Although, yesterday’s game against St Mirren was a tough one to take for the Celtic support, our first defeat in 39 league matches whilst still remaining two points clear at the top of the table, is certainly not the end of the world.
It can however, be used as a learning aspect about our squad with a long season still ahead for the men in Hoops and Ange’s starting team selection clearly was an error which contributed to the defeat.
Players like Welsh and Ralston although valuable additions in terms of squad depth, are no longer good enough to start any match and should only be used either coming off the bench in the closing minutes of a game or in the case of injury when Ange has no other options.
Which highlights how important players like CCV, Starfelt and Juranović are to the team as yesterday’s display showed a drop off in the tempo of our play and the overall performance in quality in their absence along with Jota, Hatate and O’Riley’s in our starting eleven.
My next point may be controversial, but I do not believe Japanese winger Maeda is Celtic quality. There is no denying that his pace and work ethic are incredible however, his first touch, finishing and overall footballing ability leave a lot to be desired.
Maeda can be extremely frustrating to watch as a fan often doing so well to get to a position through his pace and determination but then fails at the vital moment in front of goal. This is why I believe new signing Hakšabanović and Abada should mark the end of Maeda as a consistent fixture in our starting eleven.
It is always a disappointment to lose but as I said at the beginning of this article, we should not lose sight that this is our first defeat in 39 league matches, we are 2 points ahead of the second team with a vastly better goal difference and 31 leagues games to go.