Maryan Shved

Which is also possible, it's all supposition.

What we do know is that in the 18 games that Morgan featured in, we won 15 of them and failed to win 3 matches v Cluj.

Would Sinclair have been a better option in those 3? Possibly but I was at Group Stage game in Romania on the line that Sincy was running down and he did nothing of note against their full back; a few times he just ran in a straight line into the player.

Both are gone now so I think it's fair to say that Lennon didn't fancy either and it was an unfortunate situation forced on him by injury to Elyounoussi, Johnston, Edouard, Bayo and Griffiths. We came through it relatively unscathed, outwith failure to qualify for the Champions League play-offs but I'd put that more down to our defence and tactics in the last 15 mins of the 2nd leg than Morgan playing.

 

I’m pretty sure Lennon would make the players aware of the situation and give the guy half an hour, if we are comfortable, against weak opposition.

I agree with you. But not a 30 min cameo to go and turn your Celtic career around to see if it maybe changes something mentally within him.

We also don’t know the full story. He’s apparently impressed in Dubai then comes back and continues to be frozen out. Things aren’t adding up and like Shved, we just want to see what he can do when it matters on a football pitch.

Not every player in the world is a good trainer. Successful players on successful teams have been bad trainers.

There’s something more to this than protecting players who might be offended if he’s given a chance.

 

Plenty foreign players don't get the language and succeed, also plenty class players have been * trainers! Give the boy a freeking chance

 

Which doesn't contradict my point. Underperforming is part of the game it happens to every player but giving less than 100% is a choice and in my opinion, shouldn't be tolerated.

Our opinions on under-performing are subjective and even if Lennon felt the same, he might find it more beneficial to show loyalty to a player through a bad patch of form, rather than drop him. Which again comes back to my point that if he sticks by those players and it impacts our results then Lennon will ultimately be judged upon that. By every metric Lennon is doing a very good job since he returned, so clearly he's getting more decisions right than wrong.

 

There are usually some common language speakers in the teams that can pass along instructions. I would imagine there are a fair few English speakers in the Real side, never mind the coaches, for example. I don't imagine there are any Ukranian speakers in our squad, and if he doesn't speak English, unless there is a full time translator involved, how are instructions going to be passed on?

 

Which is pretty much my point. There's obviously something amiss and we have to trust in the decision of a manager who has won every trophy available since returning, that has us sitting top of the league by 7 points, has us winning a European Group for the first time ever and has us as the top scorers in all of Europe.

Some of the criticisms levelled at Lennon was that he had poor standards, had a poor diet regime at Lennoxtown and was a throwback to a previous era in football with his approach. Now he's doing the opposite and ensuring that players are giving their all to merit a place, he's again being criticised.

The football maverick who is lazy in training is a thing of the past. Guys like Russell Latapy, puffing on * at the side of the training pitch, Merson out sinking pints at the weekend, Hartson tanning cans of Irn Bru and crisps after games. The game has moved on, that attitude is one that has seen talented players in this era get binned. Balotelli went from playing at one of the top club's in the world to obscurity, watch him in training jogging by hurdles while the rest actually go over them. Tony Watt for all his early promise is on record for having a poor attitude to training, look where his career has went.

We are already up against it to compete with the top sides in Europe and we're not going to close the gap by allowing anyone to give less than their best and that goes for all from players to coaches to physios to scouting to boardroom.

 

It's just a bit of a shame, on one hand we've got a player that we were all excited about seeing and n the other we have Lenny's team selection justified by the lead in the league, the progress in Europe and the silverware bagged so far. Not totally given up on seeing him but not expecting it anytime soon either.

Just getting him in and around a couple of matchday squads may help him settle and give him a bit of impetus to up his game in training to get involved more once he's had a little taste.

 

Why should we reserve legitimate criticism because a manager is doing well?

Clearly, there are areas in which Lennon can improve. You can cherrypick results, or statistics, that you believe vindicate his team selection, or substitutions, but there is a broad consensus among supporters that Lennon could better use his squad.

I fail to see why that is a point of contention: even the best managers have shortcomings.

 

We should trust him to a point, but not blindly. He is only human.

If we have concerns, or criticisms, we should voice them, as we would under any other manager.

 

Legitimate is subjective, it's your opinion on the matter. There's nothing that would conclusively say Sinclair playing at LW or CF ahead of Morgan in all of those games would have led to better results over the piece. He was dropped because his performance levels had dropped markedly and in the games he played he didn't do an awful lot.

It's not cherrypicking when he is successful by almost every metric that you would judge it. Games won, trophies won, goals scored. He is doing well.

Cherrypicking would be picking individual games in that 57 game run to make a point.

We would all do things differently to each other. It's good to debate our opinions on a forum as that's what it's all about but even a majority consensus view by the support doesn't mean Lennon is wrong. The majority consensus view (myself included) was that it was a joke we were signing a 27 year old CB from Israel with 1 international cap to resolve our long-standing RB issues; outwith the unfortunate spate of injuries the majority were wrong, he's a player.

Lennon is deciding things that he believes will deliver us success and given that he's delivering on that then those decisions are vindicated. It doesn't mean that every decision he makes is right, as you say even the best in the game call things wrong and it also doesn't mean we can't give our opinions on the matter.

 

But you can’t say something is amiss to then just go back to talking about it simply being his effort in training.

I’m not saying Shved’s misfortune is Lennon’s fault. But we aren’t getting the full picture. Lennon’s success doesn’t mean he can’t get better and we are allowed to criticise him as much as we praise him.

When I said a “bad trainer” I wasn’t saying Shved is acting like any of the old players you mentioned. They are extreme examples. It also doesn’t mean bad attitude such as Balotelli. There are many players out there that don’t train well for whatever reason that is. They talk about it on Open Goal a lot.

I personally just think that it’s counterproductive freezing him out. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t get a run out against Clyde if we are 2 goals ahead.

A chance could be all he needs if motivation is the problem.

Doing so won’t throw off the dressing room or team cohesion.

 

I think if it was a complete write off he would have been loaned back to karpaty with a view to to sell to them. Glasgow best place for him , hopefully this works out because no doubting his talent. He can't afford to lose this opportunity too, hes tried Spanish now English appears the problem , its not like if he was African and communicate with other french speaking Africans or French, or South American and can communicate with other Spanish speaking players. The lad speaks Ukrainian. He can communicate with no one

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He showed a lot of promise in Ukraine, but I trust that if he was good enough then he would be playing.

 

And? We can all generally agree on what constitutes legitimate criticism.

The criticism is that Lennon failed to pick a player on merit, not that he failed to achieve satisfactory results.

I was referring to the 'games won' stat, with regard to Morgan. It is the definition of cherry-picking. A causal relationship between Morgan playing in all of those games, and Celtic winning all of those games, is dubious, to say the least. (In before 'Hamilton'.)

 

Shved is a better player than Morgan but Morgan can speak English and probably runs more in training.

If he doesn’t start against Clyde then I give up any hope of him ever playing for us again.

 

He can't be, despite all evidence to the contrary: Lennon is infallible.

 

Evidently we can't. Lennon's remit is to win games of football and trophies for Celtic, he is currently doing that.

You be critical of decisions you disagree with but that doesn't make them legitimate. He is doing his job and doing it very well indeed.

Given that Lennon has far more evidence to base his decision on who merits a start by virtue of seeing them in training every single day then he is a far more qualified to decide who merits a start than any of us.

Lennon isnt there to pick the best player, he's there to pick the team that he believes gives us the best chance of winning games and consequently silverware.

If football management was about picking the best XI on paper then we could all do it; it's not. Good football management is about seeing things that others can't and making bold decisions that others may not. It's about spotting a pacy striker playing for Hibs available for a song and seeing his potential to be a devastating RWB for us in a 3-5-2. It's about seeing an out-of-sorts winger that the majority of the supporters would be happy to see the back of and playing him in CM to utilise his pace and power, to turn him into a £7 million International player.

If those such bold decisions fail to deliver their remit of delivering success then they will come in for legitimate criticism but when they are strongly delivering on all their KPIs then they will rightly argue that any criticism is just a difference of opinion.

 

Makes the comments in Dubai even more bizarre. Why say someone is ready to “explode onto the scene” and get fans excited. For him to be nowhere to be seen again and even pulled from the Euro squad.

 

At least Lennon has Shved some light on the situation. Hopefully adapts and starts firing on all cylinders.

 

The criticism is of individual decisions, or aspects of his management, not him as a manager.

Few people are going to take issue with the numbers. Does that mean that there are no areas in which he can improve? No.

I think that it is fair to say that Lennon could improve his use of substitutes, for example. Has that shortcoming cost us this season? Not that I recall. Is that a reasonable (or legitimate) observation, based on what we have witnessed as supporters? I think so.

No doubt. He will, nevertheless, make mistakes, which may be apparent to supporters, but not him.

I understand the importance of team dynamics. Team selection can be sub-optimum and deliver success.

No one here is denigrating Lennon. He has room for improvement - not because he is performing poorly, but because everyone does.

 

Keep the faith

 

I hate it when players come and go seemingly without being given a chance. We're a bit short of wingers at the momment so hopefully we'll get to see a bit of him in the next few games

 

But apparently Lenny doesn’t like people running in training, he wants them to have a pie and a pint and go home.