Celtic’s worst start to a season for 23 years continued on Sunday afternoon as the Hoops dropped yet more points in their quest to regain the league title.
The Bhoys have shown some promising signs under Ange Postecoglou but ultimately, his team are struggling to adapt to a number of injury problems.
The absence of top scorer Kyogo Furuhashi has clearly hampered their progress, as too has a fitness problem for skipper Callum McGregor.
However, you can’t keep making excuses for poor performances; they did score three goals away at Real Betis with a range of injuries.
Since that match, though, Postecoglou’s side have only scored once in two outings.
They lost to Livingston and then their 1-1 draw with Dundee United at Parkhead was hardly any better.
Albian Ajeti was isolated in attack and despite the best efforts of Liel Abada and Jota, two players who brought flair to the encounter, they couldn’t get over the line.
One player who was disappointing for a third successive outing was James McCarthy. The Irishman was poor in the middle of the park and was substituted at half time having won just 33.3% of his defensive duels.
However, it’s hard to ignore the performance of Tom Rogic either.
The Australian started well under the stewardship of Postecoglou by scoring in the 6-0 rout of Dundee but against the club’s rivals, Dundee United, he was extremely poor.
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It caps a run of poor form for the attacking midfielder who hasn’t been at the races over the last few weeks.
As they laboured to a 1-1 draw on Sunday afternoon, the 28-year-old gave away the ball on a relentless basis, surrendering possession on 20 occasions.
That led to a mediocre pass success rate of 71% as Rogic struggled to link defence to attack.
What made the Australia international’s afternoon even worse was the fact he missed a glorious opportunity to score.
He latched onto Jota’s knockdown but rattled the frame of the goal. That was just one of three times that Celtic hit either the post or bar.
Ultimately, Rogic’s creativity and end product deserted him at Parkhead this weekend. Sadly, that has been a regular occurrence for the Celtic man in recent weeks. He needs to improve.