Celtic’s Scottish Cup win over Aberdeen is one, I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, that will talked about for years.
The way the game swung like a pendulum and ended on penalties left the Celtic fans with no nails and the Aberdeen fans believing that it was going to be their day at Hampden.
And who could blame them? Great credit must go to The Dons for the way they didn’t give up and to score two late goals.
One in regulation time and one at the death of extra time is a testament to how much the relegation battlers put into the game.
However, talk between the Celtic fans of late has been about how Celtic didn’t help themselves with their defending.
Or more to the point, how Liam Scales was at fault for Aberdeen’s two late equalisers. Especially Peter Leven’s side’s third goal.
Scales exhonerated for ‘difficult’ defending
Aberdeen did seem to target Celtic’s left side of defence for much of the match. It is a position in the team that the Celtic fans believe is the weakest.
And it worked. Both of their goals came from that area of the park and whilst the finger of blame points at the Irish international, Charlie Mulgrew defended the Celtic star with this explanation of why Scales was caught out by Aberdeen’s third goal.
Mulgrew said [Open Goal], “What I will say is that it’s one of the most difficult balls for a centre-half to defend.
“Because you need to be a certain distance between the other centre-half and it’s going over the top of you and you’re back-peddling.
“And if you’re trying to back-peddle and jump you’re not getting off the ground.”
Fair enough and if you are to look at the whole picture you could also argue that Celtic didn’t do enough on the right flank at both goals to shut down the opportunity to get the crosses in.
I’m sure Brendan Rodgers has already held a post-mortem of what Celtic could have done better and whilst the issues at Hampden do need ironed out, we need all players focused for the next five games to ensure that we can keep the Scottish Premiership trophy in the Parkhead boardroom.