Next Up - Celtic At Fir Park

[jwok]

Motherwell take on Celtic at Fir Park on Saturday. Can the Steelmen send their fans home happy? LINK

[LawSteelman]

No they can’t. We will get absolutely hammered on Saturday as we won’t cope with their pace and quality up front. In their last three games at FP Celtic have won 5-2, 4-0 and 4-1. Saturday will be a similar scoreline as we will lose a customary early goal then get our back doors caved in.

We just don’t get results against Celtic these days.

[Handsome_Devil]

Celtic's defence has been so open this season we'll have a chance if they haven't improved...but I suspect the international break will have been well-used.

[texaco cup]

Our only chance we have is if everyone of our players are on their “A” game. Our forwards have to exploit Celtic’s zone marking at any set pieces we get. As LawSteelman says above we have lost 13 goals to them in the last three games. Playing 10 men behind the ball hasn’t worked previously so let’s press them higher up the pitch and see what happens. COYW

[Handsome_Devil]

Playing 10 men behind the ball hasn’t worked previously so let’s press them higher up the pitch and see what happens. COYW

Under 'peak Robinson' we drew three consecutive games at home to Celtic, the FP pumpings to them started when we pressed them higher up the pitch and tried to play more football. There obviously needs to be a balance between taking the game to them and being solid at the back but recent history suggests erring on the side of being more cautious gets a better result because as poor as they might be by their standards, they're still significantly better than us and therefore the more open the game the easier for them.

It's a fairly moot discussion in this case anyway because Alexander will never break from his own template when it basically suits playing the OF anyway - we will press when the chance is there and the second it looks like we're in bother we'll be back in a 4-5-1 variation challenging them to break us down.

[sieb1886]

Not saying I'm optimistic of gaining a point or 3 on Saturday, but 1 point might be on the table. I say that based on us looking more solid at the back than we have in a long time. If the 2 Scandinavian CB's are able to play, and SOD and Lamie play to the top of their game (backed up by a 'back to form' Kelly), we shouldn't ship too many goals ... I hope !!