It was a shock defeat for Celtic at the weekend as St Mirren beat the Hoops and brought their 364-day unbeaten league record to an unexpected end. Ange Postecoglou has already spoken about the poor performance on Sunday and admitted that his team selection might very well have been part of the problem.
A number of changes were made on the day and a lot of key players were left on the bench, despite there being an international break right afterwards, in what felt like a very casual approach from Celtic.
It wasn’t the usual Celtic centre-back pairing on Sunday. Stephen Welsh and Moritz Jenz were brought in to cover for Cameron Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt, both of whom are injured. They hadn’t played much as a pair beforehand and appeared to struggle on the day.
Michael Stewart seems to believe that the duo were not able to handle the physicality. Speaking on BBC Sportscene and as reported by the Daily Record, he said:
"“Technically I think it is offside. There’s a bit of pushing and shoving from both players, Stephen Welsh has got a good firm hold of Ayunga’s jersey, and he probably does shove him a little bit. It’s weak (from Welsh) though and I think this goal is indicative of the performance as a whole.“You see Curtis Main’s desire, he gets above and bullies Jenz and it’s the same at the back post. You can see with the line that Ayunga’s offside but it’s very tight for the linesman to be able to see that definitively.“If it was VAR, yes it probably would be chopped off. But I think that moment there in the six-yard box was pretty indicative of what happened most of the afternoon. Ayunga and Main up top caused chaos against Jenz and Welsh, they were never really able to handle the physicality of them.”"
Celtic suffered a shock defeat at the hands of St Mirren
Stewart may well have a point on the offside. It was a tough one for the referee’s assistant to see clearly. Even if that had been chalked off, Celtic’s overall display was pretty poor and probably didn’t deserve much from the match.
Throughout the afternoon St Mirren were tough all over the pitch, they didn’t let the Celtic forwards get into the game and shut down the champions’ wing play quickly.
At the end of the day, it looked like a team that had very little cohesion, which was to be expected since this combination had probably never played together before this. Talking specifically about Jenz and Welsh, it feels like their strengths just do not complement each other and they do not work together as a pairing in the heart of defence.