What happened at the start of the second half?

Now that the dust has settled from yesterday, and we are in a better state of mind to discuss the game, I find myself wondering what happened to us at the start of the second half. Between 45 and 60 minutes, we completely lost everything we had going for us in the first half. We went into the break on the front foot, attacking the Huns and looking like if we got an early goal in the second half we could hammer them...

Then we come out after the break, and nothing. Were we trying to defend our one goal lead? Did the players suffer the much talked about 'euro hangover' and simply run out of steam?

For me, this is when the game was lost, as soon as the equaliser went in it was already too late for us. The Huns had upped their game, we had lowered ours, and with the momentum shift that a goal brings we were never going to get back into it. I just can't understand why we didn't come out of the traps at the start of the second half and really go for them. We show far too much respect when we play the Huns, they are a poor side, yet we seem to always make them look good.

Thoughts?

 

The huns came out out after the break absolutely flying whilst we just completely shat it. Yet again.

 

As Artur said, we are complete and utter shitebags who bottle it whenever we are under the slightest bit of pressure. If I was an opposition manager coming to PArkhead I'd belooking at my players to attack Celtic straight from half-time, we are always sleeping the first 15 of the 2nd half, always.

 

It's a poor showing when you come off a poor first half performance not fired up for the second. It's the sign of good management to turn it around. Fair enough, maybe it was felt that we had to be cagey and try and sit on the lead but for *'s sake don't be surprise if that mob are going to come out all guns blazing.

 

In my opinion the absolute worst thing to do with a lead is try to defend it. Especially with a defence as poor as ours, why invite pressure onto ourselves? Every time I can remember Celtic trying to play like this we've been gubbed. I remember us bringing Hartson off for Momo Sylla in the San Siro when we were drawing and looking good, and getting pumped for example.

The best thing to do when you are winning is be aggressive. If we had scored the first goal of the second half to make it 3-1 I think we would have done them for 5 at least.

But as it happened, we shat ourselves.

 

As others have said, we shat it. As soon as Davis hit the bar i knew we wern't gonna win, we just didnt look interested.

But, remember, just before they made it 3-2 Loovens hit the post, if that goes in it's a completely different game. But unfortunetly it didnt go in, and we got humped.

What annoyed me was at HT when Johan was getting interviewed and the reporter asked him what Lenny said to the team he said something along the lines of "more of the same". More of the same? We were pish fs, why would you want more of the same?

Mulgrew should've been subbed, everybody but 1 person knew he was gonna get sent off, and that 1 person was Lenny.

He should'nt have even played LM anyway, he should've been at CB with Wilson, with Forrest or Commons LM. Brown should'nt have played he still wasnt fit. Where was Ledley? A really, really poor team selection from Lenny and he MUST learn from this.

 

That's what annoys me the most, I can take losing as long as the players give 100%, yesterday our players didn't, couple that with strange selections, tactics and substitutions and we got exactly what we deserved out of that game - zilch.

 

we played Loovens

 

To be fair, I think Broony did a great job of this in the first half but his injury prevented him from being a factor in the second. Ki and Kayal just couldn't fill the gap when he went out and Lenny made the mistake of not bringing on Ledley to help out. Got completely overrun in the middle of the park in the second half, that's what killed us.

 

Did we even start the game at all because apart from a 15min spell when we got the goals we was pish.

And going in 2.1 up at half was undeserved we was * poor we never once looked like we wanted to go on and win the game we lost 50/50 tackles and the lads put no effort in at all .

The whole team was posted missing Rangers wanted it more you could see from the the start of the game , they out played us out fought us and over ran us in the end we was lucky it only ended up 4-2.

 

Spot on.

I don't think we won a second ball all day long.

 

Aye and look how that turned out he was stupid getting sent off no excuses.

Lennon was a clown for not taking him off.

One of my biggest issues with Lenny is he never learns from his mistakes a good manager spots this stuff coming and changes it .

Lennon said in his interview he knew was on thin ice yet still kept him on * stupid he spotted the problem but never fixed it .

 

So earlier you say the problem was that we were getting outfought and then after you slate Lenny for not taking off the guy who was actually fighting? I understand your point but I think you're looking at the game way too negatively. The decision to move Mulgrew back to left-back was poor but Lenny was trying to attack the game. It was a risk and it didn't pay off, end of. I think the summation that we were * throughout the first half is a gross overstatement.

 

You surely cant just substitute a player every time he's on a yellow card. We wouldnt have enough substitutes half the time we play the huns.

 

He'd been on a yellow card from about 15 minutes in and made a good couple of fouls before he finally got a second yellow. Charlie's the exact type of player you want for us in a game against the scum, but every man and his dog could see he was going to get sent off yesterday with the way he was going.

 

Fair point, but Mulgrew tackles/fouls were one of the only few moments (apart from our goals) I enjoyed yesterday.