Jim Goodwin was over the moon as he talked up Celtic after his Dundee United team earned a draw at Tannadice this afternoon.
Brendan Rodgers named a very different Celtic side to face The Tangerines as the Hoops boss looked to continue his unbeaten domestic start to the season.
The Celtic boss was pleased with the perfomances of Stephen Welsh and Liam Scales but did admit his Bhoys lacked penetrations as the Hoops played out a 0-0 stalemate against Dundee United.
Speaking after the match, United boss Jim Goodwin talked up Celtic and also shared how watching English Premier League football helped him prepare his side for the visit of Rodgers and his team.
Jim Goodwin lauds Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers in Dundee United draw
Goodwin told BBC Radio Scotland, “Celtic are a really really good team. Tactically, the manager asks you questions that you don’t often experience most weeks.
“The discipline and the organization and the concentration levels from the team, I spoke to you before the game, I said that’s what it was going to take in order for us to take a positive result.
“Of course, we don’t want to play that way in every game that we play in, because we obviously want to offer a bit more of an attacking threat, but you’ve got to respect the opposition and the quality of player that they’ve got and today was about discipline and organization.”
Celtic were dominant for much of the match as Dundee United sat back and allowed them most of the possession.
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But after the match, Goodwin attributed his players’ performance to that of the smaller teams in the Premier League whenever they face the likes of Liverpool or Arsenal.
Jim Goodwin shares lesson’s learned watching Arsenal & Liverpool for Dundee United’s draw vs Celtic
“I mean, look, you watch any league,” continued Goodwin, “And I watch a lot of the English Premier League as well and when the so called smaller teams are playing against some of the bigger boys, like the Liverpool’s, Arsenal’s and the Man City’s, that tends to be the shape of the opposition, where you’re trying to sit in and be compact and 10 men behind the ball for majority of the game, and then you’re hoping that you can get a counter attack.
“And I thought we had two or three half decent breakaways on the break that, unfortunately, we just, you know, didn’t really do enough with.
“We had a couple of goalmouth scrambles in the second half as well. But listen, if you’d have offered me a clean sheet before the game, I’d snap the hand off you.
Dundee United manager Jim Goodwin talks to Northampton Town coach Colin Calderwood during a Northampton Town training session at the University of ...
Photo by Pete Norton/Getty Images
“Celtic, prior to today, have won their previous eight games in the league away from home. So we’re the first team in the country to stop them doing that, which is, I suppose, the team deserve a huge amount of credit for.”
Remarkably, this was Brendan Rodgers’ first time facing Dundee United as the Celtic boss and it seems that Goodwin has given the Irishman food for thought.
For the first time this season, Celtic failed to score domestically and that has helped the Tayside club take a precious Scottish Premiership point this afternoon.
Celtic’s next fixture is against Motherwell on Boxing Day where Rodgers will be hoping that his freescoring Hoops team will have normal service resumed with a week to go until the Ibrox Glasgow Derby.
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