Reacting yet again - Celtic’s changes that lie ahead.

We’ve all had a moan this weekend. Some people got over Saturday fairly quickly by browsing another dog thread perhaps, while some people haven’t, and are still ‘on one’ about Lawwell, Lennon and Brown. There’s no right or wrong reaction to this either. I’m not going to tell anyone not to still be livid, they are more than justified.

I got my feelings out the way on Saturday night, when I should have been having a party and defying WEE NIPPY.

I said in the above article, that Celtic are generally very good at quickly bouncing back from a humiliation, especially under Neil Lennon.

August 2010. Utrecht 4-0 Celtic. A deeply crushing exit from the Europa League, was followed up by a solid win at ‘Firpers’ thanks to a coolly taken Daryl ‘Pele’ Murphy spot kick.

Moving onto 2011, of course we ‘beat’ Sion after an admin masterclass from the Swiss side, but regardless, a colossally bad performance and result was swiftly consigned to the ‘it’s in the past’ category when we disposed of St Mirren 2-0 after that.

Progressing to the dreadful 2013/2014 season, all below par Champions League performances and defeats, were quickly forgotten after blowing away every team domestically in the league, which was undoubtedly at it’s weakest ever since the 1990’s.

Even under Ronald Deila, after the Europa League bodying at home to Ajax and a post mortem which involved Charlie Mulgrew walking off the park before the final whistle, we comfortably walked over the top of Inverness.

Finally, last season, after being run ragged by Copenhagen at Celtic Park, we had the sweet relief of facing the biggest jobbers in the SPFL at McDairmid Park, and could turn in a laboured performance to progress to the next round of the Scottish Cup.

Rangers turned us over on Saturday, as we all know, and sadly the results were not hilarious.

Instead of now rebounding from that with a routine game against a team who train at a public park and have a dietplan like a podcasters, we face AC Milan, who boast a 100% record in Serie A and look very much like a competent team once more. Oh, and there’s that egotistical clown who is approaching 40 years of age and still talks in third person up front who will be choking to score against us and give it that ‘Dare To Zlatan’ patter, can’t wait.

To nullify this childish but talented idiot, we have to combat this 3-5-2 with something else, a more compact system that will stop teams that aren’t limited to a shoestring budget and sharing powerades cutting through us with ease.

I’m not saying David Turnbull is the answer all of a sudden, but seeing as Neil Lennon won’t drop Scott Brown after the Miracle Of McDairmid Park the other week, it is surely now worth giving him a run in the side, and either dropping Callum McGregor, or pushing him further up the park where he is deadly in the last third.

McGregor is a player who has been suffering recently with fatigue, and after an encouraging start on Saturday, it was disappointing to see how drastically his infuence on the game waned as he spent so long without the ball, and when he did have it, the only players in his path were a wall of blue shirts. This is maybe when we have to stop celebrating the record breaking minutes he has racked up and realise that burnout with these players is very real.

There will be more build up this week for the game, frankly I’m staggering it because of how emphatic an eyeopener Saturday’s game was for me to see that this Celtic team really aren’t the real deal, despite the ridiculous gap in finances and resources compared to our rivals, and the rest of the league.

The run of games between now and the end of October could very well be season defining, but if there’s one thing we’ve excelled at over the years, it’s responding well to a crisis, which in our case is usually just one shocker of a result, so hopefully we can kick off the uncomfortable fixtures ahead with a decent result this week and build on that, and a new system for our lethargic players.

Right now, Rangers are hungry, we’re overfed, and Neil Lennon MUST get the fire back into the bellies of this team, and himself, as quickly as possible.