It’s all been building towards this – it’s Celtic’s World Cup Final. And that’s why Brendan Rodgers and his stars must be utterly ruthless when they lock horns with Young Boys on their Champions League night of judgment.
The season is going well but the world’s biggest club competition is where everyone wants to see progress. It is an enormous game which will be highly pressurised. Young Boys might be bottom and pointless but they aren’t no-hopers. You could argue since the Leipzig game that Celtic have played only in patches – the 3-3 midweek draw with Dundee is the latest example of that. It hasn’t always been perfect but they have a resilience, even when the games come thick and fast, the squad have coped really well.
It’s easy to forget that winning is hard. The pulsating Dundee draw is a kick up the bum. You could see Brendan was aggravated, it was a bit of complacency, a lack of application which cost the team. That is what you always have to guard against. But this isn’t a time where we need to take a baseball bat to Celtic’s players, and the situation with £11m man Arne Engels coming under scrutiny before his recent return to form is an example of that.
There have been emphatic defeats to Dortmund and Rangers, really below the levels expected, but there hasn’t been much elsewhere to grumble about. We do have a habit of underestimating clubs from other nations. Brugge have a better recent European record than Celtic and they were really organised when they beat Aston Villa. I did call a difficult night for Celtic.
The point against the Belgians was an important, Celtic have scrapped and fought and Brendan and the players would have signed up for a win against Young Boys to extend their stay and secure knockout football in the revamped Champions League. Everything has been building towards this game against the Swiss.
In Rodgers’ first spell, it’s fair to say Celtic took some wallopings. There was criticism dished out to Brendan over a perception he was unwilling to change his way. That returned following the 7-1 after the hammering after Dortmund, but the Bundesliga men can do that. I understood Celtic’s mindset that night they believed they could go toe to toe.
They got lost, you can get a hammering at the top level, but Celtic have surprised me in a really good way this season in Europe. But you cannot get away from the fact that this is the biggest game Celtic have had in a long time. If they win it’s a great success but if they don’t then they will put themselves under enormous pressure heading to Aston Villa.
There is a feeling because it’s Young Boys that this should be 4 or 5-0. It’s not as easy as that. The pressure is off Young Boys, and it’s a bit of a stinker for Celtic with their opponents being on a winter break. No scouting and nobody knows how they are going to approach this.
This is enormous for Celtic because of the weight of expectation. If Daizen Maeda comes back, Kuhn has returned well but all the players need to be bold enough and absorb that pressure. They must try and repeat what they did against Leipzig and get to the knockouts.
Football has a funny way of biting you on the backside, you only have to look at Auston Trusty the other night in Dundee. He thought he could coast it but Dundee under Tony Docherty, a manager I greatly admire, masterminded an opponent who didn’t give the champions respite.
I don’t think the USA international will have come up against many players like Simon Murray in his career. Over the piece, Trusty has acquitted himself this season but you can’t take Scottish football for granted. And he’s not the only player who got it tight. Adam Idah is coming in for some heavy criticism and it’s now 12 games without a goal for the Ireland international. It was difficult for him earlier in the season when he was in and out of the team with cameo appearances. I was delighted for him last season.
I had watched a lot of him at Norwich and, with the greatest respect to him, I was expecting to see the Adam Idah we are seeing at the moment last season. The guy who rocked up was a breath of fresh air. But he now looks like a player with a lack of confidence. The one the other night when Kyogo teed him up appeared like a player who was more worried about the goalkeeper – you’ve got to want to score a goal.
There is a hesitancy, but I had that at times during my own career. When you are flying, you are not worried about a goalkeeper in your eyeline, he wasn’t brave enough, it’s what sets the best strikers above everyone else.
I don’t think it’s great when you are in then you are out, it’s the same with Yang. The pressure is on to contribute, Idah’s form be a little bit of a concern for Brendan. It’s not ideal when a striker goes that many games without scoring.
His all-round contribution could be greater as well. You look at Kyogo when he has played narrow off the right. He is such an intelligent player. His link-up, he is always trying to play forward. He knows where centre forwards want to be fed.
Idah is different, in terms of him being a reference point, and he just needs one to go in for him. It’s about working hard in training, lots of finishing drills. Repetition is where I always got my confidence from. Eventually something will drop, he will sweep one in and he will be off and running again.