Celtic’s struggle to score goals is the reason we won’t win this title, our strikers cannot buy a goal at the moment…
Eric Knott 
(Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Before I start this article, I’m not giving up on the title remaining at Celtic Park, but if we’re all being honest, yesterday’s loss was a huge blow to our aspirations.
We cannot continue to rely on Benjamin Nygren to be our main source of goals.
We now have three strikers on our books who just cannot seem to score for love nor money.
Tomáš Čvančara, Junior Adamu, and Kelechi Iheanacho have all struggled for goals since their arrival at Celtic Park.
And those struggles are continuing.
It is the reason we cannot win a game comfortably.
Unless one of these strikers finds their scoring touch soon, I feel we’ll struggle to win this title.
With seven losses racked up this season, you begin to think it will be a miracle if we pull this off now.
The fact that we couldn’t even take advantage of another monumental Ibrox slip up yesterday is pretty damning.
Yes, the Celtic manager is defiant, and he’s adamant we’re not out of this.
But unless he can unlock some scoring capabilities from our three strikers, all the optimism in the world will make no difference.
Goals win titles.
And goals win football games.
Without the ability to score them, any team will struggle.
I know that’s stating the obvious, but there is no other reason for these persistent struggles we’re witnessing week after week, game after game.
Yes, Auston Trusty’s over the top reaction to Jamie McGrath holding him yesterday also cost us.
Let’s be honest here, up to that point we were still struggling anyway.
It was shaping up to be another late show, and yes we might have had some chance with eleven men on the field.
But there is no point in arguing about Trusty’s actions.
It was pretty conclusive, and I think even the player himself knows that.
McGrath made a meal of it, but the optics in the replays certainly weren’t good.
Next up is a dead rubber in Stuttgart and then Ibrox.
I really couldn’t care less what happens in Stuttgart, but I fear for what might happen at Ibrox.
I’ll put it this way, it would be a good time for any of our strikers to find their scoring touch, the question is, will they?
Martin O’Neill is doing the best he can with the tools he’s been given.
We’ve labeled him a miracle worker up to this point, but there’s only so much he can do.
He has the Celtic board to thank for the lack of resources at his disposal.
Ultimately, if we lose this title, which is looking more and more likely after yesterday, it will be on them.
Nobody else.
Not the manager.
Not the fans, nor the protests we’ve brought about.
And certainly not the players.
Some of them just aren’t good enough to wear a Celtic jersey.
But that’s not their fault, it is the fault of the people who imagined they were good enough to play for Celtic.
The chickens are really starting to come home to roost now.
We’ll either be out of this title race two weeks from now, or we will somehow have performed a major miracle to stay in it.
After yesterday, the former is looking more and more likely.
But this is football.
Strange things have been known to happen.
That, in reality, is the kind of hope we cling to now.
We never needed to be here.
But you don’t need me to tell you that.
You always knew that.
Key Takeaways
- Celtic’s recent loss significantly impacts their title aspirations, as the team struggles with goal-scoring from strikers like Tomáš Čvančara, Junior Adamu, and Kelechi Iheanacho.
- The inability to convert chances into goals hampers the team’s performance, leading to persistent difficulties in winning games.
- Manager Martin O’Neill remains hopeful, yet he needs improved scoring capabilities from his strikers to stay competitive.
- Upcoming matches create uncertainty, particularly with a crucial game at Ibrox, where scoring consistency is needed.
- The blame for the current situation lies with the Celtic board for insufficient resources, not with the players or fans.
A thread bare poor quality squad delivered by a threadbare crap standard corporate greedy board has left us in this position, fans have to realise the fight is not for league titles anymore the fight is to save the club in any recognisable quality we are grave peril of disappearing from the once proud stye reputation we had to an poor poor irrelevant club stop giving them your money or you are complicit
No one should buy a season ticket . No one .
Yourself James and Joe go on about fighting to the end of the game for the points we have been lucky in this respect a blind person could see this coming, on average we are shipping two goals a game so there are defensive mistakes as well as striker ones the whole club from top to bottom is a complete mess, I have my doubts about winning the league .
Excellent realistic article. Given the paucity of investment in this Team it’s entirely predictable the results and performances. None of these Strikers are a Cadete or a Sutton never mind a Larson ( all bought for knock down fees but known to be very good players)
You get what you pay for ( or in Celtic PLC case what you don’t pay for, what you cheaply borrow until the end of the season!)
MON was on a hiding to nothing. He should’ve taken more time on his phone calls with the Celtic Owner and made some demands rather than. Just agree and take a large remuneration.
We’ll win nothing this season in fact on March 8th our season will be over as the huns will beat us in both games and they’re utterly pish if Livingston hadn’t got a man sent off yesterday they were cruising to an easy victory. There’s not one Celtic player worthy of playing for the club at the moment, not a single one and this has been coming for a long time. This board have systematically asset stripped this team for years we got away with it because they got lucky with quality managers in Brendan and Ange. My only surprise is that it hasn’t happened sooner than this and we still haven’t hit rock bottom yet there’s still worse to come in my opinion. The only way this will change is by getting rid of Desmond out but he’s on record as saying he’ll never sell and who’s got a spare £100 million lying about to make the purchase anyway. Only Rod Srewart possibly but at eighty years old has he got that longevity that anyone would need to fix this club? This is a full scale root and branch rebuild needed to pull this club up by the boot straps, this isn’t a six month makeover this whole club needs a reset that this board aren’t capable of delivering.
There’s no leadership at the club and the board’s only worry is how they save themselves. We’re told constantly that these guys bleed Celtic if that was the truth they’d do the honourable thing and resign but they’ll never do that, they’re going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming from Celtic Park. When self-preservation is your only hope then it’s already telling you your time is up. I’d ask all of the directors what are you bringing to the table that justifies your place on the board? What role do you play that advances the club in terms of investment to the club itself and that helps progress the footballing department on a daily basis? How do you explain the regression from the club that nearly knocked out Bayern Munich out of the CL twelve months ago to a team that’s struggling to beat the bottom three teams in the league? How do you explain the incompetence that has taken the club from winning a double last season to a club that have to rely on lucky last minute goals to earn points or keep you in the cup? What do you intend to do to recover our stranglehold as the top club in Scotland? Why didn’t this board push for a root and branch clear out of the SFA when Rangers were liquidated and died in 2012? Why do you allow a corrupt Lanarkshire Referees association to cheat us out of decisions but our rivals from Ibrox get patterns of assistance every weekend and they’re doing it blatantly now without fear of reprisals? Why has the club allowed corporate governance of the game to pretend that the club playing out of Ibrox is the same club when that’s just an abject lie? Why isn’t our CEO explaining to our support what the business model is for the next five to ten years and why has he never made any interviews over his five year tenure to explain how the club plan to progress as a business but more importantly as a football operation? I could go on and on here but the structure of Celtic is all wrong and that’s why our support are up in arms at the moment, it’s got nothing to do with anti-establishment it’s about how the club’s being run into the ground due to nepotism, cronyism and sheer incompetence and negligence.
I think it is a bit unfair to condemn Adamu after a Celtic
career which has only lasted a matter of seconds rather than days even.
While there is no doubt that the ironing board at Parkhead has more brains and certainly more useful than the Celtic board, despite the fact that Brian Wilson`s tweed jacket needs a severe ironing, Brendan Rodgers should be shouldering more of the blame.
He nipped away quietly when Gerrard arrived and did likewise when Rohl rolled up. I don`t think it was coincidence, more of a “getting off your mark”.
He gets great credit for improving players` performances:
he certainly didn`t do it with Oh, or Idah even. You saw what happened to Kyogo and he was the one who felt
good about beating Beale for Louis Palma.
I still maintain he should have managed to outwit the
Almighty Karma (or whoever) with the players he had at his disposal.
It is insulting to the likes of Stein, Mourinho, Guardiola
and Arteta even to use the word elite when describing him. That description drags them down to his level rather than the reverse.
Honestly, what more can you say about what was once a proud Football Club ???? CELTIC PLC hang your heads in shame……