Celtic captain Scott Brown has criticised the state of the Celtic Park pitch, claiming that it could have played a part in our lacklustre first leg performance against Valencia, as reported by The Scottish Sun.
Thursday’s performance in Spain left many scratching their heads pondering why we could not reach the same level of performance in front of our own supporters the prior week.
In the second leg we battled hard, passed crisply and defended far better, even with one man less on the pitch.
Now the captain has shone light on why he thinks there was such a disparity between the two displays.
As quoted by The Scottish Sun, Brown pointed fingers towards the Paradise pitch:
We played really well, played proper football on a proper football pitch, and until the sending off we were the better team, creating chances, and we just didn’t get the ball in the back of the net.
The first performance back at Celtic Park wasn’t good enough but then again you look at the difference of the pitches.
Their pitch was incredible and we knocked the ball about really well. Celtic Park is not so good just now. Hopefully our pitch gets better and we go on a good run in the league now.
We spent a lot of money on the park and it is not up to the standard that we want it to be. We don’t want AstroTurf pitches, we want proper pitches. But we need to make sure we’re looking after the pitches and we have the best quality pitches for the SPFL so there is good football and it is not just kick and hope.
Considering the reported £1.5m investment made into the surface at Celtic Park just last summer, it is worrying that a senior player like Brown would blame a performance in such an important competition on the pitch.
Brendan Rodgers of course has spoken about this issue recently, revealing in January that the grass surface is actually diseased right now.
It’s disheartening to hear that it is having such an effect on the players’ ability to perform at the peak of their powers and something that must be addressed again in the close season.
We were promised a state of the art surface that the team could use to exploit the opposition and so far that’s not been delivered.