Time for Celtic to chuck tippy tappy football in the bin

You need to play to your strengths, we clearly aren’t doing that. Martin needs to ditch the Brendan Rodgers philosophy if he wants his Celtic side to succeed…

One of the biggest trends in modern football in recent years is the Pep Guardiola inspired ‘tippy tappy’ approach, a philosophy that’s been adopted by a large percentage of football clubs around the globe, but one that is seen by many as something of a ‘hindrance’ and is even spoiling the entertainment value of the game we all love.

Eat, sleep and repeat, you get the idea

Brendan Rodgers brought us a similar system, one that proved very successful but it ran its course over time. Playing out from the back, and then what seems like a game of keep ball between the midfield and defence. Eat, sleep and repeat, you get the idea.

It’s a tactic that our opponents quickly latched on to, and very rarely needed to hatch a tactical strategy to combat Celtic. It was rather easy, all they needed to do was constantly press our players, and stop us from attacking, it was as simple as that.

Smother and nullify our system, and in turn frustrate the supporters. It’s all you need to get a positive result against Celtic.

Brendan may have left the club nearly a year ago, but his tactical legacy still lives on, and it’s something that’s slowly hampering our progress on the field.

Martin O’Neill is quite rightly regarded as a legend in the eyes of the Celtic supporters, but he’s in danger of tarnishing that reputation and legacy if he continues to adopt a style of football that is not only alien to himself, but one that very clearly doesn’t suit the strengths of the Celtic players.

I get that Martin and his coaching staff didn’t want to implement any serious changes after taking interim charge last year, but now they’ve had a full pre-season to work with the players, they should have recognised those weaknesses and moulded the side in a system that best suits their respective qualities.

It’s glaringly obvious that we don’t have the required individuals to carry out the brutally sore on the eyes keep ball movement between goalkeeper and defence.

All this does is invite pressure from our clued up opponents, which in turn spooks our players, and invites negativity from the stands which then allows our opponents to capitalise on our much obvious weakness.

Thursday’s inept display against Ferencvaros was proof of that fact, and if we can all see it from the stands and the TV screens, then surely those in the dugout must see the same?

We have players who are capable of being physically dominant due to their size and physique, so why not use that to our advantage and try and win possession in the middle of the park as opposed to building from the back ever single time. It makes your eyes bleed paying good money to watch it.

Then go direct and attack, utilising the power and strengths of the players we have offensively, it’s quite obvious that is our main strength.

Martin O’Neill quite simply has to ditch this footballing philosophy, and go with his own footballing principles. If not then we aren’t going to improve, and yet another problematic season awaits.

Hopefully we don’t have to endure the centre back taking a goal kick and passing to the goalkeeper tomorrow.

If that happens on repeat then you can expect a serious backlash from the stands where the Celtic support has already had more than enough of that self defeating nonsense.