If ever a stadium can be rocked by silence, this was the moment. With no visiting fans allowed at any of this season’s Glasgow derbies, Ryan Naderi’s winning goal was met with nothing but the banging of fists of the clear plastic of the Rangers bench and the shouting of the broadcast commentators. A screaming void of apathy and atrophy, the sound of a beckoning abyss, of three straight Celtic defeats and a title race blowing open.
In the coming three weeks, as club football dissolves for the international break, noises and voices will pour into the void: some helpful and some not. This, of course, is a familiar feeling for any club of Celtic’s size, and naturally the temptation will be to block out the noise, stay the course. This would be a grave mistake.
If last season’s double illustrated the way this club can still rise above adversity, there can no longer be any hiding place, no equivocation with the alarming drop in standards that was evident here. Naderi’s goal, bundled in from close range after Kim Min-su’s long-range effort was parried helpfully into his path by Viljami Sinisalo, was simply the most consequential emblem of Rangers’ superiority here. Derek McInnes arrived with an unchanged team, coherent patterns of play, a functional and hungry midfield, order to their chaos.
None of this has been remotely visible at Celtic for a while. Even as they desperately chased the game in the final minutes, they could barely fashion a chance, barely get hold of the ball. Martin O’Neill sprang a surprise with Luke McCowan in midfield, discarded his back five at half-time and rolled through his substitutions, but no plan ever really emerged from the fog.
Celtic are basically like the tangled ball of printer cables and headphone wires in the bottom drawer: try as you might to unpick them, you’re never quite sure whether you’re untangling the threads or simply making them tighter. And so, time to face some awkward questions. Is Callum McGregor, club legend, still fit for purpose?
McGregor is 33 and the captain, but has looked desperately off the pace for some time now. Does Liam Scales need replacing? Does Kieran Tierney still have the legs?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
