The improvement over the past twelve months has been remarkable and, as we have seen against Kilmarnock twice this season, our young players are developing well.
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| Tough Night in Astana: But the mighty did not fall |
It is also good business, as Manchester United illustrated with their “Class of 92”, including Giggs, Butt, Beckham, the Neville brothers and Scholes. We don’t appear to have that level of talent from the development squad, with the exception of Kieran Tierney, but it shows that even the richest clubs benefit from developing their own players.
The young signings we have made are also bringing great hope. We all know about Moussa Dembele but Olivier Ntcham is already showing signs that he may be the story of this season. Eboue Kouassi is still promising and I believe that he will also come good, but over a longer period of a year or more. The same applies to Kundai Benyu.
These two players have talent and seem eager to play but they lack the top-level experience of Ntcham.
It’s important to focus on these positives and to remember just how far we have already come before looking at negatives and the next steps that must be taken to keep making progress.
The two legs with Astana, in particular, illustrated that perfectly.
And, when I look back at what I wrote at the end of last season, it wasn’t too far off the mark. Notable exceptions were the prediction that Johnny Hayes wouldn’t sign and the expectation that Nir Bitton had played his last game for Celtic.
That may have come against Astana.
Astana are a decent team and I suspect that they will qualify for the Champions League next season and cause some scares.
We deserved to qualify but they exposed some frailties, with dynamic attacking play that we are unused to, in Scotland.
Going back to my piece about possible ins and outs, I may have to correct myself about Craig Gordon. He is a good shot-stopping goalkeeper but, despite his experience, I am increasingly concerned about the nerves he appears to display in high-pressure matches.
I thought so during the Scottish Cup Final, again during the Scotland-England international at Hampden and also against Astana.
Admittedly, goalkeepers usually need a central-defensive pairing in which they have confidence and Gordon did not have that. No blame should be attached to Kristofer Ajer but, though played out of position, Bitton again looked like the last man you would want beside you when your back is to the wall.
Nevertheless, Gordon was beaten at his near post – almost a crime for any top goalkeeper – and inexplicably parried a ball downwards in his penalty area to an Astana player, when he could have caught it.
That was self-evidently due to nervousness but will he be similarly shaky in, say, Madrid or Munich?
We also saw the other side of Mikael Lustig. Lustig is much-loved for the joy he clearly takes in playing and winning for Celtic.
But the Astana match showed again that he does not do well in frantic, top-tier games, such as in Barcelona last season. Frankly, Lustig’s legs look to have gone, after a number of serious injuries over the years.
It’s great news that Anthony Ralston has shown that he can play in the first team but, do we want to depend on him, at 18, against the cream of Europe? Probably not, though that is also not a criticism of him.
We have a weakness at right-back that some top teams will undoubtedly test.
The centre of defence is not such a cause for concern as it appeared against Astana because Dedryck Boyata will, hopefully, be back in a few weeks. The expected arrival of Rivaldo Coetzee will bring someone who, according to reports and his history to date, should bring real quality and Jozo Šimunović is a Champions League defender.
Presuming the Coetzee deal is confirmed, he can be expected to pair with Jozo in Champions League games, due to his international experience. But Brendan would be unlikely to have any fears about placing Ajer next to Jozo for domestic matches.
So, while Erik Sviatchenko is rumoured to be on the way out, we don’t really have the defensive crisis that the Astana performance may have suggested.
Up front is a different story. Brendan quite rightly pointed out that he had had to play Champions League qualifiers without strikers, having stated previously that he didn’t sign another because it was impractical to bring in an expensive forward who would sit on the bench.
He has, as ever, a point. Preferring one forward and with goals in other areas of the team, it is difficult to keep three quality players who are vying for one spot happy. And it can be very costly.
And yet surely we need someone now, given the injuries to Moussa and Leigh Griffiths over the early weeks of the season. Wingers and attacking midfielders may know where the goal is but the runs that strikers practice, the tricks they learn and the instincts they develop over years are something else again.
Bad defenders leave a team humiliated. Bad strikers merely mean lost opportunities. So, with the price differential, it’s only natural to focus on defence. But we still need at least one more. If he is a top-class old pro who is content to play about 15 games a season, great.
If he is younger and hungrier, then we can presume that the way is being paved for Moussa to leave.
We should, though, remember that this is all, in a sense, good news.
Brendan, the coaches and players are doing an outstanding job in climbing the upward curve. And, again going back to an earlier piece, we should be looking to finish third in our Champions League group and ecstatically happy if we finish second.
The Champions League is not only awash with richer clubs but also becoming something of a clique in which strong clubs from lower leagues have gained considerable experience that we still lack.
Where we are now, fourth would be a disappointment, third an outstanding success and second outrageously dizzying, leading to new and unrealistic expectations.
An experienced civic politician once told me that there was “no comfortable plateau” on which cities could exist. They were either going up or going down.
The same could be said of football clubs.
Celtic are not where most of us believe we should be, in European terms. The corporate nature of football has ensured that TV money has made the field of play ridiculously uneven.
But enjoy the draw on Friday. We are going up.
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