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News
‘Wrong’… Andy Halliday said Brendan Rodgers made a huge mistake during Celtic’s draw with Aberdeen
Celtic’s draw with Aberdeen on Saturday opened up a whole can of worms for Brendan Rodgers.
More dropped points meant more questions were being asked about his recruitment which piled more pressure on the board for a perceived lack of support for the Celtic manager.
However, what Rodgers probably wasn’t expecting was to be told that he made a huge mistake during the Aberdeen game that could have contributed to Celtic dropping more points.
Motherwell midfielder, Andy Halliday, said that the Hoops gaffer was ‘wrong’ to take off Alexandro Bernabei during the 1-1 draw.
Halliday said [], “I thought Bernabei was fine. I actually thought the decision to take him off in hindsight, obviously when you look after the game, was the wrong one by Brendan Rodgers.
“Because Anthony Ralston, for all his strengths, is a right-footed player playing left back. So anytime he got the ball, Bernabei in the first half, was getting Celtic up with the pitch, he was carrying the ball, he was playing passes forward.
“But when Anthony Ralston comes on, he wants to take it onto his stronger right-foot and Aberdeen would press and he would pass it back to the centre half.”
Bernabei was by no means the worst player on the pitch on Saturday but he was at fault for Bojan Mioski’s opener when a slack pass allowed Aberdeen to counter and catch himself and several other players out of position.
Alexandro Bernabei’s performance for Celtic vs Aberdeen
However, to dispute Halliday’s claim, here are some stats on Bernabei’s Pittodrie performance. rated the Argentine at 7.0.
The 23-year-old had 60 touches with a passing accuracy of 84%. Despite making six passes into the opposition’s final third, Bernabie only made three crosses and none of them reached a Celtic player.
He was dispossessed once and only made one successful tackle, one block and one interception. Out of his nine duels, he only won three and made just three ball recoveries.
Not the best defensive performance from Bernabie especially when Aberdeen where in the ascendancy and also his attacking threat was virtually zero.
Rodgers made the right call in hooking him and I would suspect that Bernabei will struggle to make the starting lineup against Hibs tomorrow night.
In other news, Celtic did make moves to sign £8.5m striker in January