Tale of Two Fool Hardie Full Backs- Shakhter 2 Celtic 0

"Haw, Nayls do you want another slap......"

You start off, all full of hope, maybe it will be different. Yer quite happy wie the team line up, happy that after watching the interview wie yer manager on Sky that you feel he has made the right choice as he seems to have done his homework.

8 minutes in, his gameplan has been ripped up and chucked oot the windae, yer hope has went the same way as, oh here goes, Porto, Lisboa, Bratislava, och i canny go on, as you watch yer team make school boy errors and give the opponents a start, which in all honesty, if you give any team in the world that sort of start will look guid for the next 20 minutes or so.

Inexperience? Uncharacteristic mistakes, and just players freezing on the night, hey it's all the fun of the fair watching Celtic away from home in Europe but there was one area that we were outclassed, one area that has been weak and highlighted as weak since pre-season.

Brandao and Lucarelli chose, or were told to hang aboot wide on oor full backs. Long diagonal balls on top of the destroyed Naylor and Wilson, while the marauding Srna and Rat decided or were told that oor midfield would offer no protection to oor weak links were afforded all the time in the world to get the ball and whip in decent crosses.

Once Hartley went back and we went to a sort of 4-1-3-2 shape we did improve. An improvement, which only showed how inept oor full backs are. While the Shakhter full backs whipped in dangerous baws constantly ours decided to lose the baw constantly. Must ask if anyone can remember when Nayls put in his last decent baw there is a prize on offer.

Now, we had a foothold, there was no room through the middle of the Shakhter defence so we had to go oot wide, it was in those areas oor creativity in the final third was shown to be sadly lacking.

Questions can be asked about the original formation and line up. I for one was happy wie it,was glad we were playing two up top and had mobility in the middle of the park. Tonight proved that against better opposition then the midfield needs to be disciplined in closing doon wide areas and even then it might not do us any guid.

Overall, this result was not entirely unexpected, second half is something to work on, but one that was once again avoidable. In Moscow we were tight and stopped Spartak getting that many chances. Tonight maybe oor toe to toe formation at the beginning was part of the downfall. Then again maybe if GS vision of taking an attacking game to Europe was to be successful then he should have bought better fullbacks.

Forza