Paradise Lost for Celtic & Rodgers

Dante’s Inferno is widely hailed as one of the great classics of literature, it details Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell. After meeting his guide, Virgil, the two poets begin their descent through a menacing world of sadness, horrifying tortures, and unending grief.

For Celtic fan’s today, they faced their own version of hell. There were no nine circles - just 90 minutes of sheer torture watching their side look more like competition winners than professional footballers in one of the world’s great derbies.

Celtic were missing both Austin Trusty and captain Callum McGregor through injury, which saw Maik Nawrocki make his first start of the season - after playing just 23 minutes all season prior to today. McGregor was replaced by Luke McCowan in midfield. Hearing the news that Nawrocki was playing and given his limited game time - I feared the worst.

How wrong was I. It wasn’t Nawrocki I should have feared but the rest of the Celtic team. Right from kick-off, you could tell that the Rangers players were up for the game. They had just dispatched Fenerbache in midweek after the game went to penalties, reaching the quarter finals of the Europa League - but it was Celtic who looked the sluggish of the two.

Just four minutes in, Rangers were in front after a lapse in concentration from Jeffrey Schlupp - playing in his first Glasgow derby - allowed Raskin in to head home a James Tavernier corner.

It went from bad to worse for Celtic just before the break as Diomande, unmarked inside the box, fired past Kasper Schmeichel to give Rangers a 2-0 lead. But it could have been 3-0, if Vaclav Cerny had a more composure on the ball after Schmeichel passed straight to the Czech international.

It was arguably the worst 45 minutes from Celtic I had seen all season. Kuhn was replaced at half time, which saw Adam Idah come on, pushing Jota out to the right and Maeda to the left. And it was Maeda who breathed signs of life into a Celtic side who were flatlining up to that point, as the Japanese international leapt above Tavernier to head home a cross from Jota minutes into the second half.

On 74 minutes, Celtic drew level when Luke McCowan played a perfectly weighted pass to set up Hatate who fired past Jack Butland in the Rangers goal. With Celtic on the ascendancy and looking the more likely of the two sides to score, they took their foot off the gas allowing Ferguson to change things up with 7 minutes to go - and just five minutes later that change in personnel paid dividends for the interim Rangers manager as Igamane fired home Rangers’ third of the game and sealed all three points.

If we are being honest for a second, Rangers fully merited their win on their first half showing alone. And despite being 13 points behind Celtic in the league - the past two derby games have shown that they have found Rodgers and Celtic out. They may not be able to beat a St.Mirren or a Motherwell - but they have well and truly got our number.

From the first minute of the game, our players were a shadow of themselves. They were slow on the ball, lethargic, their passing atrocious, and they looked as if they were having a kickabout at the park.

Not only player other than Nawrocki got pass marks in the first half, with Alastair Johnston and Nicolas Kuhn the worst out of a bad bunch. Kuhn was a waste of a jersey and was rightly hooked at half time - whether or not his head has been turned with all the paper talk about a move away in the summer, his performances of late have been dire and in my opinion, should be dropped for Yang for the next few games at least.

How Johnston stayed on for the full match is mind boggling. He looked as if he was playing football on ice, he doddled on the ball, allowed Rangers players to close him down far too easily, lost possession more times than I could count and then crucially slipped to allow Igamane space to control the ball - and even after that put in a half assed tackle - before the Rangers striker scored their third. As for the chance he had at the death to equalise? Safe to say it ended up where his head was throughout the match, in the clouds. The crowning moment of a dire performance.

I could go on and on, break down every single player’s performance from Schmeichel looking like a rookie keeper playing his first game to Engel having the bare faced cheek to try to whip up the crowd as they watched that shit show. But ultimately, the whole performance falls at the feet of Brendan Rodgers.

Speaking after the defeat, Rodgers said: "We made too many mistakes with it, we weren't fluid enough moving it, and we allowed ourselves to be pressed. We didn't play with that speed and quality.

"The performance level is something we need to look at. I don't think we've been as good as I'd like us to be in these games of late.

"We get through and win the League Cup final, which was great, but again the performance wasn't at our highest level. At Ibrox, we were well beaten and we lose today, so there's a wee bit of thinking to be done.

"It doesn't matter if you're one point ahead or 16 points ahead, you have to play with personality and we haven't done that," the Celtic manager added. "We need to be better than we were today."

I’m sorry but what planet is Rodgers living on? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry saw how poor Celtic have been when pressed yet Rodgers fails to change his style of play. They also see how we are rewarded with goals when we attack or counter attack at pace - even today showed that - and yet he still reverts back to the tippy tappy shit as our midfielders pass the ball back to the defenders who pass it back to the keeper and then pass it across the face of goal welcoming the opposition to press and harass us - forcing us into making mistakes. Which we inevitably do.

Teams have found us out and know how to beat Rodgers’ style of play. Whether it is pressing us hard at every opportunity or firing a long ball over our defenders - who seem to turn as slow as an oil tanker in the ocean - we are made to pay time and again. And still Rodgers continues with a style of play that goes against everything that Celtic are as a club.

Celtic as a club should play fluid, quick, direct attacking football. We don’t let the opposition regroup and sit back to defend our counter attack - we get in behind their defenders down the wing or through the middle at pace and punish them. But under Rodgers, we allow the opposition to regroup and sit with 10 outfield players behind the ball forcing us to pass the ball back and forward between midfields and defenders - before someone makes a poor pass and it either ends up with the opposition racing towards our goal or a ball being cleared back to our keeper.

Rodgers talks about character. Where is the character in his style of play. It is dire, it has no place at Celtic Football Club. And he then goes on to speak about performance levels from the players. Again this is nothing new. We have seen this time and again from the players under Rodgers - not one player came onto that pitch this afternoon wanting to fight for the jersey, looking to get stuck in, wanting to get knee deep in the fight and come out victorious. Not one player.

We can sit here and say that we missed Trusty and McGregor today - but McGregor played in the defeat to Rangers in January. So what are we missing?

Clearly there is a distinct lack of depth in our squad - that is on the board for hoarding money in the bank rather than investing on the pitch. But it is also on Rodgers for kowtowing to Lawwell et al for not only selling our main striker, but also failing to replace him. Maeda may have came up with the goods since Kyogo has left but that’s not the point - once again Celtic look to do things on the cheap while banking tens of millions of pounds - and for what end?

We also don’t need character as Rodgers called it. We need leaders throughout the team. We need fighters. We need players with bite. We need a manager who can fire up the players to take on their league rivals not go out with a whimper. Kuhn epitomised the lightweight nature of this Celtic team - when we are in a scrap of a game, when we need to fight our way through, we cower, we give up. That’s what Kuhn did and bar a token 20 minutes, that’s what the rest of the team did also.

As a side note, I hope the Scottish FA was watching the game today and look at the behaviour of the players in the Rangers dugout after the third goal goes in. In particular, Vaclav Cerny who ran past the Celtic fans spraying them with water as he celebrated. This provocation led to stewards and police descending on the area, as Celtic fans angered by the Czech’s behaviour tried to confront the Rangers man - as he cowered behind his teammates with a smirk on his face. Who am I kidding - they will do nothing as per usual - just as Brother Beaton did nothing on VAR to flag up the two studs up challenges on Maeda and Yang.

Celtic will go on to win the title and potentially another domestic treble, but that will only whitewash over our abysmal performances this season. But it will make the board happy and that will make the shareholders happy, and that’s all that matters to the absentee landlord Dermot Desmond and his lapdogs Lawwell and Nicholson.

Changes are a must this summer, investment is a must. Despite the silverware he has won during his time at Celtic and will win over the rest of this season, I am now convinced that Rodgers isn’t the man to lead Celtic forward - he is in my opinion, holding us back.