| Match Pictures | Matches: 1998 – 1999 | 1998-1999 Pictures |
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Trivia
- In the light of the Daily Record’s “Jock Brown told us to lie” story, following their complete duping over Riseth’s signing, Jock Brown sued the Record for £250,000.
- It appeared that Viduka was being approached as a signing target. Since the initial approach Viduka had been targeted by the Zagreb fans after his poor form and it looked like the Australian wanted out of the club as soon as possible. The problem was finding a fee acceptable to both clubs.
- Stephane Mahe (hip), Harald Brattbakk (knee) and Simon Donnelly (back) all collected knocks against St Johnstone, while Marc Rieper (ankle), Phil O'Donnell (thigh strain), Tom Boyd (thigh strain) and Regi Blinker (groin strain) were also doubtful. Rieper declared himself fit and played. Annoni dropped out of the squad. With the number of injuries and the tiredness evident in the team it was clear that sending 10 first team representatives (more than any other team in Britain) to the World Cup in the summer was affecting team performance and results.
- This was Vidar Riseth’s debut and he was played at left midfield
- The pre-match Press conference saw Dr Jo facing up to the Press and declaring his belief in the players at the club, but they were nearly all carrying an injury and all tired. He also denied that there had been a rift between him and Jock Brown, dismissing the allegation as an outright lie.
- Following this draw with Hearts the Press went out on full shark attack mode against the team and the management and back room staff. Hugh Keevins and Mark Guidi wrote articles which could only be called assassination attempts in the Sunday Mail.
Review
The result certainly put pressure on Venglos to start delivering. A tired team was under-performing (though the game was an improvement from the dire St Johnstone game) and there appeared to be strains within the ranks ( Match Report and Burley’s post-match comments). Even so a highest post-Taylor Report attendance turned up for the game but a good number left before the final whistle. Just to add fat to the fire, Jansen turned up to watch the game.
Teams
Celtic: Gould, Mahe, Rieper, Stubbs , Larsson, Burley , Brattbakk, Donnelly, Lambert, Hannah, Riseth (Burchill, 83)
Subs not used: Jackson, McKinlay, Kerr, McBride.
Scorer: Donnelly (32)
Hearts: McKenzie, Naysmith, Weir, Salvatori, Ritchie, McCann, Adam (McPherson, 89), Hamilton, Locke, Makel (Murie, 86), Pressley
Subs not used Hogarth, Horn, Holmes,
Bookings: Hannah (Celtic) Salvatori, McCann (Hearts)
Referee: Willie Young (Scotland
Attendance: 60,027
Articles
- Match Report
Back to drawing board as Celtic reveal lack of Heart
The Scotsman 28/09/1998
MIKE AITKEN
Celtic 1 Donnelly (33)
Heart of Midlothian1 Hamilton (53)
MOST post-match assessments which trip off the tongues of footballers are bland as well as predictable. However, harsh circumstances – this was Celtic's sixth league game without a win – produced harsh words from Craig Burley when the stand-in captain was asked to reflect on why the champions have lost their way.
Having played through injury himself for much of the past six months, the midfield player seemed particularly irked by those colleagues who were quick to excuse themselves from duty with sick notes. Although he stressed that Tom Boyd, who was missing with a hamstring injury, did not fall into this category, Burley insisted that "some players could do a bit more".
One of the most passionate members of staff at Parkhead, the midfielder also felt it was about time all the Celtic players started facing up to their responsibilities and stopped making excuses for a string of half-hearted performances.
The reality of life for the Celtic players is that fifth place in the Premier League and a meagre haul of ten points from eight games is nothing short of unacceptable.
Much has been made of the fact that many of the Celtic players were on duty at the World Cup during the summer and that this extra shift somehow explains their current lack of sharpness. Burley bluntly described this line of reasoning as "bollocks". It was time, he added, for every Celtic player "to get out there and roll up the sleeves." Nor was Burley having any more weight put on the departure of Wim Jansen, who was back at Celtic Park again as an observer on Saturday, and the belated arrival in the head coach's chair of Jozef Venglos.
"It doesn't matter as a player if you were disappointed when Wim left, or delighted," he said. "As a professional footballer, you must give the new man in charge 100 per cent." As to the lack of new personnel, Burley avoided saying that fresh faces were not needed but he argued that this subject was yet another red herring.
"There are no excuses – the guys who are here now should be good enough," he added. "But we need to stand up for ourselves more." Burley used the example of how visiting sides, when asked to defend at set-pieces, fought for the ball as if their very lives depended on it. The inference was that Celtic were much less determined than Hearts when Neil McCann threw over the corner-kick into the six-yard box which Jim Hamilton belted into the net at the second attempt.
Guilty of defending like a pub team and lacking forwards who score on a regular basis – "I don't want to be top scorer – I'd rather play with strikers who score 20 or 25 goals a season," he said – Burley accepts Celtic have a crisis of confidence.
Rather than seeking others to blame, however, the midfielder believes that the players themselves must put matters right. "Only sometimes," he reflected wistfully, "you can't see where the goals will come from…"
Though short of fit players and having come through a sticky patch of their own Hearts gave Celtic a lesson in application. The Gorgie side played a pressing game which demanded enormous effort from their three front men.
Neil McCann is often criticised as a luxury player but in this game the winger ran his socks off. "It was a big shift and I had to get up and down a lot," he said. "But I felt we played well as a team and just about shaded the match. We certainly deserved to take a point."
McCann was hopeful that Craig Brown would take note of his display and that his chances of playing from the start for Scotland had improved. He would like to have attacked more through the middle in the second-half but had been asked by Jim Jefferies to hold the slot wide on the left of midfield.
This was a feature of Hearts' play in the later stages of the game when Celtic enjoyed the bulk of possession. By keeping their shape, Hearts were able to frustrate Celtic in midfield and prevent the Parkhead side from creating clear-cut chances.
When Celtic did threaten to enter the Hearts box, David Weir invariably stepped forward to break up the attacks. If the Hearts defender lost his chance to play for Scotland with a poor show at Kilmarnock, he deserved to win his place back on the strength of this display.
Weir's use of the ball was impressive as was his crisp tackling. True, he was turned inside-out by a lovely flash of skill from Henrik Larsson at Simon Donnelly's first-half goal, but Hearts were more inclined to blame Paul Ritchie at the preceding throw-in for not booting the ball into the main stand when the defence was caught short-handed.
Having shown more composure and ideas than Celtic in the first half, Hearts then needed grit and determination to claw their way back into the game after the interval.
They were able to pull off this feat mainly because Celtic are alarmingly short of creative players in the final third of the field. Apart from Larsson, as Burley acknowledged, it was hard to see who was going to produce the touch of the unexpected which would open up a formidable Hearts defence. Donnelly and Vidar Riseth on the flanks both had quiet games while Harald Brattbakk was again a fish out of water.
With Burley and Paul Lambert unable to deliver the pass to unlock the Hearts defence, it was often left to Alan Stubbs to break from the back in an effort to unsettle the visitors. The ploy, however, was no substitute for real penetration.
Played in front of 60,027 spectators – the largest gathering ever to sit down and watch a league match in Britain – an absorbing game suggested Hearts have more to look forward to this winter than the champions. With signing moves expected later in the week and the prospect of key players returning to fitness as the autumn unfolds, they left Celtic Park feeling almost as cheerful as when they took the Scottish Cup back to Edinburgh in May.
- Manager Interview
Dr Jo Venglos post match
“Every coach at every top club is under pressure because it is part of the job and I can take it. The team work hard but need a little bit of luck. I know they have quality.
“Our performance was much better. The spirit was fine and the quality of our play was better thn against St Johnstone.
“We played against good opposition and at the end of the day we lost two points.
“We must be patient. The effort and the quality shown by the players last season must and will come through. We just need to win one or two games to improve our confidence.”
“That’s normal (that thew fans should boo) when we are not winning, but during matches they have to support us.
“I thought we were much closer to taking the three points than just the one. You cannot say the players have not been trying. They have been working well, but generally I cannot say that some have been performing badly.
“We will watch the goal we lost on video and observe where we went wrong, but we have to take responsibility as a team. If someone makes a mistake, he knows. I don’t have to say anything.”
Craig Burley, post match
"I am the club's top scorer but that is not a position I want.
"We have to be getting goals from the front players and that is not happening. We are struggling to get goals and we are also losing bad goals. Some of the goals we have given away this season have come because of schoolboy defending. We have been like a pub team sometimes. There are no excuses left for us. The results have nothing to do with tiredness after the World Cup or anything like that.
"And we cannot hide behind the suggestions that new players would help the team. We won the league last year and, while fresh players would be welcome, there is no way that can be an excuse. We have to go out and prove ourselves, and we have to start doing that soon.
"It's an easy option for players to sit in the treatment room, but that is not helping the club.
"I hold up my hand for Tom Boyd, though, because he has been playing for a week or two with an injury problem, and he is committed to this club. There are times when you have to play with injuries.
"There is no hiding place out there in front of the fans. We thought we had turned the corner when we won in Portugal the other week, but that was different. We could afford to be patient over there while here, at home, we are expected to go forward all the time. That sometimes means a cavalry charge and we push forward too much.
"There are no problems between the players and the coaching staff. There is just disappointment that we have not been able to get the results we want.
"Everyone is giving l00 per cent, but we just cannot seem to get things together."
Pictures
Stats
| Celtic | Hearts | |
| Bookings | 1 | 2 |
| Fouls | 9 | 18 |
| Shots on Target | 3 | 3 |
| Corners | 3 | 6 |
| Offside | 0 | 1 |