So I’ve had 48 hrs to digest the fallout from, to say the least, a rather disappointing encounter with Rangers on Sunday.
Oh and also process a rather horrific hangover after chucking way too many pints down my neck in various west end pubs in the aftermath of the game.
As is always the case with these games there has been a helluva lot of the aforementioned fallout.
By the game’s end, Rangers had won 2-1 and it was a deserved victory that even the most hardline Celtic supporter would struggle to begrudge them.
Carrying on from their dominant though ultimately fruitless display at Hampden earlier in the month the visiting team were at it from the start.
I was hoping we would come out and dominate the ball and show we meant business from the get-go and was happy to see a fired-up prematch team talk in the huddle by captain Scott Brown. Alas, it seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Rangers were winning the midfield battle and also suffocating us down the flanks with Frimpong closed down at almost the halfway line every time he roamed forward and our wingers Mikey Johnstone and James Forrest rendered redundant.
Just after the half-hour mark, we got an opportunity out of nothing to take the lead when Katic tried to wrestle Jullien’s shirt off him at a corner and referee Kevin Clancy gave a penalty.
Ryan Christie has been in sensational form this season with seventeen goals already, three of which have come from the spot but he opted to go across Rangers keeper Alan McGregor who made an excellent save and we’d failed to take advantage of a completely fortuitous situation.
Moments later another corner was met by Jullien whose header was cleared off the line by Steven Davis and it was starting to look like the tide had turned in our favour but then on the 34th minute, Barisic found Kent standing unmarked in the box and he finished with a fine angled shot off the inside of the post and past Forster.
Celtic responded with Johnstone finally coming to life and striding forward to feed Odsonne Edouard on the edge of the box but rather than shooting the Frenchman dithered and was closed down by Davis.
He made amends soon after though as his intricate footwork in the Rangers half left several opposition players perplexed and allowed McGregor to advance on goal with his shot deflecting off of Edouard and leaving the other McGregor in the visitor’s goal helpless.
We enjoyed our best period of play thereafter with Rangers suddenly on the back foot for the final minutes of the first stanza.
However, it was the Ibrox side who came out like a whirlwind in the second half and after Morelos passed up his customary sitter in these games they took the lead from a corner when Katic peeled off Ajer and bulleted a header past Forster.
Almost immediately Celtic got a corner of their own down the other end and big Jullien’s header once again looked net bound only for Davis to also once again clear it off the line.
Johnstone then fed Eduoard on the edge of the box and Frenchman had a fair old effort palmed wide by McGregor.
Ajer then drove a cross across goal and Jullien was a mere inch or two from heading it home but alas it was not to be.
Rangers understandably sat in for the final quarter of the game and we ran out of ideas with the introduction of Ntcham, Bitton and Griffiths not really making much difference and the game petered out until the final whistle.
But not before Alfredo Morelos made his mark with two yellows, both completely pointless of course, with the first for a late challenge on Scott Brown and the second a laughable dive in the box.
You really can set your watch by him.
To make matters worse he produced the cut-throat gesture to the Celtic crowd as he walked off the field that his employers have absurdly tried to justify by saying that it means something else in South America which is, of course, risible nonsense.
So the final whistle went and Celtic have suffered their second defeat in 20 league matches and see their lead at the top of the table reduced to two points with the light blues having a game in hand.
We are still top but it’s a pretty precarious lead now and we have a long way to go until our next league encounter away to Kilmarnock on January 22nd.
There’s Scottish Cup action to come a few days before that as we visit Championship strugglers Partick Thistle at Firhill on Saturday the 18th but the winter break has now commenced and expect Celtic to be jetting out to Dubai in the new year for a ten-day training camp and a long-overdue chance to recharge the batteries which looked decidedly low on Sunday.
It’s not where we would like to be and recent performances, especially against Rangers are a concern though to be honest pretty much all of our games since the beginning of December have been listless.
We’ve packed an incredible nine games into that time and it’s clear that we need some support for the fatigued looking Ajer at the back and Callum McGregor in midfield. We also could really do with the services of Mohamed Elyounoussi back on the wing as he’s been a huge miss this month and one thing’s for certain we need another striker. Griffiths just isn’t at the races anymore and we can’t keep waiting for him to get back to form and Bayo is just not up to scratch.
We need to spend in this window and I’m pretty sure we will though of course how much and who we’ll get is anyone’s guess.
Watch this space I suppose with names like Benkovic, Wanyama and Andraz Sporar likely to be popping up a lot. Whether they pop up in Celtic jerseys by January 31st and the end of the winter transfer window remains to be seen.
There will also be the issue of Morelos who is now claiming racist abuse was hurled at him as he was exiting the pitch by the home support. Apparently, a video is circulating of him getting abused alright but the racism claims appear to be a deflection tactic. If there is any truth in it I hope the culprit or culprits are shopped and banned for life.
The Colombian striker is already looking at a lengthy suspension due to his antics and this one clearly has legs as Rangers continue to insist that their serial offender striker is, in fact, the victim in all of this.
They haven’t commented on their visiting fans booing a minutes applause for the recently deceased Celtic player Duncan MacKay before the game. There’s dignity for you.
Anyway, certainly not the end to the first half of the season or the year or indeed the decade that we’d have liked. But it’s been a decade we’ve dominated with eight league titles, five Scottish Cups and five League Cups which of course included a treble of trebles and ten trophies in a row so difficult to complain really.
Let’s regroup, recharge and hopefully invest in January and go for nine in a row and quadruple of trebles in 2020.
No matter what you’re doing I hope everyone has a Happy New Year and thank you for reading and supporting the blog.
....Always A Tim! 