Celtic’s Lack Of Consistency Comes Down To One Key Factor

Twenty-five games into the return of Brendan Rodgers as Celtic Manager and his side have yet to win three consecutive games in that time.

Dress that up whatever way you want but that kind of inconsistency is unacceptable.

And it’s the kind of inconsistency that will put Celtic’s Scottish Premiership title in jeopardy.

Injuries to key players such as Reo Hatate, Liel Abada and Daizen Maeda have hampered the manager at times.

So too has a summer transfer window which gets more puzzling with each passing week.

However despite these issues the current Celtic squad should still be capable of overcoming Hearts at Celtic Park, as well as Kilmarnock at Rugby Park.

There may be many issues for the current malaise but the biggest issue I can see is a seriously lack of consistency in the starting XI.

Under Ange Postecoglou goalkeeper Joe Hart would look up and see Cameron Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt lineup ahead of him in almost every single game.

Ahead of that it would be captain Callum McGregor, Matt O’Riley and Reo Hatate.

And beyond that, 34 goal Kyogo Furuhashi would be leading the line.

A combination of injury, exits and a loss of form has meant that Rodgers has had no such luxury available to him.

And it’s manifesting itself in increasingly poor results.

Whilst some of this can’t be helped there have been some puzzling squad rotations which have been the manager’s choice and it’s been hard to make sense of some of these.

Gustaf Lagerbielke scores a Champions League winner against Feyenoord and doesn’t even make the squad for Hearts.

17 year old Mitchell Frame makes a dream debut v the Dutch side, but likewise is nowhere to be seen on Saturday.

On the flip side we’ve not seen a peep of South Korean midfielder Kwon since the summer yet he inexplicably makes the bench at the weekend.

So too does forgotten man Alexandro Bernabei – a player deemed not suitable for our Champions league squad.

These are just some examples from recent weeks. There are many more.

For me this clearly indicates that the manager doesn’t know who he can trust at this time.

But equally worrying is that this lack of faith may also lead to the players losing trust in Rodgers.

Once your dressing room goes down that road it can be a very hard place to return from.

In light of back to back league defeats, and with Europe now over for another season, Celtic must now return to a strategy of focusing on one game at a time.

That starts with this weekend’s visit from bottom placed Livi.

Play our strongest team, get the tree points by whatever means necessary and then (and only then!) can we look at the final two challenges of the calendar year.

Let’s see if we can find some much needed consistency over Christmas.

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