I think it's the feeling of most Celtic fans, even at this early stage of the season that we're not moving forward now. We have certainly not hit the ground running this season and I don't think the players who played so well for us last season are playing as well again this season (Brown and Johansen in particular). The rest either joined in the summer or January but GMS looks a shadow of the player at the moment, doesn't seem to have either the confidence or maybe just not the time on the ball to do his thing like he did at Dundee Utd.
Ciftci, well the less said about his performances the better!
I don't think we recruited particularly well this summer, it remains to be seen what Simunovic is like but with a price tag like that he better be our best defender. Boyata has gone from looking a good player to being awful, particularly in possession! He can tackle and defend, but please don't ask him to pass the ball!
We lack creativity but we failed to deal with that in the summer because we're already overloaded with midfielders!
Agree about Rogic and Bitton, I like both and Bitton is improving that side of his game, I think he learned when playing in Europe how little time he'll get. Rogic is good, never been the quickest player but has good feet and has had a good start to the season....but he's not going to be suited to every game!
I think we needed another dynamic midfielder, someone a bit more like Brown, a box to box guy with a bit of fight, that will be useful in certain games.
Johansen needs to get his head screwed on because at the moment it looks like he's running around like a headless chicken or giving away silly fouls, nothing more! Johansen floated around the pitch far too much today! He was supposed to be playing RW but was coming inside and dropping deep to pick the ball up....then it was easy for Aberdeen to defend because they knew the ball wasn't going to go to their left side because there was nobody there!
We have too many players who only play well in certain games that suit them, we need players who are going to play well regardless! Either that or Deila can't be afraid to change the team up more, and that may mean changing the formation!
I read some stats that were actually a little worrying. Before the weekend's games we were third best in terms of number of shots conceded per game. We concede 7.5 shots per game, Aberdeen concede 7.2 and HAMILTON have conceded on average only 7.00 shots per game.
We average far more shots per game than anyone else! We average 18.17 shots per game so far this season, scoring 16 goals. Ross County's average is next highest with 11.67 and have scored the joint third highest number of goals with 10. Hearts are the second highest scoring team with 15, but they only average 11.2 shots per game. So we are not taking our chances as well as teams like Hearts and Hamilton are!
In 2013/14, we had the highest chance conversion rate in the SPL with 16.21%. Last season under Deila, that dropped to 13.24%, that was fifth best in the league behind Motherwell (13.86%), Aberdeen (13.96%), Dundee Utd (15.89%) and then Dundee (16.19%). That's pretty poor!
So far this season we're fourth in chance conversion rate with 15.93%. That however is quite far behind St Johnstone on 17.75%, Aberdeen on 18.24% and then Hearts are way out ahead on 28.23%.
Deila likes his stats, maybe he should read those and see what it tells us......we're not converting enough chances because we only have 1 striker!
Our defence are doing fine in terms of how many shots we allow, not concerned about that. The problem is that when teams are getting chances against us, they seem to to be taking them.....or being allowed to take them I should say!
I'm not going to call for Deila to go because let's face it, it's going to have to get far worse than this before he's sacked but I do think he needs to do something about the state of the team right now. We're just not firing on all cylinders at the moment and the defence needs to man up!
If we continue playing so weak then we'll finish bottom in the Europa League and be lucky to get any points at all! If we do perform that badly in Europe, I think Deila would step down.