Celtic’s loss to Feyenoord was a sore one to take for the fans. Especially after how they saw their team perform in the first 45 minutes.
Brendan Rodgers’ men were more than a match for the Dutch champions and it wasn’t until Gustaf Lagerbielke’s second yellow card that it all came crashing down on the Hoops.
But for James McFadden, the second booking wasn’t the problem. McFadden says it was Lagerbielke’s ‘crazy’ decision in the first half that the Swedish defender should be more concerned about.
McFadden said [BBC Sportsound], “The second yellow is not so much the problem because he needs to go and defend the situation. He makes that decision. It’s the first yellow card that’s the problem.
“He takes his eye off the ball, it hits his standing foot, then he gets back round and into a good position. He’s got the defender with his back to goal and he lunges and makes a crazy second decision, which means that any mistake he makes from there on him is going to be punished. Especially if you make it in the box.
“Now, if that was his first yellow card, Joe Hart saves the penalty, it’s still 1-0 and it’s 11v11 and no need to panic.
“So the first decision, for me, is the poor one.”
And McFadden is 100% correct. As soon as a defender gets booked so early in a match they will be under a lot of scrutiny from the referee.
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Any wrong decision or innocuous foul could encourage another booking and, as happened to Lagerbielke last night, an ordering off.
But the youngster will learn from this. He has to. Celtic now face the prospect of Lazio coming to Celtic Park without the Swede in their ranks. And with the current defensive crisis Brendan Rodgers has at the moment, the Celtic manager cannot afford to lose any more players due to unforced errors.
In other news, ‘I said to them afterwards’: Brendan Rodgers’ message to the Celtic players after loss vs Feyenoord