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We knew it was going to be a dour stalemate of a game against a stuffy and stubborn St Johnstone side.
Stick with us in future for your soothsaying needs.
In all seriousness, yesterday’s groan-worthy performance against St Johnstone saw us get what we deserved yet again domestically, with more points dropped at home, albeit with the manager clearly focusing on the Zenit match as the priority this week, with eight changes from the team that put the Russians to the sword, although it’s still concerning that the players that came in weren’t able to put away a poor side who have been on the end of some doings off bottom six sides in the league.
Celtic Twitter was a turbulent place after the game, with mood swings ranging from excruciatingly annoyed, to condescendingly calm.
I feel somewhere in between.
It’s apparent this season that the team have taken their foot off the gas, and their lavish trip to Dubai hasn’t changed their mentality, attitude or tempo, with performances at roughly 60% of their potential, yet we’re still not in any trouble of losing our grip on the league trophy, and it’s clear that Aberdeen or Rangers are nowhere near capable of building any consistency to challenge that, so naturally the players collectively know they can under-perform most weeks, and still saunter to success.
Admit it, it’s a fact. It doesn’t make it right though, but we seem to be only raising it this season for games that really matter domestically.
We’ll yet again, up our game at Pittodrie next weekend and put Aberdeen in their place, and while our trip to Ibrox in March is likely to be a far tougher task than September’s visit earlier in the campaign, the chances of us actually losing that match are very slim.
That said, Brendan Rodgers came out gunning for St Johnstone’s players and questioned their mentality for only turning up in the ‘bigger games’ this season. Pot Kettle yet again from Mr No Self Awareness, it would seem!
Reidzo constantly said on GIGPOD(RIP) that last season was a ‘one off’. It would seem that he was correct after all, in terms of consistency at least. Yet, for all this team have been questioned this season, we’re still probably going to win another treble, a back to back one at that!
It really is a strange situation, and there are similarities to the 12-13 season again, in which the domestic displays really set the alarm bells ringing, but the ‘big games’ were wrapped up in convincing fashion and so was the title, eventually, despite the brutally poor points total by the end of that particular season.
It’s clear that the chopping and changing isn’t suiting the team this season, but the manager’s not going to stop now, and if we knock Zenit out, as I suspect we will, games like yesterday will be forgotten very quickly and Celtic Twitter will, as it usually does, unanimously romanticise the club and the season up until the next poor result, and the cycle will continue all over again.
That’ll be some laugh when it does.