Source: Team_Talk
Hoops chief eyeing consistency
The Parkhead boss is once again fighting off criticism after his side crashed out of the Homecoming Scottish Cup to St Mirren on Saturday.
The Hoops thrashed Saints 7-0 in the SPL at Celtic Park last week and then went back top of the SPL on Wednesday night with a 2-1 win at Kilmarnock.
It was then assumed that they had at last recovered their form which saw them win 12 successive league games earlier in the season and that Saturday's trip to St Mirren Park for their quarter-final tie would be a formality.
However, the SPL champions displayed again the sluggishness which has dogged their displays in recent months when they let slip a seven-point lead over rivals Rangers at the top of the table.
Billy Mehmet's second-half penalty - after Celtic skipper Stephen McManus had felled Craig Dargo inside the box - gave Saints their first cup win over Celtic in 47 years and put the Paisley side in to the semi-finals for the first time since they won the cup in 1987.
Strachan is most certainly aware of the ramifications of defeat by Rangers next Sunday when league positions will count for nothing.
The former Coventry and Southampton boss also knows he will have to find the answer to his side's frustrating inconsistency from within.
"We had three good performances in a row before the St Mirren game
- but that wasn't a good one", he said.
"That is the inconsistency that we have shown this year.
"I'd love to get a consistency that you could pick the same team every week but we don't have 11 or 12 who stay in the team all the time.
"That's my job to find it but if you go along to the coaching courses they don't say, 'if you want to go back on a long run, this is what you do'.
"You don't get that on a coaching course.
"You are out on a limb as a manager and you have to try and find ways to get that consistency back."
Strachan, who spent last week playing down the significance of the 7-0 victory over St Mirren, claimed not to be surprised by the Paisley side's reaction to their mauling.
"I knew they'd be organised and motivated," he said.
"There was nothing in that game I didn't expect.
"Now we just have to get on with it.
"We have many important games coming up."
Certainly, the importance of Sunday's game against Rangers will not be understated in the build-up to the final where the trophy forms the first part of the domestic treble.
Celtic's cup exit means recent grievances are set to be revisited this week.
With Scott McDonald absolved of blame for the defeat following his crucial brace at Killie, the spotlight once again returns to fellow strikers Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Georgios Samaras, who have failed to score in their last 25 appearance between them.
Indeed, the Dutchman has scored in just one game this season, a 3-2 win over Aberdeen last September.
Young Irishman Cillian Sheridan is on loan to Motherwell leaving Strachan with only reserve striker Ben Hutchinson to call upon if he wants to make radical changes to his attack for Hampden.
The Celtic boss, however, is unlikely to deviate from his recent assessment of former Middlesbrough striker Hutchinson.
"There are people in front of him at the moment," added Strachan.
"He is scoring goals for the reserves but I was at the reserve game the other day and there were people who made their mark without scoring goals, players who made chances for Ben and they have to be taken in to
consideration as well."
