How To Make Difficult Impossible

Celtic's current malaise is structural, but on the field of play, they did themselves no favours against a well-organised Dundee.

Sometimes you just need to help yourself.

The defeat at Dens Park was a tough watch. More galling still is the fact that this is the current reality. We are back in a virtual lockdown. It’s 2020-21 all over again.

Players want to leave and cannot. The manager is struggling but will be expected to muddle along. Under pressure (or malaise), decision-making is poor. And, in some cases, there isn’t the quality required. Some are simply getting older and declining as nature intends.

When you do a job well, you deserve credit. Steven Pressley and his team certainly do. Easily the worst team in the league based on performance in the opening seven matches; a rigid 5-4-1 low block; pressure applied in the mid third; zonal discipline, both horizontal and vertical; excellence in dead-ball organisation; and a potent counterattack led by Cameron Congreve were all delivered almost flawlessly.

Yet, as Kieron Maguire gleefully reported on X, Celtic should be doing better.

And Celtic deserve that. After years of success, of course, there will be pent-up kickings to be administered. That’s football.

Despite all this, there are some basic tactical tweaks Celtic could have enacted to compensate, especially in the first half when the game was effectively lost.