SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

My goodness,that was a terrific game of football last night. Yes, it should have been well beyond Dundee long before they equalised late in the first half, and yes, we did retake the lead not long after the break, but they threw the bloody kitchen sink at us for that second period, and I thought we were fortunate to get the late point. 

I don’t often say that. 

I did point out in yesterday’s article that the home side weren’t to be taken lightly, that they would come at us a lot more than their near neighbours did about three weeks ago. But even I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught they unloaded on us. And this was them with multiple absentees from their squad due to illness and injury!

Tony Docherty can be well proud of his charges. But in truth, so can Brendan Rodgers. Under the cosh for so long, Celtic still managed to keep driving forward even to the last, and it took an added time penalty, a clear handball, for us to get our first equaliser and the final goal of the contest. 

I reckon every Dundee player last night will be very pleased indeed with their own performance on the night. I don’t think the same can be said of every Celtic player. I’m not going to name anyone, as that is unfair. But it is worth pointing out that when players are responsible for missing sitters at one end, or causing chaos through dreadful defending at the other, or misplacing nearly every pass they tried, then it makes life bloody difficult for everyone else. But these players have shown their true selves on many other occasions, so a quiet boot up the arse from BR will probably suffice. 

As will a changed line-up at the weekend. 

To the goals, and there were some damned good ones. Five minutes gone, a deep cross from Taylor works the one-two with McCowan. Rushing in on goal, he has the option of heading square for Kyogo, but wisely decides to put the header into the far corner past Carson. An absolute beaut, and didn’t Luke know it! He must have been knackered after that celebration!!!

We then settled down for half an hour of Celtic doing what Celtic do in these games. Bore the opposition to death. Yes, we created a few chances. One or two should definitely have been taken. An air shot from Idah and a powerful header off the bar from Bernardo were probably the pick of them. But the next goal came when we got a corner with five minutes remaining. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve pointed out that the opposition are more dangerous from our corners than we are, but that’s what happened. The usual garbage saw Dundee break like lightning, seventeen seconds it took them to put it in the net. A beautiful finish too, edge of the area to the opposite corner. At that stage, it was against the run of play. But then, fannying about on a 1-0 lead is never too clever. 

Second half saw us regain the lead, a bit of a stramash-remember them?-leading to a close-in header from Yang. This time, we didn’t have time to fanny about on our lead. Dundee just whipped up the park and equalised, the basterts! The ball was cleared to our left back area, on the touchline near halfway. All Trusty had to do was put it out for a throw, let the players regroup. Nope, that’s too much for him, he’ll just do nothing and let the home player waltz past him with the ball. And pass it to the corner of the six-yard box for his pal to put it in off CCV. Really really bad defending, no other words for that. 

After that, it was Celtic’s turn to be under the cosh. Sure, we were still dominating possession-yeah,like that’s so important these days!-but Dundee were creating more chances and looking more likely. And when they got a corner with about fifteen to go, they just crowded the area, and waited for us to make an arse of it. The impressive Donnelly, only signed last week, rose above Trusty and planted it. I thought he was holding Trusty down, but Robertson wasn’t interested. 

Now Celtic were up against it, and we had already used all five subs too. What made it even more difficult was that Dundee were hardly sitting back and defending their lead. We tried shooting from distance-to no effect. We tried the cute pass inside the box-to even less. We tried the through ball to Palma in acres of space-you can guess how that ended. Eventually Kühn tried a shot in added time, his first since he came off the bench. Mo Sylla-no,not that one!-slid in to block it with everything he had. Unfortunately for him, his raised arm was what did the trick, as clear a penalty as you will see Don Robertson give us. Arne Engels is the Cool Hand Luke you want in these circumstances, and he duly obliged. Our second Cool Hand Luke of the night!

This was as hard a game as any of the provincial clubs have given us all season, I reckon. And credit is due to Dundee for a performance that really deserved a bigger audience than turned up on the night. The local public need to give themselves a shake, because they don’t know what they’re missing. 

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Above article by BMCUWP