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Celtic 2 Newcastle United 0 Paradise revisited by Macbeth
I had the pleasure of sitting right in the midst of the better off Celtic supporters. Padded deep green seats, with padded arm rests, under bumheating in the winter, but thankfully not tonight. It was warm. Most of you will have seen the game yourselves so I don't really want to go into too much detail as you will have made your own conclusions, but ... We started with a 4-4-2 German Goalie Charvet ............... Marcelino ..............Goma..................... Domi Solano............... Dumas............. Speed ...................Serrant Kets .....................Shearer This begged a few questions, raised a few eyebrows, shivered a few spines.The playing of 4 defenders is different to everything else we have tried so far in pre-season. Possible reasons ... 1. (and my preferred one) is that Domi is a wonderful full back but not as effective as a wingback playing 10 yards further forward. Gullit hassaid his team will play to the strengths of the players he has at his disposal. Domi is one of our best players at the moment so he has to play inhis best position which is left back in a 4 man defence. 2. He wanted to play Dumas in midfield to see what he was like 3. He wanted to keep a wide man on the left, didn't have Glass, didn't want to play Domi there and ended up with Serrant, who needed thebacking of Domi behind him. 4. Some other theory ?? Which ever theory holds it didn't really work out that well. Dumas looked okay in midfield but not Hamann in presence.
It was great to see Shearer playing for an hour. I thought he looked in great condition for the amount of training he's supposed to have missed.This may upset those of you who missed out on the rest of the Scottish tour but we were transformed by Shearer being there. It even made Ketsbaia look half decent for a while. Generally we knocked to ball around well, we just lacked penetration going forward. Their first goal came from a needlessly conceded corner. Big guy got up well and headed it in, exact copy of third goal conceded against Dundee United last week. An issue for the trainig ground I think. Second one came from good midfield passing from Celtic and then the guy running on to the pass. Goalie got a hand to it but a decent forward should always score those.
The biggest success for us was the outstanding performance of Domi. On tonight's showing he must play a left back, and not as left wingback. He had one superb second half run from the half way line which he finished with a superb chip which just cleared the bar. Even the Celtic supporters around me applauded. Celtic looked decent and again will (with Rangers) win all their games against the rest of the SPL and decide the title in the four games against each other. Good luck to them. Crowd just over 59,000 !!!!! I was here 4 or 5 years ago to see Ginola, Barton, Hislop and Ferdinand play in black and white for the first time. We drew 1-1 then and I went confidently into the new season. Tonight I've come away feeling Celtic are what we were then with lots of attacking options. We aren't. Dyer and Ferguson will. make a big difference.
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big question was where is Keiron Dyer when you need him ?? Without
him we were as bereft of ideas as we have been since Beardsley left.
The midfield wasn't inefficient it was just totally lacking in
creativity.Gary Speed isn't good enough. He gets there, gives it all,
he's just not quite good enough.
The
subs came on and did okay. Robinson look sjust like Paul Dalglish
did last season BUT Dalglish looked half decent when he had Shearer
with him and hopeless if he was on his own. Robinson has only played
up front on his own, he is therefore better than Dalglish. McClen
again brought an urgency to the proceedings, although again I'm not
sure that his enthusiaasm hides technical frailties. Maric came on as
well, apparently. I really can't understand what's happened to him,
it's very sad. After the subs and going two down we switched to 3 at
the back (and three up front in Kets, Probinson and Maric) and it
didn't really improve things. 
