Just a week after we supposedly won the SPL, it’s crisis time again as our lead at the top of the table was cut to four points.
Of course the talking point will be Artur Boruc’s clanger, which will become a Youtube classic before long. Boruc is good but, whatever his personal circumstances, he does need to concentrate fully on his job as a professional football player – even if John Rankine later said he had been practising his “squiggles” from 40 yards.
That said, the chances of the Celtic supporters being conned by a gleeful press into turning on him are surely remote. Artur has earned the esteem of Celtic supporters and it will take more than the odd howler to challenge his position as first-choice goalkeeper and one of our favourite sons.
And, though the error was inexcusable, Boruc was not helped today by a bizarre team selection. Gary Caldwell was arguably our best player at Easter Road and, at this stage, is vying with Scott Brown for the title of Celtic’s player of the year.
We know he can play in midfield – and more power to him – but it seems ridiculous to have broken up Caldwell’s defensive partnership with Stephen McManus to accommodate Glenn Loovens. Injuries undoubtedly played their part but rather than tinker with defence, surely Paul Caddis or Aiden McGeady could have started in midfield.
If Gordon Strachan didn’t see McManus and Loovens troubled at any time, presumably he missed the first-half miss by Steven Fletcher (admittedly McManus was nowhere to be seen at the time).
Loovens has his qualities but positional sense is not one of them. On several occasions he was caught out of position and indeed the central defenders pushing too far forward was a theme of the game.
And yet – here we go – it could all have been so different if Celtic had invested properly in the summer. We started the season with only three established strikers, two of whom have been injured, with the other one rarely looking like threatening to score.
That was always likely to be problematic and the real surprise is not that Celtic failed to score against Hibs but that we managed to win 12 matches without being fully staffed in that area.
Today, the strikers may as well have been non-existent. Scott McDonald did work hard, Cillian Sheridan, who is still young and inexperienced, made no discernible impact and Georgios Samaras clearly still has some way to go to reach peak fitness.
It has become commonplace for those defending this failure to strengthen (and left-back is still an issue) to portray those who wished to see the club with a balanced squad as demanding reckless spending. That is not the case. Some people would just like to see the club assemble a squad that has adequate strength in all areas. That, we clearly do not have.
Some of the decisions made recently are tantamount to setting up a jewellery store and saying that you don’t have enough money for proper security.
The apologists for this negligence – and that is precisely what it is – insist on comparing our “net spend” to Britain’s worst-run club since Leeds United, one that is in the midst of a calamitous financial crisis brought about by a
bombastic impresario.
Is this the only benchmark?
The more I read from some Celtic officials and commentators telling us how it is ridiculous to have expected our worldwide scouting network to have identified a striker and left-back, the more they sound like politicians telling us there is nothing in the coffers to fund free personal care for the elderly.
At football clubs, like central government, funds are found depending on the policy whims of the day.
It is simply dishonest to represent those of us who identified weaknesses in the squad months ago as demanding random, unsustainable spending. And let’s not forget that Celtic’s failure to do so has already cost the club millions of pounds in European football revenue.
Gordon Strachan must shoulder some of the blame, but not the lion’s share. However, if he continues to make excuses for people he believes to be his friends, he may very well one day find himself being held accountable for the failures of others.
The newspapers, of course, will have their headlines, which we in turn will ignore.
Those charged with running the club, those whose only comprehension of ownership is defined by the number of shares certificates with their name on them, ought to think twice before trying to reconcile the supporters to another disappointing transfer window.
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