Its Better to Be Lucky…

By: JT | January 28th, 2008

There’s a lot of merit to that old cliché, but its not much consolation when the club that you support is living incredibly dangerously, still four points behind their ancient rival in the league, and faced with a home-and-home against one of the world’s premier outfits in a few short weeks.

Celtic somehow managed to escape Falkirk with a 1-0 victory yesterday, knocking three points off the lead that the Huns had expanded to seven on Saturday. The lead that Celtic enjoyed in goal differential has shrunk to just one now as well. If you didn’t realize it already, the Bhoys are in a serious title race.

It would be great to talk about the points that Celtic took, and how championship teams win when they’re not at their best, blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is that Celtic were extraordinarily lucky to win the match, and performances need to improve dramatically to avoid a disappointing end to what currently is a very promising campaign.

Falkirk were up in the Bhoys’ collective grill from the get go yesterday, and a few calls by the refs saved the day. The Bairns had two penalty claims that went unheeded, and Scott McDonald was suspiciously close to being offside on the game’s only goal, deep into first-half stoppage time. Check out the video, and judge for yourself. If you look at it from the right angle, with the right light, it almost looks like he’s onside. Really, it does.

Almost the entirety of the second half was played in Celtic’s half of the pitch. If Falkirk had anything going in the final third, the Hoops probably would have gone home with their heads down. That does bring up the one positive point on the day though, the back five, including heroic keeper Artur Boruc.

Paul Hartley was given the nod at right-back, and played well until he was removed with fifteen minutes left due to a thigh strain. Youngster Paul Caddis came on and did his job as well as could be expected give the pressure Celtic were under. Gary Caldwell was composed, Lee Naylor was doing what Nayls does, and the Captain, Stephen McManus was busy clearing balls from danger and breaking multiple bones in the leg of Falkirk’s Dean Holden.

Celtic have not given up a goal in their last five matches, and its impressive that they’ve been able to accomplish this with makeshift right-backs and multiple partners for McManus in the center of defense (could Sami Hyypia be the solution?). The nervy moments come less frequently now, but when you’re not creating goals or scoring them, the onus will inevitably fall on the defense to close matches out, and I’m not all that comfortable with that particular strategy going forward.

Celtic had TWO, count ‘em, TWO real chances on goal. Luckily they converted one and it was enough. But when a team challenges Celtic, with all the talent at their disposal, to play attacking football, the Bhoys should accept it wholeheartedly, and not act like the only offense they need can come from the counter-attack.

There are only a few days left for Celtic to bring in a striker to augment those currently on the books, and the most likely candidate appears to be Burnley’s 6′4″ Northern Ireland international Kyle Lafferty. If he can do the job, and supplant the frustrating duo of Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Chris Killen, his arrival will be welcomed by all.

It seems that Celtic played their best football when they had Champions League encounters right around the corner. Every player wants to get onto the pitch during these marquee matches, and that probably motivated their good play on the weekends. With only league and domestic cup matches for the next few weeks, maybe the squad just isn’t at the mental level that they need to be to wrap up the easy wins that should be easy wins.

I really hope thats not the case, because that means that some of the players are only around to play European football, and other competitions are merely killing time until Barcelona comes calling.

Either some new blood needs to be brought in, or the first team/manager need to get their heads out of their butts. If neither of these things happen, the remainder of the season could be quite painful to watch.