Frustrated

Gutted we lost today

I would have been happy with a draw, and a 1-0 defeat is hardly a terrible result, but I’m more disappointed with the manner of the performance and also the fact that the momentum we’ve been building up the past few weeks has taken a hit.

The team was tired after Thursday, I get that, but can’t help but feel we set the stall out to be far too defensive from the get go

When this Celtic team has struggled, it’s been when teams have pressed them high and not allowed them to stroll it at the back

Perhaps we didn’t have the legs to do that today after Thursday, but I dont know how many old firm games I’ve watched now, and the amount of time and space we give Brown and Ntcham in midfield really does my nut in

When we had possession, we struggled to get the ball out of our own half

When they had possession, their CBs were under little to no pressure at all, and Brown/Ntcham were basically allowed possession in our half unchallenged..it wasn’t until Rogic, McGregor, Forrest or Tierney high up the park got hold of it that we were really putting challenges in

For me, this is consistently where we are losing these games, yet it seems to be happening time and time again, so I was a bit disappointed to see it again under Gerrard

Some will say Celtic are just too good and make that space for themselves.....but I just don’t buy that

I’ve watched Hearts get at Celtic by pressing them high and it has yielded results for them......twice.......one of them an absolute horsing at Tynecastle, the other just a matter of weeks ago with Lafferty an instrumental figure in that win

Hell our best performance against Celtic in recent years when we really looked like challenging them was at Ibrox when we were in their face, pressing high and scored early through Windass

We have to start believing in ourselves and start matching them up in midfield. If Hearts can do it and our team from last year got some success with it, surely this improved team can do the same?

We sat far far too deep today, we did the same against Motherwell for far too long in the second half of that game and it cost us a late equaliser

It’s becoming a bit of a trait

If we didn’t have the legs to play at a high tempo today, fair enough, but as the title of the OP says, it’s frustrating to see us sit so deep and basically giving the opposition free reign to get at us quite so much

We have to make it far harder for Celtic to get near our box as easily as they were doing, rather than defending for our lives quite so much in the box and relying on the woodwork and some wondersaves from McGregor to keep them out