Celtic tonight faces a rampant Ranger's side. Into the Semi finals of the UEFA Cup, and the Scottish Cup, 4 points clear in the title race and CIS Cup winners. With two games in hand they are clear favourites to win the league and could easily do a treble this season.
We have now gone four games against them without victory, a shocking statistic for any Celtic Team. Worse still is the fact that we have failed to score against them since 2006! This is not good enough and this trend must be reversed, and tonight is hopefully the night!
Rangers have had their fare share of embarrassing runs in these matches recently, the worse being the seven defeats in a row that they had to endure during O'Neill's tenure. We are now over half way to suffering the same fate against a Rangers Team THAT IS NOT REALLY THAT GOOD!
All Smith has done with that team is forge a formation and system that is suited to the personnel at his disposal and made them hard to beat, in doing so he has sacrificed all semblance of flair and creativity from his charges, much to the apparent glee of many a pundit in the land. They are sterile and predictable and a team with some of the quality that we have on the pitch should be prevailing against this side more regularly.
Far too often in these games we have played into Rangers' hands, high balls up to tightly marked forwards is not the way to penetrate a team with two decent centre backs, but still we persist. The ploy to fire high balls up to Samaras in the last game at Ibrox worked well due him dropping deep to collect but with the absence of a proven finisher this tactic was impotent and pointless.
So what is the answer? Well playing the ball to feet or into space that the forwards can run into is one way that we could be more penetrative, another would be to repeat the long diagonal ball to the deep dropping Samaras but for this tactic to yield goals maybe McDonald would be a more apt partner for Samaras' spoils? Early crosses from deeper positions seem to work well against this defence and was a tactic that Celtic once employed to great effect earlier in Strachan's Celtic career, may a return to this form of faster flowing football be the key?
One thing is for sure, the system and style has to change in order to beat this stoic 'Gers defence. Given that you could bet your bottom dollar that Ranger's will play with a lone striker Strachan could be bold and go with three at the back. As long as someone tracks the runs from midfield this could afford the attacking personnel the leverage required to unlock this defence.
This discussion is in vain though, as we know that Strachan will stick with his 4-4-2 formation that is not easy to beat, but does little to afford enough real goal-mouth chances. Yes we did see the whites of McGregor's eyes more than once in our last meeting, but we did not win that one either.
So all in all we need to restore our pride in these meetings, the fact that such a poor Rangers team has dominated so much is a poor statistic. At least when we have been the underdog in previous eras it has been against a decent side, as it was when we did 7 in a row against them. That aside a victory against them would reduce the deficit to one point, and I am sure that Wattie would prefer to play his games in hand without Celtic being so close. Another victory against them in the next match could see Walter's resolve ebb away. Let us not forget what happened the last time Smith's side had to go the distance in the League, we all happily said Cheerio to ten in row and hello to the League Championship!
Yours in Celtic
Clydebuilt