John Hartson didn’t mince his words after watching Celtic crash out of the Champions League qualifiers with a penalty shootout defeat to Kairat Almaty, branding the performance “rotten” and criticising the team’s attitude over both legs.
The former Celtic striker took to social media to vent his frustration, echoing what many supporters were already feeling after a gutless 210-minute showing over the two legs.
“Celtic were rotten last night,” Hartson posted on X. “No excuses, the 1st leg at home was a hard watch, Kairat looked comfortable.. 100% complacency.. too many looking around waiting for something to happen. Poor performance is an understatement..”
The lack of urgency, spark and creativity over both legs was glaring. Celtic barely laid a glove on a side with a fraction of their resources, and the inability to break Kairat down, particularly at home, was what ultimately did for them. Their manager hasn’t even completed his coaching badges.
While the board’s failure to properly back the manager has rightly drawn criticism, the players who were given the task and failed to deliver, need to take some of the blame too. Too many passengers, too little intent.
As for the manager, on a Premier League wage at Celtic, he should have been able to set the team up to progress into the next round.
Complacency, as Hartson alluded to, is fatal at this level. Celtic thought they could get through this tie without being anywhere near their best. They were wrong and now they’ll pay the price.
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3 responses
Too many good players have wanted to leave Celtic since Brendan Rodgers took over as manager and started to implement his boring negative football. The change from Ange’s style of relentless attacking play more or less isolated Kyogo from any kind of decent service and other forward players like Kuhn were also deprived. That’s why they left.
The team that failed against Aberdeen in the cup final and now in two legs against lowly Kairat is man for man complacent. It’s Brendan Rodgers’ job to make sure that gets knocked out of them sharpish, yet he has failed to lead as the coach. He’s the first one who needs to go, followed quickly with major Board firings and then half that Celtic team. And by the way, Calum McGregor is way overrated. He’s not captain material. It’s also time for the overweight Schmeichel to call it a day.
Rodgers has to stay or go if he wants backing he has to sign 3yr contract there not going to let him spend millions his record is poor if its him thats buying the players last night Donovan should have been on far earlier than he was Japanese left full back should have came on moving scales out wide and the players how many 50 50 did they win alright ref was a homer plus typical Italian wants to be the star man pitch not made for Rodgers style everytime we turned there defence with the ball over it we had them I trouble pitch was not made for passing what amRodgers watching turn there defence with long balls they pundit ball up to our goalie known it would take 5 minutes to get into there half our players won’t our cant think for themselves like robots players should give there wages to the four hundred tharmt had to watch that performance cant hide behind board that team should have been more than adequate to win and the penalties idah he missed penalty and even the retake cost Celtic two points with our penalty taker taking third after idah miss either Engels or our captain should have taken the next especially with them missing there’s yes Rodgers choices were wrong Donacan has to play against the huns yes its a big game for supporters but us it that important as antmy other game still 3 points tmhuns will just sit back hit us on the break and no penetrative I either wing yes maeda has to play wide cause we have no one else yes there be postmortem but the boards a easy target our style of play was not right for this pitch and with wide players non exsistent
We all make mistakes, Brendan included. Yours for example was calling for a Japanese Full Back who isn’t even in our UCL squad.