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News
‘Big loss’… Brendan Rodgers told he made a huge mistake taking ‘brilliant’ 26-year-old player off vs Kilmarnock
As the dust continues to flare up over Celtic’s loss at Rugby Park on Sunday, Brendan Rodgers’ game management has now been called into question.
The Celtic manager has already been criticised for continuing to select Nat Phillips and now, he’s been told he made a massive error in taking Tomoki Iwata off against Kilmarnock on Sunday.
The Japanese midfielder was taken off directly after Killie scored their equaliser and Stephen McGinn thinks the Celtic manager got that one wrong.
McGinn said [], “I thought Iwata, it was quite harsh to take him off. I mean, he’s not Callum McGregor in possession.
“He does a brilliant job off the ball. I think early in the second half he nicked a real good one. Celtic were promising in attack.
“It probably summed up the last few weeks in terms of being wasteful around the final third from that moment.
“But I thought it was a big loss for them when he went off.”
Celtic missed Tomoki Iwata’s defensive qualities
Look, I get the reason why Iwata was removed. At 1-1, Rodgers could ill afford to drop more points so he decided to bring on Kyogo Furuhashi to rescue the game.
Unfortunately, all that did was leave a gaping hole in the middle of the park that allowed Kilmarnock to exploit and they then went off to win the game.
Iwata was playing fairly well. He won three out of his five duels, made three defensive actions, two ball recoveries and won 100% of his tackles.
In the forward areas, the 26-year-old made three passes in Kilmarnock’s final third, created one chance and had a 91% passing accuracy. []
Iwata offered both an attacking threat and solidity in the centre of the midfield. Once that was taken out of the game, it looked like Celtic were all out of ideas.
In other news, ‘Not up to it’… Chris Sutton claims £2m Celtic player looks nowhere near good enough