Yesterday gives me far less fear than Malmö, Dundee United and even Alashkert did truth be told.
We looked miles sharper for large spells of the game and but for some ludicrous final ball decision making would have racked up a cricket score by half time. The last 30 minutes were very poor yes, no getting away from it, at least we looked capable of playing a higher tempo game again. That was abundantly not present earlier in the season in the aforementioned games.
We are all very guilty on here of propelling missing players to world class messi like talent but that game was custom made for Hagi yesterday. If we can repeat that first 45 minutes one touch play with Hagi on the park the final ball and goal tally improves drastically.
I said about a month ago that we looked like a team who patently weren’t fit following a very fragmented pre season. We would, IMO, have 4-6 more weeks of stuttering form before things began to pick up performance wise and that was before the covid pre old firm problems. Yesterday in spells (first half) looked like some of the cob webs were starting to be blown away. I fully expect us to kick on in the coming weeks now and put some clear daylight between us and the pack.
That all said it was never going to be the near perfection of last season. Rodgers team had a similar dip the year after going undefeated too from memory. Let’s look and see where we are after the first full round of games with hopefully more of the squad available for selection.