Celtic 2-Dundee 1: Is Boruc Undroppable?

By: Matt | January 11th, 2009

Apologies for the lack of a match preview this week, but technology issues prevented me from writing one. My technological woes were resolved in time to view Celtic’s fourth round match of the “Homecoming” (aren’t the Huns telling us to go home? Are they slotting us as the cup winner already?!) Scottish Cup against Dundee FC. Celtic won 2-1, but not before usually solid Artur Boruc did him damndest to try and force at least a replay. The game’s first action took place in the 14th minute when Boruc left his line to clear a long pass by Dundee’s David O’Brien. It looked like a normal play that Boruc had wrapped up until the Holy Goalie only cleared the air around him and the ball went trickling past him, where Colin McMenamin of Dundee collected the ball and put it in the wide open net to put the First Division side ahead. Along with this gigantic blunder by the heavily relied upon Boruc, conditions at Celtic Park for the match were miserable, with whipping wind and constant rain coming down. Credit must go to the Celtic players, who did not allow this howler and the conditions bring them to an early cup exit.

Scott Brown continued to look like the 9 million quid man that Pompey seem to think he is. In the 37th minute, “Brooony” drove down the left side into the Dundee box before leaving the ball for Scott “Supersize it!” McDonald, who mishit the ball. Fortunately for the Bhoys, the ball ricocheted around the box before landing at the feet of the man who made the play happen, Broony, and he put the ball into the back of the net.

Aiden McGeady saw his first return to the starting XI for Celtic and has begun to make his case for securing said spot. With about a minute to go until the end of the first half, McGeady curled in a wonderful shot from the left past familiar face in net for Dundee, Rab Douglas. Ole Rab actually had a decent game yesterday, and I and many others, were pleasantly surprised to see him still in Scottish Football. Rab wasn’t up to the difficult task of stopping McGeady’s rocket and Celtic took a 2-1 lead into the halftime dressing room. The two goals would be all the Celtic need, but Artur Boruc seemed content on testing that.

In the closing minutes, Dundee were pressing for an equalizer and Artur Boruc nearly gifted another howler of a goal when he fumbled a cross from Dundee’s goal scorer McMenamin, but luckily big Glenn Loovens was able to clear the ball from the goal line. The full time whistle blew and Celtic progress into the 5th round of the Scottish Cup, where they will take on the winner of Peterhead or Queen’s Park. The story of the match against Dundee will be the play of Artur Boruc though.

Boruc had another bad day at the office yesterday, adding to a list of those days this season. This list, well, it is a longer list than Celtic fans care to see, especially when seeing that these bad days happened, oh I don’t know, NEVER last season. Boruc’s form this season has been good, but there have been a few of these bad days. Some murmurs are that Boruc is too concerned with meeting blonds and downing pints in pubs that his positioning and form, and call for him to be dropped. Yet, whenever these murmurs get loud enough, it seems that the Holy Goalie pulls off a huge save, like he did a few weeks ago at Ibrox against Rangers when Kris Boyd was racing in against him one on one. After his performance against Dundee, many are calling for Boruc to sit….that is until they remember that Lukasz Zaluska is at Dundee United until next season and that Mark Brown is number 2. Unfortunately, because of who the back up is, for the time being Boruc should remain between the pipes. However, Gordon Strachan should make it very clear to the big Pole that he is not undroppable and any more lack of form will result in Boruc riding the bench. He should also show Artur the quote where Zaluska said that he wants to come to Celtic and compete for the starting job.

Highlights of the match: