Celtic v Cluj, Live updates
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- RODGERS CURSE ON IBROX RIVALS
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67 ECW…
Spot on Anology.
So disappointed about last night’s performance and still can’t get to grips with CALMAC at left back.
On a bright note… I’m in Benidorm with a pint in front of me. 👍🍀🍀
From MartyS_13
£7.5m defender – benched.
Left back – benched.
Centre midfielder – played at LB.
Shved – out of the squad.
Sinclair – play Morgan instead.
These things don’t make sense. Embarrassing and abysmal management. Not acceptable.
From MacKay1981
£500 on a season ticket, last night 2 tickets at £70, fuel at £60 and a 7 hour round trip ? Lawwell sits and lines his pockets without a care for normal fans. Cheap option as manager and biscuit tin mentality. Resign this morning along with your puppet of a manager.
MORE IMPORTANT THAN LOSING LAST NIGHT
Take a minute to think about the emotions of our competitors today
SG will be buzzing – we have galvanised them
They will be licking their hun lips at as coming to them on Sept 1st
If we do not win 9 in a row it will be the biggest mistake in the history of our club
Think of it like this
Man Utd dominated the EPL for years allegedly their demise is due to Ferguson leaving
Yes it had an impact but I think their demise is due to Ed Woodward their CEO arriving – its all about him
They are rich very rich but when you make wrong decisions you get found out
Look what has happened to the 2 teams Man Utd dominated for years Man City and liverpool
And don’t tell me it’s because of money Utd are one of the richest clubs in the world
Money helps but if you do not have good people doing a good job you are a busted flush
At our beloved club we have the money but like Man Utd our CEO and our Manager are not making the right decisions
Do not underestimate what is going on with the Huns
Paul67 stop updating us with the consequences of Mike Ashley winning a court case and the Huns going bust again
They are skint but they have a plan they have had a gut full of us taking the piss and they are up for a fight
Meanwhile PL is updating the stock exchange
Please wake up Peter
67ECW
From janefieldst
A best estimate is that Lawwell and failures to secure Champions League football has cost Celtic around £120 million. Four out of six failed Champions League campaigns. Put football to the side for a minute, that figure alone would see any CEO shown the door.
I’ve defended Lawwell and Lennon et al plenty of times in the face of criticism some warranted some not, but last night’s debacle shows that Lawwell’s constant gambles are failing and that Lennon was found out by a club that was no better than us BUT tactically superior.
To be fair we all make stupid mistakes.
Only last week on here someone was describing Ayer as the first 40million pound departure at our club.
Yes 40 million.
He is a decent player but
last night I would not have paid 40 thousand for him.
As long as Lennon changes all the obvious errors from last night straight away I will fully support him.
His post match interview however did not fill me with hope that he will.
6 goals lost in two matches against a poor team and an average team.
OUR CAPTAIN KNEW WE WERE IN TROUBLE
Scott Brown has apologised to NL for “liking” a comment on twitter that said NL got the tactics and team all wrong
IMHO – As captain SB would be privy to NL thinking before the game
SB would have opinionated that McGregor at left back is suicide
Obviously SB was ignored by his manager
In the aftermath like us all SB would have been emotional and simply reacted to the twitter message condemning NL for team selection and “liked” it
In the morning realised it was not the right thing to do and has apologised
BUT I would bet a pound SB feels the same way we all do NL got it wrong
Our Manager has a challenge today – make sure you do not cause a problem with your captain
67ECW
HENRIK1967 on 14TH AUGUST 2019 11:31 AM
These things don’t make sense. Embarrassing and abysmal management. Not acceptable.
___
Totally agree. We knew KT wouldn’t be playing this game even if he stayed.
Absolutely insane decision to play CalMac at LB.
I’m being treated as the mean guy the bad guy but if you only knew the truth.
Derek Boyata.
https://youtu.be/6zriJ0VfaBA
Anybody else feel the rapid decline of Scott Brown is irreversible?
34 now and the bustling energy is diminishing.
Will NL limit his appearances as a result?
Will he eff.
Nobody can take the puppet seriously anymore. Should never have been given the job ; he needs to leave now before anymore damage is done.
Who to get in ? Dermot needs to intervene and make a an appointment which is a statement of intent.
Lawwell is slowly destroying Celtic from within. A senior exec needs to be headhunted ASAP to replace him with a Director of Football to provide independence from CEO.
Lawwell has been there too long and is now doing untold damage to the club. It’s all about him and his control freak nature with the bonus entitlement mindset.
If Lennon was a Celtic man he would walk. He’s not —- just like Lawwell a mercenary and a not very good one at that.
They need to both go. No more Lawwell throwing managers under the bus.
There is no finance generating mastermind at Celtic, all the money generated is from the loyalty of the supporters and their cash. There’s nothing difficult about cutting or keeping costs down, no financial wizardry at all.
Remember it’s our money that’s in the bank not PL’s, and it’s our club reputation that PL perennially gambles with every transfer window. He brings nothing to the table for the salary he gets. You could actually subcontract to a top accounting firm to run the business side and still save a heep of cash
Last night was all on Lennon
Lennon appointment is all on Peter Lawwell
We’ve succeeded inspite of our board, we’re the biggest club by far with great attendances every second week, sell thousands of kit year on year despite them being hideous in the main, and we’ve had no competition
67 EUROPEAN CUP WINNERS
There’s a fair chance Neil Lennon has pissed off Scott Brown , Boli , Julien , Calmac and Sinclair to name just a few . Hopefully not beyond repair but who knows. Not to mention millions of Celtic fans worldwide.
The only person whose stock is lower at the moment is PL.
From CelticF1rst
A direct quote from Peter Lawwell on May 31st, following Lennon’s appointment.
74 days before we went in to last night’s match without a trustworthy left back. https://twitter.com/CelticF1rst/status/1161574773941575680/photo/1
Lennon is a Celtic man.
Why should he ‘walk’.?
He got it wrong but come on he needs to be given a chance.
The game is gone.
Celtic fans need to cut him some slack.
I have my doubts about him too and I was not happy with his team last night.
We all called it before kick off on here that the line up was nonsense.
I do think however that he will have learned from this big style and okay if he hasn’t learned and the next few weeks go badly maybe the situation will need to be looked at.
How does this signing thing with Lawell actually work ? I see Phil’s at it now.
“Hey Neil, there’s a guy starting Monday, find him a place to play in the team. I’ve paid £8m for him.” said Peter.
Oh and by the way, say this to the press Neil (from DR):
“He’s been one who came to my attention in February as the club had been looking at him for quite a while.
“We’ve worked very diligently in the background. He’s excited to come here.
“He’s a very powerful, dominant centre-half. He’s a good athlete but he’s also technically very good.
“He’s played in Ligue 1 in the last two seasons — and that’s Premier League level.
“We are looking to bring in quality and that is what he is”
Now he’s shite according to Neil? Claickbait bloggers at it again…?
LUCKY CODY on 14TH AUGUST 2019 12:01 PM
We would all need to be prepared for it to be Moyes. Was at the game last night apparently.
If Lenny learns from last night there should be no problem.
Going forward we have improved – we look more exciting, and have cut out the side to side, pass the ball among everyone for the sake of it BR tactic.
It would be a shame if the other issues that were so obvious last night were to bring about his downfall.
Some are easily fixed, others possibly entrenched.
And how do we cut out the shocking number of individual errors that we seem to commit in important European nights?
HH
I see the excellent boys at ‘CelticfansTV’ could not even bring themselves to film their ‘post match pint’ feature.
Shame…But I know how they were feeling.
I bet awe they Cream Buns were devastated at us dropping coefficient points last night.
new article posted.
Hope we stick with Lenny for now.
But if in a couple of weeks things are going badly AND Cluj get knocked out of the champions league by Prague….surely Petrescu would jump at the job at Celtic?…
Would not be a bad call
Lazydynamite,
We will cut him slack when he leaves the building. He has effectively lost the dressing room with that shambles yesterday. Scott Brown did not make a mistake by liking that tweet. It was a message from out captain to the support. Even after his apology he will be warned over his future behaviour.
Lennon needs to go and the clowns of a back room staff can go with him.
Lawwell whose god is money will be hurting. Missing out on £50M is very painful but with his manipulative powers he will manage to extract his £1M out of the debris of this season.
Failure to deliver NIAR will see season ticket sales collapse.
Ps hope AIK beat us in Europa League
Phil just posted that his source tells him that the two signings were not Lennon’s and that info comes from a director
If True then lawwell should walk today
#lawwellout
I can accept defeats on the park. Football is a sport and its beauty is that the outcome should be uncertain if the teams are reasonably matched. even 50/1 shots have won.
In Europe, we have a habit of being the victim of too many upsets. Did we underestimate Cluj? Get a bit cocky after dominating the 1st leg? Our team selection was bizarre.
The players bought for good money for the positions we had to fill did not play in our most important game of the season. If they are not good enough, wtf did we buy them?? Did Lenny approve the signings?
PL is getting the stick, but Lenny is to blame. 100%.
If we learn from this clusterfuck, we can still have a winning season. Over to you, Lenny.
what mistake are we hoping to learn from ?
The usual transfer window fiasco or the one we’re Lennon balls’ up the team selection, alienates senior players and makes bizarre substitutions
It’s obvious we never learn
noble words from those advocating cutting some slack
It’s a difficult morning to attempt to rationalise what happened at Celtic Park last night. The reaction on the usual social media platforms might be best described as thermodynamic, with greatly more heat than light generated. On reflection, there are three main topics to consider: The Team; The Performance; and The Context.
The Team
Pre-match, all the talk was of solving the riddle of the team selection. Many have suffered foot cramps from chronic involuntary toe curling while watching Callum McGregor at left back in the past, so obviously, OBVIOUSLY!, Neil Lennon wouldn’t play him there in this critical match.
My own view was that Celtic would set up with three at the back, and a central midfield 4 designed to pick up and use the second ball from Cluj’s habit of going long quickly. Risky granted, to go one light at the back, but it seemed logical given the team lines. After all, McGregor is a clever midfield player, and you play your best players in their best positions, right?
It is also worth noting that one of the highest paid and most impactful players at the club – Sinclair – wasn’t included in the squad for the match at all, Johnston getting the startig place wide left and Morgan the nominated substitute.
Within seconds of kick off, it was apparent that McGregor was indeed playing at left back. One assumes the aptness of Boli to repeatedly give the ball to the opposition was the central concern, but…
The Performance
A pair of Brown and Ntcham in the centre with Christie one ahead seemed to suggest that Celtic were not particularly concerned with the second ball lottery or the challenge of playing through the (expected) high press, further evidenced by the relatively advanced positioning of the wide players.
Concern at left back crystallised when Deac ran in front of McGregor at the back post to head the opening goal, Brown having failed to stop the cross coming in from the right.
Celtic started this match ahead in the tie given the away goal, but were a goal down at half time. Within 15 minutes of the restart Celtic were ahead again through goals by Forrest and Edouard, a precarious 3-2 aggregate lead lost to a penalty following an inexplicable handball by Brown, who otherwise endured a second half episode of pure-mad-mentalness.
Ahead again following some terrific football by Christie and Edouard, and with fewer than 15 minutes to play surely Celtic would tighten it up and see it out. Surely. Nope. Morgan relieving Johnston was the only change, which didn’t alter the shape of the side, didn’t close down the middle of the park, didn’t close out the match, and didn’t prevent the loss of a third goal with 10 minutes remaining; a shot across the goal from outside the box generously pushed into the feet of the rebound-ready Omrani by Bain.
Thereafter, with a front line of Edouard, Griffiths, Bayo and Simunovic supported by Christie, Forrest, Morgan and McGregor, the loss of a fourth goal was simply a coup de grace at the death, Celtic having already self-exsanguinated.
The Context
The champion teams from 44 countries enter into Champions League qualifying in the recently revised ‘Champions Route’, with only 4 progressing to the group stages following 4 rounds of ties plus a preliminary round; UEFA’s triumph of self-interest over sport. Those who make it through have won an accumulator with long odds.
For Celtic, despite the advantage of being seeded in each round, the probability of qualifying in this new system is around 20%. I say this because the arithmetic says so. Celtic are considered to be the favourites in each round they play, but as the rounds progress the quality of opposition increases and the probability of winning each tie is reduced.
We might beat the champion team from Bosnia or Moldova nine times out of ten (90% probability) in the first round, but the champions of such as Norway or Sweden are a step up in the second round, and perhaps the probability of beating such a side reduces to 75%.
By the third round, the competition is stronger again, with opposition drawn from the champions of the likes of Greece, Poland and Romania. What is the probability of Celtic beating such a team? One might like to think that Celtic would be strong favourites, but recent (painful) history suggests otherwise. Let’s allow optimism to trump experience and consider that Celtic would beat such a side 6 times out of 10, a 60% probability.
By the time of the final qualifying round the outcome is entirely in the balance, with eight teams of equivalent standard, each able to beat the other on their day. It’s a coin toss, and the likelihood of Celtic winning through is 50:50.
The roll-up for Celtic is a 20% chance of qualifying through the rounds to the group stage; one success in five attempts. You can play about with the numbers above, but however assess the chance in each round, even if you’re hopelessly optimistic, by the time you’ve multiplied out the probabilities you’ve chosen, Celtic will be odds-against qualifying.
In that context, the primary imperative for the leadership and management of Celtic is to optimise the chances, something that in recent seasons they have found curiously challenging. Last season’s exit to AEK was presaged by all manner of foot-shooting, leading to the loss of Boyata for the tie, Champions League for the season, Dembele to Lyon and ultimately Rodgers to the dog house.
This season Celtic have replaced left back Tierney with a player the manager clearly doesn’t trust in the position he was bought to play, while the €7M signing Jullien sits beside him on the bench. Meanwhile, and seemingly absurdly, Celtic’s bank balance at year end June 2019 will likely exceed their annual wage budget.
A note to any budding CEO – cash in the bank doesn’t win football matches; Players do. For the love of God, use the money!
Well what can I add to what has already been said . We knew boyata and berkovic were for the off , the same with KT , planning and scouting should have commenced to bring in replacements ,it obviously wasn,t . But then again had we a chief scout to oversee the search for the replacements , one who was committed to the club , I don’t think we had . Now take lenny , and make no mistake NFL was the cheapest option , the guy is Celtic to the core ,but last night he made very costly errors in team selection, I am not going to ridicule the guy because he should not have been quoted for the job . He stood in to help us over the line and got us there , along with a cup win to boot . A manager with a pedigree should have been sought , costly I agree but would have been money well spent . Instead our board members decided in the directors box by way of a wee group huddle after the cup final , To offer the job to Neil , then he was informed in the shower area of there decision ,how unprofessional was that . As i said neil got it very wrong last night ,but out of work ,the chance to see the team over the line for the treble ,which one of us on here would have turned it down . A new coach should be sought , one who like the late great jock stein makes it known he will not tolerate interference on team matters. And that financial backing for the team is a must . I hate to mention this , as I detest every mention of there name ,but the Scousers team haven’t the quality we have , they brought in 8 players 2 season ago to beat us ,it failed .last season they brought in 10 new additions,and it failed this season they have brought in 12 new additions which may not fail , (hope
to god it does ) but they are not prepared to just make up the numbers they want our crown and will buy , loan or an other to achieve it . They but the fair players from wee teams and by God they don’t buy wimps , unlike us who tend to go for the slight built tenner baw players ,dead handy when you have there place to go to , not . We badly need a defence upgrade. We badly need STEEL in the middle of the park and another top
class sutton hartson style striker . And if PL doesn’t play ball .we badly need another CE HH.