Celtic were brought back to earth last night with Brendan Rodgers left to reflect on a 5-1 defeat from Ajax.
No-one saw it coming at half-time with the match level at 1-1, each side could claim that they should have been ahead at the break.
The second half was something of a nightmare for Celtic, no area of the team functioned with Ajax cutting the hoops open as easily as Borussia Dortmund did in last season’s painful Champions League defeat.
Celtic bounced back brilliantly from that set-back, the team was evolving and improving at that time but right now things have gone stale.
Whether that kicked in following the Champions League KO from Bayern Munich in February is up for debate, there were signs before that with some fans claiming that the 0-0 draw away to Dinamo Zagreb in December was the first sign of the club dropping a gear.
Kyogo Furuhashi wasn’t replaced in January, Nicolas Kuhn hasn’t been replaced with Rodgers still waiting on the three additions that he was hoping for when he spoke at the end of last season.
Rodgers on transfer activity:
It depends what your ambition is. If your ambition is to really progress and push forward, then we need to improve the squad but I can’t fault the players.
The players that are here, they’ve been working so well, so hard and you see some of the play and how they work has been very, very good.
However, if you want to progress, then, as I said, you need to bring in quality and that’s something that we hopefully can do.
Rodgers on the 5-1 defeat:
I think the scoreline didn’t quite reflect the game. I think that the first 60 minutes we played a lot of really good football with physicality, we broke through their pressure, scored one, could have had more.
I just thought the last 30 minutes, we’ve pushed the players really hard in the pre-season, so it looked a wee bit leggy.
But that aside, we should keep the ball better and can be better in duels, so there’s no doubt we lost out on that.
Then the two final goals are probably a consequence of that.
There were enough really good moments in the game, but certainly the last 30 minutes, we would want to be better.
I think that’s the nature of a pre-season. It’s designed to grow and by the end of it, you’ve had really good tests
Rodgers on Yang:
I see Yang as an important member of our squad. He’s a player that showed that domestically he can play well for us, and really well.
He scored goals. He created goals. You see tonight that the goal he scored is very, very good.
It’s always a challenge, I think, at a club like Celtic, whenever players have maybe been for a couple of seasons and they’re not quite established.
Because then they want to go and play more. But certainly at this stage, where we’re at within the squad, it’s not something I can even entertain. You see he’s starting the games.
And I see him as an important player for us in our squad. And once we can get the quality around him, then he’ll be a good player for us.
Rodgers on Yamada:
We were told late on he wasn’t registered. He couldn’t play in the game. It was a UEFA game.
I think we thought it would be through. So, he obviously came with us and travelled.
But then, later on, an hour before the game, we were told he wasn’t.
We hope he’ll be okay for Saturday. Hopefully for the player. So, let’s see where that goes tomorrow
Celtic complete their pre-season preparations against Al Ahli on Saturday, the only gains from seven matches are that Kieran Tierney and Ben Nygren have had time to adapt and have shown up well since their transfers.
The SPFL Premiership season starts on August 3 against St Mirren, the following day the Champions League Play Off draw is made with those games being played on August 19/20 and 26/27.
There is absolutely no sign of activity/urgency/ambition from the club to improve the squad, in tandem with that Rodgers’ contract is also running down.
Before the transfer window closes Celtic have SPFL trips to Pittodrie and Ibrox as well as the Champions League Play Off, so far in the window Celtic are sitting on around a £15m profit from selling Nicolas Kuhn, Gus Lagerbielke and a sell on fee from Jeremie Frimpong. Against that Ben Nygren, Hayato Inamura and Shin Yamada have been signed.
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