Summer's no breeze for Tony Mowbray

Well, the close season comes, birds twitter, summer breeze makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine...



... and blogs are neglected.

Which is sort of a shame because there has been no proper welcome on here for Tony Mowbray, Mark Venus and Peter Grant. By all that's right and holy, Mogga & co's credentials shouldn't have got them near the interview stage at a club like Celtic but that's by the by. I like who we have in charge and I believe that they can do an excellent job for us.

That task isn't helped by having to fly to the Antipodes to play some exhibition football when they should really be preparing a squad for Champions League qualification. But then in “pursuing sources of revenue“ … “we don''t get Premiership money“ … blah, blah, Celtic always have some sort of excuse.

The truth is, of course, that all these commitments – like the Peace Cup – were made when it was believed that Celtic would win the SPL. The mere matter of adequately improving the squad to make sure that we could play in that nonsensical tournament and travel to the other end of the world without wrecking our chances of playing in the Champions League was surely a technicality.

That's in the past, of course, but not forgotten – and nor should it be.

Tony has made a bright start, attempting to re-awaken that passion and loyalty to the team and manager that disregards the intrigues of the boardroom suits. His job has not been made easier.

The departure of Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink inspires mixed feelings. He was very effective for a time but when the last remnants of pace left his legs, watching him proved to be torture. Personally, I never fully forgave him for stupidly getting sent off as we were going down to an improbable defeat against the R-word at Celtic Park. At that stage, we could still have won the match and Jan's idiocy – with the wry smile that followed – was costly and unbecoming of a Celtic player.

Shunsuke Nakamura was a marvellous footballer, who seems to have been allowed to leave without even being asked to speak to the new manager. He was, after all, quoted as saying he would stay at Celtic “as long as Peter wants me“. We must presume that Peter Lawwell had no further use for him.

Tony himself made the decision to let Paul Hartley go and while it may have been the correct decision in the long term, Paul's professionalism will be missed. I often wonder how large a figure in Celtic's history Paul might have been had he been signed a few years earlier. He has exceptional qualities and Bristol City are fortunate to have him.
So with those three and Bobo gone, “salary-trimming“ is in full swing.

And now we have Marc-Antoine Fortuné, whose signing is a bold move. Most of us are in no position to make judgements on him and the coaches have high praise for a forward they worked with at West Bromwich Albion. However, strikers who score very few goals are an immense risk.

The coaching staff point to the overall scoring rate of the team in matches he plays in. Are they perhaps overlooking the phenomenon of Celtic strikers being penalised when they challenge for the ball? Since certain blue-minded zealots campaigned for special treatment allowing centre-halfs impunity when challenged by Chris Sutton, there has been a constant theme of referees favouring defenders against our strikers.

In part, this accounted for the ineffectiveness of Jan and, unless there is a serious change of culture, Marc-Antoine faces the challenge of his life. We should be patient with him as the Jacksons and Broadfoots of the world are surely waiting to compare him unfavourably to Kyle Lafferty.

We await much-needed further signings and suspect that more players will be asset-managed out of the door. In these circumstances, if Tony Mowbray takes us into the Champions League proper, he will already deserve legendary status.






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Strachan must remedy system failure

I always have been – and remain – a supporter of Gordon Strachan as Celtic manager.

However, having been knocked out of the tournament that offered the best chance of success and trailing in the league, the head coach must act quickly to prevent a whitewash at the hands of a vastly inferior Rangers squad.

Let’s look across the city: in my opinion Rangers have only two players of exceptional quality in Carlos Cuellar and Barry Ferguson. On the form Cuellar has shown this season, he would brush aside any of Celtic’s centre-backs, given that the best central defender at the club, Darren O’Dea, is considered too young to be picked ahead of more established players.

Ferguson is a talented footballer playing some of his best football. Celtic, however, have an abundance of talent in the midfield area yet are looking fragile in that zone in which the game is controlled.

Strachan is entitled to pursue his favoured approach – and it has been extremely successful for Celtic up to this point – but sometimes it is better to do something different than to persevere for fear of being accused of being wrong.

Comparing Celtic with Rangers, two things scream out – a Rangers system that based purely on positioning, tackling, smothering the game and looking for breaks against Celtic’s attempt to play more technically pleasing, passing football; and Rangers’ relative selection continuity largely due to a glaring lack of talent among the fringe players.

However, Strachan insists not just on pursuing a 4-4-2 formation or, perhaps more accurately, 4-2-2-2 as the tactical genius John Barnes advocated, but also on continually tinkering with the central midfield area.

In doing so, he has refused to allow the players to find the time to gel together. On one hand it can be very good to show players that they must perform well every time if they want to be picked. On the other, many managers accept that sometimes you have to give certain players time in the knowledge that they will hit top form after six-to-eight games.

The various combinations of Donati-Brown- Hartley-Sno-Robson have functioned erratically throughout the season. For my money, Strachan should pick Hartley (arguably the most complete footballer in Scotland) to partner Brown and keep faith with them.

Regardless of his small vocal band of critics Brown is a gifted player who gives constant movement, strength, aggression, energy and sharp attacking instincts. Hartley offers the control that Donati was signed to deliver but in recent months has grown in stature as a Celtic player and Scotland international with a mature reading of the game complemented by excellent passing and positioning. One little-mentioned statistic showed that Hartley had a pass completion rate of 96% when he was substituted in the Camp Nou.

In my opinion, a manager either settles on a midfield pairing or reverts to one central playmaker – and Hartley, sometimes reminiscent of Paul McStay, is one player with the full range of attributes needed for that role.

Of course, Strachan could always do something radically different. It would be too much to hope that he might go crazy and play a 4-3-3 formation against Gretna. He also certainly has the players to adopt the 3-5-2 system that worked so well for Martin O’Neill for so long, using Hartley and Donati or Sno as holding midfielders. Allowing Brown to focus on attack while McGeady and Nakamura, or preferably Robson, take the offensive wide roles.

One thing is for sure – a squad with a huge amount of talent has been performing well short of its potential in recent weeks with confidence waning on the field and off. It is also clear that despite unfair criticism of Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and unrealistic expectations of Georgios Samaras, the understandable shading in Scott McDonald’s form has left Celtic looking goal-shy.

There is room for worry that the approaching match with Rangers will be like watching Alex Higgins play Cliff Thorburn at snooker. Higgins did his best to entertain and was either brilliant or awful. Thorburn played the most soul-destroying form of anti-snooker – but he often won.