Celtic have seen diminishing returns since returning from the international break.
After initially bouncing back from a 1-0 league defeat at Ibrox with a resounding 3-0 win at home on SPFL Premisehip duty against Ross County the men in Hoops blew a 2-0 lead away at Real Bets before then going down meekly 1-0 to bogey team Livingston at Almondvale aka The Tony Macaroni Arena.
The Ross County game was pretty much easy peasy with a deflected Carter-Vickers effort finally opening up the stubborn visitors on 64 mins before Albian Ajeti – in from the cold due to an injury to Kyogo on international duty with Japan – headed in spectacularly for number two and then nodded in a third from close range late on.
Celtic carried that form on five days later – for half an hour at least – as they motored to a spectacular 2-0 lead in Seville’s Estadio Benito Villamarín against Real Betis with goals from in-form Ajeti and a converted penalty by Josip Juranovic.
We really were on fire and it could have been even better with Jota nearly making it three but alas Celtic’s unfortunate habit of crumbling on away days in Europe sadly reared its ugly head and somehow we conceded four goals in a crazy nineteen-minute spell either side of half time.
Talk about going from agony to ecstasy.
Anthony Ralston scored late to give us a glint of hope of rescuing a point but it wasn’t meant to be and the final score read 4-3 to the hosts.
An at times scintillating display of attacking play undermined by our ongoing vulnerability at the back.
Three days later a bad situation became worse when we served up our worst display of the season going down 1-0 away to bottom-placed Livingston.
There really isn’t much to talk about here.
Andrew Shinnie gave the West Lothian club the lead on 25 mins and thereafter Celtic played passing drills looking listless and out of ideas in the process as the home side held on to inflict Celtic’s third league defeat in only six league games this term.
The exploits of the previous Thursday night clearly played a part but our inability to have anything resembling a plan B is concerning as we fell further behind Rangers in the league.
We’ve also failed to win at Livingston since the West Lothian side’s return to the top flight in 2018.
Celtic appeared to bounce back – initially at least – from their terrible display at Livingston last Sunday with a professional 3-0 dismissal of Championship side Raith Rovers in the League Cup quarter-final via goals from Jota, Abada and Turnbull.
Raith under the management of former Celtic scout John McGlynn play some pretty dazzling stuff at times in the second tier of Scottish football but wisely decided that trying to turn it on when so wildly outgunned wasn’t the best option so sat in and tried to keep things respectable.
It could have been a lot more but the comfortable scoreline secures a November 20th semi-final against St.Johnstone and manager Ange Postecoglou’s first of what we hope will be many visits to the national stadium.
The following Saturday we then entertained an impressive Dundee Utd team who had finally ended Rangers’ long unbeaten run earlier in the season.
The Arabs didn’t just come to sit-in but played a pretty expansive game and had a go.
After Abada had looked to put us on easy street with an opening goal on 16 mins, Ian Harkes then popped up with an equaliser only two mins later.
The rest of the game was evenly contested but neither team could make a further breakthrough and we had to settle for a share of the points.
And with our league form floundering what better to wipe away the blues than welcoming Bayer Leverkusen to Celtic Park for our second Europa League group match.
The German cracks were flying high in the Bundesliga and mercilessly punished our every mistake in a 4-0 rout.
Watching from a mostly disinterested bar in Donegal Town it was sore one take mainly due to the fact we actually deserved a lot more from the game.
It looked like a pummelling on paper but in actual fact their keeper Lukas
Hradecky had a great game making multiple fine saves.
At the other end, a David Turnbull slip in the box and a later penalty award after Cameron Carter-Vickers was harshly ruled to have handled a long-range shot contributed to two of the visitor’s goals.
A harsh lesson though strangely I found it difficult to be too critical of the team after this one as the scoreline really didn’t reflect the match at all.
Onwards and upwards to October.
....Always A Tim! 