An inexcusable performance and a return of Brendan’s team being leaked

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The Celtic Star

·16 de março de 2025

An inexcusable performance and a return of Brendan’s team being leaked

An inexcusable performance from Celtic, the lack of desire was damning. And Brendan needs to sort out his team-leak problem…

Daizen Maeda of Celtic celebrates scoring his team’s first goal during the Scottish Premiership match between Celtic and theRangers at Celtic Park on March 16, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

Well, where do we start after that performance today? An utter Inexcusable display with only a few players earning pass marks in a game we should have been busting a gut to win.

Vídeos OneFootball

Only the likes of Maik Nawrocki, Jota, and Daizen Maeda can hold their heads high as they least put some sort of effort into the game. Our so called experienced big hitters such as Kasper Schmeichel, Cameron Carter Vickers (who played with a toe injury), Alistair Johnston, Jeffery Schlupp and Nicolas Kuhn let themselves, the manager and the supporters down by producing a dire, sub par performance in terms of both performance and commitment.

Hamza Igamane of theRangers scores his team’s third goal during the Scottish Premiership match between Celtic and theRangers at Celtic Park on March 16, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

Arne Engels and Reo Hatate just about merit a passmark and Yang did well coming off the bench, unlike Adam Idah who really needs to start justifying that £9m transfer. Talking of substitutes, Brendan Rodgers is bemoaning the late winner for theRangers but he indirectly contributed to that by failing to put Alistair Johnston out of his misery as the Canadian endured the worst ninety five minutes of his career. As a right back Rodgers had a ready made chance on the bench in Anthony Ralston yet chose to keep Johnston involved when the chance was obvious to every pair of watching Celtic eyes. A dreadful error by the manager that ultimately lost us the game.

Callum McGregor’s ability and leadership was badly missed in the middle of park. Even the presence of the much criticised Auston Trusty was missed in defence with the usually reliable CCV looking a pale shadow of his usual commanding self.

Barry Ferguson, Interim Manager of theRangers, celebrates with backroom staff after Mohamed Diomande scored the team’s second goal during the Scottish Premiership match between Celtic and theRangers at Celtic Park on March 16, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

All this contributed to a woeful unforgivable performance against an average side who we made look half decent. Sure they wanted it more due to the lack of pressure on them, but that’s not an excuse and we have to hold a long post mortem into what went wrong and make sure we bounce back and secure the title as quickly as possible.

Today won’t have damaged our title aspirations, and the treble remains well and truly on, but that still that doesn’t excuse our failure, or Celtic shipping NINE goals in three matches against today’s opponents, who now have six points from three matches against Celtic this season with one match to play.

Peter Lawwell, Chairman of Celtic, Dermot Desmond, Non-Executive Director of Celtic, and Michael Nicholson, CEO of Celtic, are seen in attendance prior to the Scottish Premiership match between Celtic and theRangers at Celtic Park on March 16, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

The 3-2 win for theRangers could be enough to convince the Ibrox decision makers to give Barry Ferguson and his coaching team the gig on a permanent basis, which should suit Celtic just fine. That Celtic bench today was way short of quality and experience and with touching £80m resting in the Celtic PLC’s bank account that’s not really acceptable.

READ THIS…Celtic 2-3 theRangers – An atrocious start, Hoops were so passive and sloppy

🗣️ “There’s no doubt we missed Callum [McGregor]” 🗣️ “There’s a responsibility on everyone” Brendan Rodgers gives his thoughts on Celtic’s 3-2 defeat to Rangers ⬇️
– domingo, 16 de março de 2025

Celtic have not had a bad injury run this season, but with McGregor, Trusty and Bernardo missing we looked short in depth and quality. That needs fixing. So to does the team news being leaked. We knew the Celtic team around 9am this morning but choose not to post it on The Celtic Star or share the ‘rumour ‘ on social media, but it was being talked about and could easily have reached theRangers.

That is coming from Celtic – someone talking a wage – or someone around Celtic in the pre-match base – and that needs to be sorted out immediately.

Just an Ordinary Bhoy

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27 August 2000: Henrik Larsson celebrates during the Scottish Premier League match against Rangers at Celtic Park. Celtic won the game 6 – 2. Photo: Stu Forster /Allsport