From NTV issue 244
Moussa Dembele has just done what the likes of Larsson, Dalglish, and Nicholas couldn’t. Because obviously today’s opponents didn’t exist when those heroes were playing.
Today was the day that the SMSM looked to the sky and noticed that it was black with chickens coming home to roost. Ever since the Scottish cup debacle of last season the line peddled has been that Warburton has assembled a team that can match Celtic. Of course they cheerfully skimmed over the details, such as that game finished level, our set-up that day was borderline insanity and the main point of us changing manager and significantly improving our squad.
Meanwhile across the city they managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory in the cup final by losing the same goal twice in the final 10 minutes (amusingly enough rendering their triumph over us as meaningless and denying them a first shot at Europe). They followed that up with a summer that saw them sign a bizarre collection of aged basket cases and treatment room malingerers, before being handed the friendliest possible start to the season by the fixtures ‘computer’, facing nothing but last season’s bottom six prior to this game.
It was almost as if someone at Hampden wanted them to be top when they arrived at Celtic Park.
But as with the cup final they’ve managed to make a pigs ear of it, dropping points, playing badly, but still utterly convinced of where their ‘rightful’ place is. The funny thing is that if you stripped them out of the dead club’s skin they have started the season quite well for a newly promoted team, unbeaten and picking up points against the teams that will be battling it out at the bottom next spring.
But Celtic Park is always a tough shout for a newly promoted side and, again stripped of all the hype, this was an outcome we have seen many times before as a newly promoted team comes to our home stadium and gets outclassed. Why anyone would be surprised by a scoreline such as this is beyond me.
It would be fair to say that we played parts of this game without great urgency, possibly with an eye on the Barca game coming up, but when it mattered we made our class tell.
Their tactics in the first half seemed to centre around the idea of kneecapping Tom Rogic. He must have been fouled more than any other player in Scotland this weekend and he was only on the pitch for 52 minutes.
However, what can I say about the assistance given to us by their frankly comical central ‘defence’?
Sweet baby Moses these lads are shocking. The alleged marking on Dembele for his first goal was remarkable for its absence. The entire second goal was a calamity of awesome proportions; first they gift us the ball with a ridiculous pass from Keirnan, straight to one of our better passers in Bitton. He immediately plays the ball to the running Dembele. Thanks to Senderos’s lackadaisical ambling out he is well onside. Senderos then leaps in to block a shot that never arrives as Dembele steps inside him and swings a shot past the ‘keeper. Lift off.
At this point it felt like the score could be anything we wanted, which made what happened next highly disappointing. Firstly we allowed Windass (the only one of their players who looked at the races) a free run from the midfield. Next we didn’t put enough pressure on the cross. Next Lustig completely lost Miller and his header was forced over by some horrible little rat faced arse whose name I can’t be bothered remembering/looking up/typing.
Meanwhile our new ‘keeper stood rooted to the spot throughout, barley moving his feet or arms. I’m not saying Gordon would have kept this one out (Miller’s header was superb) but this guy is not an improvement. His refusal to come off his line to help Lustig in the second half was very worrying.
Anyway, this allowed them to go in to the break with the idea that they could get something from the game. Worse yet, we seemed to think that as well because when the second half kicked off we were nowhere to be found. For the first ten minutes of the second half we barely got a kick, although it must be pointed out that they never managed an effort on target during this spell.
It would be fair to say, then, that our third goal was against the run of play, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a superb goal as Dembele played the perfectly weighted, perfectly timed pass to Sinclair (fairly anonymous until that point) who slotted the ball in off the post.
At which point they promptly fell apart. Senderos picked up a stupid first yellow for an off the ball thing, but his second yellow was beyond bizarre/stupid as he seemed to think he was playing GAA by leaping for the ball with his hand.
At that point Barton was pulled into central defence – which was probably a relief to him given the gulf in class between him and Brown – but of course he was now confronted with Dembele. He soon found himself sliding in a futile bid to stop the fourth.
In the meantime Stuart Armstrong had come off the bench to replace the jet lagged Rogic and what a relief it was to see Armstrong contribute and turn their defence. He even got their goalie diving full length to stop a 25 yard effort. I was delighted that he was the one who put the final nail in the coffin today. Hopefully he can kick on and make a real impact on the season.
The media assessment of the game saw the first real scrutiny of Warburton and like it he did not. With some tough fixtures coming up he might find this kind of press treatment the norm, but that shouldn’t be anything that a man with a magic hat can’t handle.
AB Murdoch
The mother of all Glasgow derbies (apart from Celtic vs Thistle, Queen’s Park and Glasgow City Ladies) was certainly an experience I’m sure many Celtic fans were looking forward to as we got acquainted with our new neighbours.
Must be honest and say the team selection worried me a bit with Dembélé up on his own, and a couple of early crosses without a contest didn’t convince me. But it took Celtic all of 10 minutes to get a grip on this Zombie carcass and take control of the match and the Frenchman was soon rampant.
Dembélé met Sinclair’s corner with such ferocity at the back post to give us the lead before he had Bob the Builder lying on his backside to tuck away the second a few minutes after.
The Zombies had a familiar pseudo-resurrection when big Dorus was stranded from a Tavernier cross. More questionable goalkeeping from the Dutchman as he couldn’t decide whether he needed to bring in soap powder on his way home or catch that big white thing flying over his head. Gordon won’t have to wait long to be reinstated if he keeps this up.
Thankfully it was Garner who prevented their arthritic winger/striker from getting yet another goal against us. A bit of a buzz-kill just before half-time but, thankfully, not an ominous sign of things to come, as was so often the case last season.
That being said McKay had a glorious chance to make it 2-2 just after half-time when the ball fell to him from a poorly defended cross. The winger spurned his big moment and his remaining contributions consisted of chasing Celtic players down the right-flank.
The Dembélé Show rolled on as he turned provider for Sinclair with a superb slide-rule pass between the two feckless Sevco centre-backs.
The Magic Hat then had a dilemma. (Surely nothing he couldn’t solve?) Time to whip out his best trick of the day; making half of his defenders magically disappear.
The cry was “no Surrenderos” when the Swiss got a second yellow for palming a misjudged lob out of the air. And then Kiernan was simply crying when he threw in the towel to try and spare himself a Zombie parcel bomb.
Dembélé made hat-trick history – by being the first player to score one against this team – as he took down and slammed home an excellent Lustig cross before Armstrong finished the rout with a tidy finish.
As for Sevco’s “Premier League quality” signings…
Krancjar withdrew at half-time to stop the old joints seizing up, not that he’d done anything other than persistently kick the irresistible Rogic. Clint Hill was left on the bench even at a point when they were down to two recognised defenders.
But it wouldn’t be fair to ignore the contributions of Joey Barton. His Pirlo-esque passing was expressive to the point where it didn’t matter which colour of jersey the recipient was wearing (primarily green and white). Easily Celtic’s best player and nearly chipped in with a goal of his own… past his own keeper.
Glorious afternoon all round. Only one team in it and the gulf in class both on and off the pitch was put to the fore.
Tommybhoy
Sky’s coverage of Celtic-Rangers began with David Tanner apologising for four years of interruption but he reassured viewers that the “Old Firm” was back.
There is a reason why Tanner rhymes with Spanner but the sentiment encapsulates the feelings of Sky and certain parts of the media as a whole. Without focusing on a duopoly, the perception of a challenge has been so fuzzy as to make it appear as if it doesn’t exist.
In spite of the avowed focus of the SPFL to promote one game above all others, it still remains the case that for there to be a competition, sides have to be competitive.
And on this day Celtic’s opponents were anything but competitive.
Five games in, the season appears to have settled into a pattern – Celtic will almost certainly canter to the title in a fashion that already seems like it may make Aberdeen’s challenges of recent seasons seem like close run things, while three or four sides will battle it out for the minor placings.
The flood of attention given to this game pre-match left it floating like Noah atop a flood of sunken Giants.
But those hungry for the apology for the interruption of this fixture will have seen a game that shows how far Rangers are from Celtic. Very far indeed.
5-1 is not the whole story. It was a story of mistakes from Rangers – in selection, in play and in mentality.
When Halliday, Forrester, Hill and O’Halloran sat on the bench, it must have been clear that a side needing to be united and able to counter quickly was set up without any of the attributes actually needed to execute that game plan.
Mark Warburton now finds himself in an unenviable position – the full force of the Glasgow pressure cooker will be applied upon him while he stews trying to find a solution. Replicating his Celtic Park performance against the likes of Aberdeen will lead to big trouble.
The issue was simply that whatever they tried didn’t work. James Forrest and Patrick Roberts later on both exploited Lee Wallace like a naive high schooler on prom night travelling to Makeout Peak expecting just a kiss.
On the opposite side, James Tavernier was tested by Sinclair and stymied by Tierney.
In midfield, Tom Rogic had the beating of both Barton and Windass, often both at the same time, through power and skill – a further sign he has developed into the league’s best midfielder. There was little graft from him as there was little need to.
Moussa Dembele had the movement and the nous to be in the right spot at the right time – even in scoring a hat trick, his moment of quality was his slide rule pass to set up Scott Sinclair’s goal.
This was not prime Celtic either. It was very good Celtic, but there was often a slight lack of cutting edge – particularly prior to the first goal – and it felt like it was 5 going on 9 had Celtic turned their dominance in terms of territory into chances and goals.
In that sense, this was reminiscent of the League Cup semi-final of two seasons ago – Celtic were untroubled and rarely out of second gear. Second gear was more than enough to breeze past a Rangers side which didn’t get past stalling altogether.
So far this season, Celtic’s most strenuous test was that posed by Hearts, who had the physicality to impose themselves on Celtic – Rangers, instead, were passive in the extreme: even in spite of a sending off and players losing their composure, this was hardly a violent game.
As a result, Hearts ended up passing them in the table into second with a late surge past Partick Thistle at Tynecastle and it would now appear that they will take the role of Celtic’s sternest challengers this season.
Celtic’s tests in the Champions League will show how far Celtic have come.
Rangers have a lot of thinking to do. Celtic’s fans have a lot of boasting to do.
Everyone else has a lot of gaining to do. Because, right now, the four year interruption of a single game looks like extending into a five year interruption of that game actually having competitive relevance.
TIMOMOUSE
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