vs Dundee | Vital Football

vs Dundee

wee_od_88

Vital Football Hero
Away to unbeaten Dundee this lunchtime.

Brown, Forrest and Tonev are all still out while I think Lustig could be rested today especially as he had a bit of an injury problem in midweek.

After Ambrose's poor performance in midweek, I wouldn't be surprised to see him drop to the bench.
I think Commons will start behind Stokes up front. Kayal will drop to the bench.

Gordon
Matthews - O'Connell - VVD - Izzy
Mulgrew - Johansen
McGregor - Commons - Berget/Boerrigter
Stokes

Subs: Zaluska, Ambrose, Kayal, Biton, Boerrigter/Berget, Griffiths, Wakaso
 
That's the team I think we'll see btw.

What I would go with is:

Gordon
Matthews - O'Connell - VVD - Izzy
McGregor - Biton - Johansen
Commons
Stokes - Griffiths
 
Celtic team to play Dundee: Gordon; Matthews, Ambrose, Denayer, Izaguirre; McGregor, Kayal, Johansen, Berget; Commons, Stokes

Subs : Zaluska, O'Connell, Henderson, Pukki, Wakaso, Bitton, Griffiths
 
I forgot about Denayer!

Looks like VVD must be for the off though.... :(

No captain Mulgrew today either. Strange......
 
HT

Summary of that first half: we've been thoroughly pish.

Defence have entered a plea of criminal insanity.

Midfield have asked for the same defence lawyer as the defence.

We've asked Interpol to help in the search for our attack.

Deila taking the piss again.
 
First half was awful. Deila's tactics strike again. Did better in the 4-4-2 in the second half. Much change needed.
 
Fortunate draw.

It's fiba, Jim, but not as we know it...

Deila's subs are shite. Then again, so are his philosophy, teams and football.

We need to get him and Lawwell out the door asap.

 
Agreed,Tic. The attackers--Stokes, Commons and Griffiths--were also a threat every week to pump in six goals. When a coach makes a tactical sub on 42 minutes, he doesn't know what he is doing. The only mitigating factor is the absence of Brown, which cannot be discounted. He makes a big difference sweeping back to help the defense and unlike every player except McGregor and Griffiths, he can run the ball upfield the length of the pitch without stopping to pass sideways. The latter is Johansson's specialty.

My prediction is that we suffer bad results in Europa and are in a dogfight for the league and he is sacked in early December. The club will beg Lenny to come back or bring in Coyle. Perhaps Coyle isn't great, but he had success in the Championship and did all right Burnley and Bolton. He is light years more qualified than :emoticon:64 .

It is clear that Stokes and Commons are off the boil, but they are better players than we are seeing. They get no service in the box. Kayal cannot pass and Johannsson can only pass sideways, so Stokes and Commons have to bring the ball in AND find a shot. Ambrose is awful at right back, which is evidenced by the fact that he had acres of space on the right side and couldn't do anything with it. Why Deila thinks he can play there is beyond me.

Tic makes a good point about the defense. The Ambrose-VvD partnership with Izzy and Matthews or Lustig as fullbacks worked very well last year. Now it's awful. Usually when the central defenders are struggling, you have a problem in midfield. Our opposition is running at them. When a castoff like Paul McGowan is a threat running into the box, something has gone wrong. This is not a good team, but it is made awful with these tactics. Did Liverpool let on so many goals because Skrtel is bad? No, the team threw everything forward and exposed the back. This year they added Lovren but also hold a more balanced field. Clean sheet today!

:emoticon:64 might want to take a lesson from that and by watching Celtic film from, say, four months ago. The parallel to MOwbray is frightening. He played an open, attacking game and didn't have the personnel to do it and would not change. The results were awful. So here we are.
 
:emoticon:64 said VvD is not leaving in this window. He sat him because the payer is looking at greener pastures and wasn't in the right frame of mind. This will go over well, I'm sure. Add in that Commons was benched at the start of the Maribor game and now is captain? I have to think Deila is losing the dressing room right now. At a minimum there must be as much confusion off the pitch is there is on it. :emoticon:68
 
Tic's point about how good our defence was last year is a very good one.....it was solid! I remember when Mowbray ruined things and Lennon took over, Lennon soon learned that he needed to be more solid in midfield in order to help out the defence and keep things solid. Ronny will have to figure out this soon as well or he simply won't last!
However this season, the problem doesn't always seem to be that we don't have enough midfielders helping out.....it's that not enough of our midfielders can go box to box. Brown can do it, Johansen can to an extent. Biton, Kayal and Mulgrew can't!

There is also of course the general lack of quality among our players at the moment. Winning games also plays a big part in things as well; if we are winning and confidence is high then performances will be better but the longer we go in with these poor performances and poor results, the worse it will get!
Hopefully RD will have plenty of time working with the players during the international break and we can get back to winning ways.

I thought O'Connell and Biton were very strange substitutes. We were chasing the game and needed goals, surely we should have thrown on players who could help with the attacking?

I thought O'Connell played reasonably well, he made a few mistakes and a few shaky moments but he tried to drive the game from defence which was good. He's still young and still learning so you expect him to have bad moments in a game, as long as he learns from them.
Griffiths looked more like his old self though, he looked like one of our more dangerous players. McGregor once again showed he is one of the few players we have with any real ability!
 
VVD has been called up to the Netherlands squad in place of Ron Vlaar who has picked up an injury! New Dutch boss Guus Hiddink obviously sees something in Van Dijk that Van Gaal didn't!
If that doesn't help relax him about staying at Celtic for a little while longer, I'm not sure what will!
 
Didn't think this charity game really needed it's own thread so just thought I'd tag it on to the end of this.

Celtic team to play Villarreal:
Zaluska; Breslin, Twardzik, Izaguirre, Tierney; Lindsay, Kayal; Thomson, Berget, Boerrigter; Griffiths

Subs: Fasan, McIlduff, McCart, Miller, Hendry, Higgins
 
Most of these players are from our U7s but have probably played for our U20s and a few have even made the Development squad.

Breslin is a regular Scotland youth team player. I believe he plays midfield normally but may be versatile in playing fullback.
I'm not sure where Tierney plays but it would seem strange for us to use both Twardzik AND Izaguirre as CBs. Twardzik has played the position before (successfully) for the development squad though.
Lindsay I believe is a player that the club has very high hopes for. A box-to-box midfielder I believe. I think he was attracting interest from some big clubs in England and possibly even abroad.

McIlduff - I really want him to make it through to our first team; purely because of the name! It's a brilliant sounding name! lol.

Griffiths, Boerrigter, Berget and Kayal really want to put in a good performance and show they should be included more!
 
Well we've gone some 24 minutes or so and so far it's 0-0. A much younger and weaker side have kept a clean sheet against superior team than our "first team" did against Dundee! It may only be a friendly but that's still showing our first team as being awful last weekend!

We've had moments of good play but it's generally been all Villareal, especially former Barcelona player and Mexican international Giovanni Dos Santos! He's pulling the strings! He was impressive at the World Cup and it looks like he's continuing that form.
 
Scratch that, 1-0 to Celtic after 27 mins. Griffiths free-kick is flicked into the back of the net by Kayal!
 
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