Having played a lotta footie in my time (over 600 matches) and coached and acquired some coaching badges for fun, I find this upcoming match to be intriguing from a tactical pt of view. I think we all agree this is gonna be a very difficult match for Hibs and I'm assuming that we are also losing Ryan Porteous to a red card suspension? There will be a fatal consequence if my assumption re Porteous is correct!! A "backs to the wall" approach does appear to be the only plan to accept and try to deploy and I base that view on all Hibs matches played so far and the glaring stats attached to the unimpressive results - strikers almost non-existent and "leaking" too many goals!! So we must flood the midfield with "battling" players, fight for the midfield area and protect our defensive line as best we can. I'd also deploy a couple of Hibs players to "man mark" certain Celtic mid players - under orders that they are almost "skin-touching" these players! I know for a fact that marked players hate being targeted in this way because I have been asked to do exactly this kinda job in years gone by and done it well with some of the "mouthing and whining" from "targets" just confirming how good a job I've done on them lol!! I doubt Heckingbottom will do this but one can only hope. We wanna suppress their free-flowing footie and try to "kill" the game - "go Italian", no choice!!
GGTTH
GGTTH