Never mind the quality, feel the lack of width. However organised, compact and Motherwell were on Saturday, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that they ran into Celtic on a day when the absence of key players – especially their most effective wingers – left Ange Postecoglou’s men struggling to punch holes in the visiting defence.
Take nothing away from the Steelmen, who counter-punched brilliantly through the pace, guile and wit of Kevin van Veen. They more than deserved their point. But Celtic without Jota are a different team. More narrow, certainly, and half a beat slower in getting the ball in from the wide areas. Without Reo Hatate, meanwhile, they miss a player who drives into the spaces left by Celtic’s naturally expansive style. Spaces that someone like Tomoki Iwata seems almost reluctant to occupy.
With Sead Haksabanovic and Daizen Maeda both unable to deliver his normal service, Kyogo Furuhashi spent half of the afternoon crashing the six-yard box – his office – and thinking to himself: “Wait a minute. Isn’t there usually a ball here for me to smash into the net?”
Stuart Kettlewell turned up with a plan to stymie Celtic. One based on a five-man defence and a midfield quick to close off passing lanes (see Photo 1).
To break this down, Celtic would look to their favoured methods of shifting the ball wide and getting their most advanced midfielders going beyond the wingers (see Photos 2 and 3). The problem? The home team seemed to pause before and after every normal step. And that gave Motherwell all the opportunities they needed to reset and regroup.
Celtic could always rely, of course, on Callum McGregor to produce big moments. Even before his goal, he was picking out Maeda with a lovely pass that might have put the hosts ahead (see Photo 4).
But the captain often found even his most promising attacks foundering on his front three’s inability to find the wide-open spaces available to them. Photo 5 shows an infuriating situation for McGregor, who may well be actually screaming at Maeda to run into the unoccupied acreage to his right, rather than clogging up the middle of the box.
The ball is eventually played to the overlapping Alistair Johnston, who can only strike a cross against the defender (see Photo 6).
There wasn’t much Motherwell could have done about Celtic’s opener, the fact that there were seven players between the Scotland midfielder and the goal when he took his shot (see Photo 7) an indicator of the visitors’ diligence, at least.
For a spell, Celtic began to look like their old selves. Which meant going wide to create space either in that golden zone just outside the box (see Photo 8) or in the inside channels (see Photo 9).
They’d create little advantages and overloads, knowing that the movement and sharp passing of their attacking players would lead to chances, with the snapshot shown in Photo 10 ending in a Kyogo shot just wide.
Motherwell were nothing if not dangerous on the break, though. And they knew Celtic would leave gaps – well, chasms, more like – at the back.
Credit Callum Slattery for playing the right ball to give Van Veen a chance to run at Greg Taylor (Photo 11). From there, with all that space to defend, the Scotland left back simply hoped to delay the striker until his team-mates came tearing back to offer reinforcements (see Photo 12) – but couldn’t keep the Dutchman at bay.
On a day when Celtic actually managed to register five shots on target, it never really felt like they were going to get the winner, despite having a good 40 minutes – injury time included – to muster fresh attacks.
And, in a team without the services not only of Jota but Liel Abada and James Forrest, once again it was the lack of width that left them trying to play through the eye of a needle.
Take a look at Photo 13. Now, you may have heard football folk talking about the famous Five Lane Attack – basically dividing the entire width of the pitch into five lanes and making sure you have at least one body in each corridor, maximising the area your opponents have to cover.
In this shot, Celtic have their entire front five crammed into the penalty box. With Motherwell also packing the area, there was just no room for anyone to swing a boot, never mind create a clear-cut chance.
With a certain big date at Hampden around the corner, Postecoglou will have plenty of pondering to do between now and Sunday. His priority will be to rediscover the quality that has been a hallmark of this season. And hope that star winger Jota is fit enough to add that wide-boy swagger missing against Motherwell.
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