Jumping to Conclusions is a Dangerous form of Exercise
Is everybody absolutely sure this championship race is over?
Celtic’s nine point lead has been assumed to represent an unassailable advantage. Even the man on the television highlights programme on Sunday night asked his two talking heads in the studio who would be second in the table at the end of the season.
“Rangers, Aberdeen, or even Hibs,” he said.
But Celtic made a mistake by making seven changes from the side who beat Zenit St. Petersburg in the Europa League last Thursday and paid for it by dropping another two points in the league against St. Johnstone on Sunday.
For the second league game in a row Brendan Rodgers failed to win and failed to score a goal.
Kilmarnock made them pay for that by winning against the defending champions at Rugby Park. Stevie Clarke’s side have now, even more remarkably, won more league points over the last ten games than Celtic have managed to accrue over the same period.
It was a bit rich of Rodgers to have a dig at the St. Johnstone players in his post-match comments on Sunday, suggesting that they only turned up and put on a show in big matches.
Where did Celtic go on the five occasions this season when they have drawn a handful of matches on their own ground?
Was it not the case that the manager fell into the trap of believing he could do what he liked with his personnel and assumed they would be bomb-proof against a Perth side who have been falling gradually downwards in recent weeks?
That turned out to be a mistaken assumption and criticising the St. Johnstone players’ application afterwards looked like a diversionary tactic designed to camouflage Celtic’s shortcomings on the day.
Is it not more likely that, rather than St. Johnstone rising to the occasion, Celtic’s costly and much vaunted pool of players were abject failures on the day?
Scott Sinclair, last season’s Player of the Year, was once again posted missing, and no matter how many times he points to his goalscoring stats for the season the fans can see a pale shadow of the player he once was in front of their eyes.
Edouard is rated in the multi-million pound category by Paris St. Germain, his parent club, but has too many blank afternoons and evenings in the goalscoring department.
Dembele? Why did he turn up for the Europa League game and offer nothing in his cameo appearance against St. Johnstone?
And would it not have made more sense to play him from the start and let him build on the confidence he gained from his outstanding display against the Russians three days earlier?
Celtic, following on from Aberdeen’s loss at Hibs twenty four hours earlier, looked a massive gift horse in the mouth by passing up on the chance to fully extend their lead at the top of the table.
Their next two league games are away to Aberdeen at Pittodrie and then the meeting with Rangers at Ibrox.
Two wins for Rodgers’ side and the seventh league title in a row is a certainty. Two defeats and there are reasonable grounds for suggesting, with nine games left to play, a tension-filled end to the league championship.
Sunday’s team was chosen in the belief it would be good enough to beat the previously ailing Saints and would enable Celtic to rest the legs of those needed for the more pressing engagement in Russia on Thursday evening.
The plan backfired and now Zenit will need to be eliminated from Europe or league points will, with the benefit of hindsight, have been sacrificed in a careless fashion.
All of the above will be dismissed as nonsense by that element of the Celtic support who totally reject the idea of a rising challenge to their side, but Sunday at Pittodrie is now a crucial fixture and Rodgers’ side will need to go into it on the back of a lengthy journey home from Russia and severely limited recovery time.
Equally, there is no point in laughing off Rangers’ momentum while they are scoring goals for fun and growing in confidence on the back of a significantly strengthened side.
The game at Ibrox promises to be the closest derby match since Rodgers took over at Celtic nearly two years ago.
Jumping to conclusions is a dangerous form of exercise in football.
This time last season, Celtic had a twenty-seven point lead at the top of the league. Now it is nine points and the challenge is to keep that advantage intact after two matches which will hold Celtic’s nerve up for inspection.
The big crowd at the home leg against Zenit St. Petersburg sang about winning ten titles in a row. That has become the holy grail for a support who would react very badly to that ambition being booby trapped.
And there’s no point in saying everything would have been different at the weekend if Scott Brown hadn’t been suspended.
The captain is inspirational and in the form of his life, but are we really to believe Celtic are completely dysfunctional if he has to take the day off his work every now and then?
A pivotal sequence of games has now landed in Celtic’s lap and they had better have the resolve to deal with them, otherwise questions are going to be asked about the wisdom of money in the bank while the team needs a level of investment that has not so far materialised