If Dundee can rattle Celtic like they did last night, what will Young Boys do to us??

01/15/2025 07:44 AM

Well, that was all a bit sobering at Dundee last night, wasn’t it?

If you were a neutral watching that game last night, it had everything, it was a great advert for the Scottish game.

Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t a neutral.

Credit is also very much due to Tony Docherty for instilling the belief in his Dundee side that they could take the game to us on their own patch.

They had us rattled in that second half.

And we were bereft of answers when it came to breaking them down.

It is, however, refreshing to come up against a side who is not afraid to take us on.

Jim Goodwin, who was sitting in the Dens Park stands, could learn a thing or two from Tony Docherty.

Docherty’s Dundee side is an example to all sides in the Scottish Premiership that the dour tactic of parking the bus against us is far less effective than the approach his young and vibrant team took on last night.

They came within two minutes of beating us.

I can’t say that we were lucky, or that they were unlucky when it came to the penalty, because there is no disputing the penalty we were given.

Nicolas Kühn’s shot was goal bound, Mohamad Sylla used his hand to stop it, the result was a penalty.

Dundee we’re unlucky not to see it out, we were lucky to have Nicolas Kuhn’s trickery and deft footwork, if you want to bring luck into it, that is.

That, ultimately, is what saved Celtic from a loss to Dundee in the end.

Saved being the operative word.

Because as the clock ran down, it looked more and more likely we were going to lose this one.

I’ll say it again, we were rattled.

And we were rattled because we simply aren’t used to Scottish Premiership sides coming at us full tilt like that.

It’s almost as if it was a shock to the system, and it’s something Brendan Rodgers needs to take heed of.

The Dundee crowd were up for it too.

And for a crowd that can only have been around 6 or 7 thousand, the atmosphere was terrific.

From both sets of supporters.

But that’s enough of the adulation for Dundee, I need to talk about Celtic.

That was a performance reminiscent of the Ibrox side away from home of late.

Starting well, having chance after chance, but failing to capitalise, and then getting ragdolled.

Because that’s exactly what happened.

It’s clear Tony Docherty set his side up to catch us on the counter.

And that’s exactly what they did.

Their first goal was a text book example of counter attacking football.

But when Dundee caught us napping for a second time on the counter attack, they smelt blood.

And boy, did they go for the jugular after that.

It’s clear the Dundee manager tweaked his tactics after the second goal went in.

He saw a weakness, and decided to exploit it.

Instead of sitting back and absorbing our slow build up play, Docherty decided it was time to go for it.

And every one of his players to a man was up for that.

The same cannot be said for our players.

I’ve been defending Auston Trusty for quite some time now on our podcast.

I cannot, however, defend his performance last night.

Which was weak and insipid.

Or weak as piss in layman’s or Brendan Rodgers’ terms.

You could say that Aaron Donnelly had an arm around his neck for Dundee’s third goal, and the photo evidence shows that, but his overall performance left an awful lot to be desired.

I don’t think that performance will do his selection chances any favours.

But after Ibrox, the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Liam Scales might need a chance to redeem himself, but if we see any kind of repeat of what happened at Ibrox, said redemption will be very short lived.

Centre back coming in in this transfer window?

I could go on and on about all of last night’s shortfallings, but this has been well covered already in the media.

What concerns me more than anything here is this, if Dundee can rattle us like that, what could Young Boys do to us next week?

Now, if Joël Magnin is serious about coming to Celtic Park and putting some points on the board for his beleaguered side, then he need look no further for inspiration than last night’s game at Dens Park.

Which I’ve no doubt he’ll watch.

It would be remiss of him not to.

One good examination of that performance last night, and he’ll easily deduce that Auston Trusty was one of the weakest links.

For Trusty’s sake, he’ll need to redeem himself very quickly after that.

If he’ll even be given the chance to do so.

We saw how quick Brendan Rodgers was to drop him after his first half performance at Hampden.

He might be just as quick to do so again after last night’s performance.

If there are positives to take from that game, then it’s the performances of Yang and Luke McCowan.

McCowan scored an excellent opener for us, and Yang worked hard all night, getting his just rewards through the goal he scored.

The former Dundee man was playing well up until he was substituted, which baffled me a bit.

Bringing on Hatate for McCowan in a pressure situation and a match that seemed to be slipping away from us?

It didn’t cost us like it did at Ibrox, but it could have.

Adam Idah IS starting to worry me now too, he needs a goal, and soon.

There’s no doubting his pedigree, but he needs this drought to end.

Arne Engels, as usual, was coolness personified when it came to the penalty.

And we needed him to be.

Otherwise we were deservedly losing that game.

There’s a lot there for the manager to assess.

But he needs to take the whole team and tell them in no uncertain terms, perform like this next Wednesday night, and our Champions League campaign is as good as over.

That’s the reality.

Next up, though, is Kilmarnock.

McInnes will take some heart from last night’s display.

But I don’t think his side will beat us.

What we need is a comprehensive victory over his side to put us in the right mindset for the following Wednesday night.

Hopefully that will let us banish the memory of last night.

Because we need to.

Otherwise we could be in serious bother…

YouTube: Sack The Board!! – Trinity Tims Podcast

Last night, we released the 7th episode of the Trinity Tims, we titled it Sack The Board, in honour of the chaos over at Ibrox! Please check it out and like, share and subscribe if you enjoy what we do!

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