Where do I start? A few months ago, I was extending a cautious welcome to Tony Mowbray, a man whose credentials were inadequate for a potential Celtic manager but who, nevertheless, I expected to perform quite well.
And yet, to be frank, nothing could be further from the truth. Mowbray inherited a squad with serious problems. Not least amongst those was a certain satisfaction in being second-best; a smug disregard for the opinions of fans whose patience was exhausted with their inability to score goals against teams with a hint of organisation.
From Mowbray, we looked for answers. We got a £4m player (now injured) who had scored 16 goals in his previous 89 games and a midfielder who started his Celtic career like some great undiscovered talent but faded when praise came his way.
When Arsenal dismantled the team, attention was focused on the unique qualities of the Highbury outfit with the expectation that our new manager would improve matters once he got to grips with his squad.
Much has been made of Mowbray’s “philosophy” and “principles” relating to how the game should be played. On recent evidence we can conclude that this emphasises the rights of the individual over the team. Where there was a dull, grey order, we now have a team with all the drive and discipline of the new-age hippie generation.
But worse, Mowbray’s influence seems to have resulted in our decent performers appearing lost in a fog of tactical bewilderment. Solid pros – like Stephen McManus, for example – find themselves in a team “system” that shows apparent disregard for their limitations.
Mowbray likes to build from the back – so McManus is urged to start playing forward passes into the heart of the midfield, costing us dearly against Rapid Vienna and Rangers while he still had not learned his lesson against SV Hamburg.
Enter the ever-reliable Barry Robson to bring some professional common sense to midfield – he spends the evening giving the ball away to opponents. These two are not the only culprits but when no-nonsense footballers suddenly drop the “no-“, we have cause for grave concern.
But in truth, there is not a single outfield player who can claim to have performed satisfactorily all season, something that would probably comfort a group of footballers who apparently value camaraderie ahead of the desire for excellence, never mind honouring the traditions of Celtic or performing for the fans.
With only three strikers, we play only two and rarely together while two younger, hungrier players are out on loan. Likewise, we only have three central defenders, none of whom have performed even passably, while the man who is arguably Celtic’s best defender is plying his trade for Reading.
Meanwhile the midfield has all the shape and cohesion of a jar of wasps.
Scott Brown has an admirer on this blog and was Scotland’s player of the year last season. This year, even accounting for injuries, he looks to have suffered amnesia, forgetting all that he has learned in the game to take a full role in a school playground 11.
As for Shaun Maloney, well he is like one of those old pals you can’t shake off – the kind who is occasionally entertaining but more often a liability and an absolute nightmare in a crisis.
There we shall stop naming the underperformers and go for the short-cut of absolving Artur Boruc of most blame while those around him fail.
Amid this disintegration of a football team, Mowbray allegedly claimed that the fans would “be happy with the effort, desire and commitment” shown in capitulating to Hamburg. He should sue the person who implied he is so out of touch with the supporters.
Few would sympathise with the players he has criticised. But he is also required to demonstrate that he has the slightest clue as to what to do with a Celtic team, rather than starting with a lone striker at home and persisting with this approach while his team trailed.
If Mowbray is the student of the game he claims, he should take a leaf out of the book of Alex Ferguson. Just a few weeks ago he noted that publicly criticising players “hurts morale”. I suspect it affects their loyalty to a manager more and, certainly, this is not a team of players fighting for their boss.
Ferguson, of course, also founded his success on tightening his defence first as a foundation for a positive approach to football. What would he make of a manager who goes to Ibrox and finds his side two goals down before they have wiped the sleep from their eyes?
But most of all, Mowbray is ignoring the basic tenet of management that you must make the most of the players you have until you can bring better ones in. The constant huffing about transfer windows lends weight to a suspicion that he believes he can disregard his current squad because they are not of his choosing.
If that is so, he is unlikely to see those “four transfer windows” as his position will have become untenable long before then.
He has been let down by directors, investors and executives, for sure. But most let down have been the fans – by the suits, the players and the management.
Mowbray must change the outlook and performance of his team radically and immediately or face a John Barnes-like ignominy.
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