ANGE POSTECOGLOU fielded a heavily rotated team for Saturday’s match against the Rangers.
It was a poor performance, particularly from those who had been handed a massive change by the manager.
It’ll give the manager some food for thought heading into the summer transfer window, with a couple of players showing they weren’t up to the quality that Celtic needs.
Speaking live on Sky Sports, the Celtic boss said:
“There’s a number of reasons [why Celtic were “off it”].
“Credit to Rangers, you’re facing a difficult opponent at their venue.
“The amount of changes I made didn’t help. Our guys lacked a little bit of sharpness but at the end of the day we just weren’t good enough.”
Ralston, Kobayashi, Bernabei, Abada and Oh all had the chance to impress today, but none of them grabbed it with both hands.
Abada was probably the best of the bunch, looking dangerous in the first half, although he should’ve found himself on the scoresheet. Oh missed a great chance at 1- 0, but he watched as the ball bounced off the outside of the post.
Kobayashi was poor today, with Ralston not helping the backline at all.
A dive into the market in the summer is needed, if keen on having a super squad.
First Big mistake he has made was not playing Kyogo and Taylor from the start. But it was a meaningless game and although we would obviously have preferred to win I don’t think Ange is that bothered about the result. The performances of Bernabei, Oh and Kobayashi will have worried him. He knows these guys look as if they are not good enough. McGregor and Jota were awful but he can excuse these guys an off day once in a season. Oh will probably be OK but he should not have played from the start. I thought managers always played their best team, I am sure Ange has said that. But 5 changes from the last game 3 which were not necessary gave them the push to start the game as they did and the damage was done early. They would never have started like this if Kyogo was playing. He terrifies them. But nothing lost except a wee bit of pride. Ange can now justify big money demands from the board. If garbage like the international cantake 3 off us we need to improve. They might just think they can make a couple of additions to challenge when they need about 10-12 players to make up a squad. I mean Matondo and Souttar are both garbage and will be first team players next season.