who is to blame here? board or lennon and players

The board.

This team got to the last 16 with two quality players injected into it. They are not * and they do try, they are just seriously lacking replacements for the players who were instrumental in the clubs success last season.

 

Lennon tonight for me. Team had enough to win this comfortably if set out aggressively.

 

100% spot on. I love the guy but his decision making today was just awful and for me he's to blame.

 

The players on the pitch were good enough to beat SK... they didn't perform anywhere near their best!

Lennon must also shoulder some of the blame as he set the team up extremely negatively and didn't make the necessary changes to shake us out of the doldrums.

I'm hearng a lot of BS about us not having the necessary striking options to put SK to bed. As much as I think that Tony Stokes is limited, he is still good enough to stick them away against teams of SK's calibre.

The lack of spending is a completely seperate issue at this stage.

 

All three.

I thought tonight we were actually unfortunate to lose the game by 2 goals. We created a few good chances, Commons was a matter of an inch down or to the keeper's left away from a wonder goal, their keeper made a good save from Forrest's header and they got very lucky with the 2nd goal. However, I'd expect we should score at least one given our possession and attempts (stats make it look even - most of theirs were optimistic smashes from outside the area) and the team need to take the blame for that. The defending for the first goal was poor, but now and again mistakes are made and the team as a whole need to ensure the opposition make more mistakes than we do. Izaguirre's failure to even hit the target with his chance was shocking even for a left-back, and Forrest could've maybe done better with his shot inside the area. All in all we were completely lacking a clinical finish, which takes me on to Neil Lennon...

Lennon left Stokes, our best description of an out-and-out finisher, arguably our most likely source of a goal 99 times out of 100 and making the (very pessimistic and unlikely) assumption that we sign no-one else i.e. going with just with what we've got available - potentially our best replacement for Hooper - on the bench for the entire 90 minutes. He also took 85 minutes to bring on (2-2.5 million pound signing) Amido Balde when it was clear Samaras wasn't having any influence up front and Commons was struggling to create anything of note trying to link up with him. I think defensively he got his team selection right, they just didn't exactly set the heather alight with their performance. But to persevere with the players he had for the time he did was straight up poor decision making. In my view Samaras should've been moved wide-left (to drive beyond the full-back), Mulgrew, Ledley or Brown taken off (none of them were any better or worse than any other) and Stokes put on before the 60 minute mark (to provide a potential finish to our attacks). Maybe then we could've nicked the away goal and not conceded a second, which could've been done had we convincingly replaced Hooper and Wanyama.

"Peter Lawwell, come on down..."

Last season we made £20M+ playing in the Champions League, and we sold our two best players (and our best defender going last season's performances) for a combined total of around £20M. Doing the maths, that's £40M in addition to the wages saved on players we've released minus what we've spent on players (around a 6M chunk assuming we save a million but spent £7-8M on new players). That's £34M in the coffers and we all realise the need to be prudent but the least the support and the rest of the team and management could expect is that money would be released to replace them. Of the guys we've brought in, we've seen very little of any of them for various reasons, but we look unlikely to spend further to replace Kelvin Wilson given we've brought in two CBs. However, Wanyama and Hooper were by a mile our best players. IMO players of that calibre are needed to have any chance of avoiding a hiding against bigger teams in the Champions League. To even get to the Champions League we needed to get through 3 qualifiers. Given we reached the last 16 last season, the board should've had faith in Lennon enough to allow him to replace these two players. Furthermore, they're the only players of their type in the squad - IMO we don't have an out and out defensive midfielder in the mould of Wanyama (albeit Kayal is good but in a different mould), and it's been obvious since we sold Hooper that we lack that little bit of firepower up front. I reckon taking a gamble and spending around £4-5M to replace these players post 2nd-qualifying round would've been a prudent investment. First of all, I reckon they'd greatly increase the chances of qualification and hence a £15M-ish profit on them. And second of all we're guaranteed the Europa League which would perhaps make up for the shortfall if the gamble didn't pay off. The failure to replace these players means we may well be looking at being eliminated. Perhaps it's not entirely their fault - the players need to be available and the scouts and coaching staff need to identify them but nonetheless I'm not even sure we'd have spent anyway

Anyway rant over. It's not over until it's over and actually I think we've still a decent chance of qualifying. It hangs by a thread though.

 

Lennon and the players here..

We need a better standard of player in especially up front but without a doubt the squad we have at the moment should beat anyone we have faced competitively this season..
The board is an easy excuse,if we scored tonight we could have won 3/4-0 but we never..
The players and manager need to look around the dressing room and find answers as there was none earlier!

 

All of them.

 

The Board must take most blame, they hired the manager and coaches and thats not me having a go at our management team. The Board have been tight fisted for too long in regard to transfere money, the manager can only work with the pish budget given and the coaches can only work with the payers bought on said pish budget.

Serious money needs spent, not the full blown £40m odd in the Bank of Celtic, but the Wanyama money (all £12.5m of it) that way we can bring the team up to the standard we had before.

Lawwell said we would always come out each window stronger than when we entered it, he also said once tat we would get a £5m player, but that never came to pass (few yrs back now).

Time we started buying a couple of decent players every other year to suppliment what we have or its just going to get worse.

 

All of them from the top down and yet it's much more than that.
We play in a league that, if we take us out, is competitive. However the standard is poor and the moment any of our teams go outside our borders, they find it tough. Our standards are not comparable with most other Premier Leagues in Europe . Any of our 1st Team Squad could walk straight into any other SPFL 1st Team without breaking sweat, indeed players from our Development Squad walk into other Club's 1st Teams. In any sport, if you keep playing at a lower level, your game will get used to that level and whenever you play a game/match outside your 'comfort zone', it's tough to suddenly turn it on. That's not an excuse. It's reality. So we expect our guys to just turn it on whenever. Sadly I don't believe they are talented enough to do that, nor, for the foreseeable future will we be able to attract that sort of player or Manager, because as Paul Lambert once said - where's the challenge in playing the same team 4 times a year. Apart from Big Vic, all of our better players signed either a contract or pre-contract when Rangers presented a challenge in the SPL - we don't know what the 2 Dutch lads are like but they said when they signed they were influenced by us being regulars in the CL.
So its going to be an interesting next few years, with high ambitions because we are Celtic but with the harsh reality that players we think are talented by our League standards are really ordinary by most other European premier leagues.

 

Of course the performance from the players tonight was terrible and they need to look at themselves, at times they where scared to commit and where a shambles for the two goals. However when u here the phrase "players to build a team around" the players we have left are all the other players. The players that make up the rest of the team. Wanyama and Hooper and less so Wilson where all the players we built the team around they where the leaders they where the players the other players looked at when we were up against it to get us out of trouble. What we have left is the a shell of a team. The fault of that is entirely down to the board and its big biscuit tin! I have no problem with selling on star players for good money however if the majority of the money isn't reinvested in the team then tonight's result inevitably follows! I mean its common sense we are a depleted team so how can you expect the same results as last season. Zero ambition shown by the board looks like costing us 20 million, the sooner someone tells Lawwell that sometimes you need to speculate to accumulate and that a football clubs assets should always be on the field and not on the balance sheet the better.

 

I think Lawwell, Neil Lennon and the players are all to blame.

People may think it's just a knee-* reaction, but I really think both Neil Lennon's and Peter Lawwell's position at the club should be dependant on the result next week, and I think it would be entirely justifiable, all things considered.

 

The Lawwell sound bites 'we will spend £5 million on the right player" bullshit only ever appear at season ticket renewal time. hes a * chancer people should have seen through him 5 years ago, when strachan was reduced to signing * like willo flood and that ugly hun dumpling pressley

 

Lawwell has to go, simple

 

no ones essentially to blame, the other team played better and deserved to win

 

This.

I don't care if we have a hefty profit; we spend as if we are up to our eyeballs in debt and are slowly regressing.

 

Guys....aye agree we have some fingers to point and rightly in some cases! However. ... maybe we got beat by the better team on the night....?

Their performance defensively was spot on. Positioning.....marking....closing down...and tactically they achieved exactly what they set out to do.

I agree ....we need to replace big Vic at DM and Hooper....and yes lennon should have at least Balde a * run out as hes a big strong boy.

We do have a second leg. ...but really away goals win these ties.....we will be forced to chase goals against a very well drilled side who counter attack effectively.

Really its a combo of lack of signings. ...some poor performances....and an opponent who played their * off.

Were still in this just....but we need to focus and * sign someone .....soon.

Hail blhoody hail.

 

Rangers

 

The whole lot of them!! the board for not replacing key players thinking they could get away with getting into the champions league with what we've got. Lennon for getting the team wrong tonight and the players for being sloppy defending at times. It all kinda goes all back to the board though as Lennon, if he had replacements for the key players we've lost could have put out a stronger team. Then with the players belief would have been down which is expected when the spine of the team has been sold

 

If spending money on a striker that can get us into the CL proper, and is worth £20 million to the coffers isn't as important as cash in the bank today, then we as a club have it all wrong.


We need to think that spending over £5 million on a quality striker to get us into the CL proper as an investment, not a liability.


We can afford to amortise a contract by £1million per year, then sell or take the hit.


This is our biggest £££££ carrot, and we need to act accordingly.


Cash in the bank doesn't score goals nor earn big rewards.

We're guaranteed to win the league for the foreseeable future, so the line of thinking/risk that we might not has been eliminated.

 

That wasn't obvious was it