The one ray of sunshine in our long dark autumn was holding Lille to a 2-2 draw in France. After 13 games, the French club sit second top of Ligue 1, two points off PSG; so far, this is their season in the sun. The French club sit top of our Europa League group, a point ahead of Milan, both teams have qualified for the knock out round ahead of the final group games tomorrow.
Lille are incentivised to win at Celtic Park, there is the best part of Є1m open to them and seeding in the first knockout round to play for. Celtic’s motivation is less clear. We should certainly rest some ahead of the more important game on Sunday against Kilmarnock, but our defence needs every test it can get right now. A clean sheet is achievable and should be the focus on team planning today.
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QUADROPHENIAN on 9TH DECEMBER 2020 12:34 PM
TIMALOY29 – While we’ve been speculatively playing Moneyball with younger punts, they’ve been playing Medicine-ball; rotating older, wiser crocks into an efficient – not flash – system which has built their confidence no end. Mainly guys with significant British-style football experience. Our exotics haven’t bedded in well at all. Shipping out Gordon, Simunovic, Hayes and Sinclair to save a few bucks was dumbfeckery of an elite order.
_____
Not sure I agree with that.
Barkas is 26 and an established international keeper with experience in European Competition.
Duffy is 28 with 41 international caps
Diego Laxalt is 27 with 24 international caps
Moi Elyounoussi is 27 with 27 international caps
Ajeti is 23 with 10 international caps
Not sure I’d describe any of those guys as “Moneyball” signings. Guys who’ve all been signed from the elite european leagues with either no potential future sale (Laxalt, Duffy, Moi) or a hefty initial fee.
That also ignores the fact that the squad who were already here are playing at a significantly lower level than they were last season.
I do think we underutilized the free agent market. Right now Jackson Irvine is available and would be an upgrade on Brown.
But we don’t just do Moneyball. All those guys we’ve signed are not punts.
What we need is a good performance.
Good results follow good performances.
Hard work, high tempo, pressing, urgency, working off the ball, supporting team mates these are the qualities we need to see and which are missing.
Formations and tactics are largely irrelevant when all players and all formations result in the same turgid, lazy, slow performances.
I have seen no evidence that any players have the spark needed.
A clean sheet should be the objective EVERY game nomatter who we play . We may not achieve it but it shouldn’t be a new idea that’s suddenly occurred to the coaching team.
It will be 0-0 at the start of the game.
I’ll give you that Paul.
Big Wavy
Expected team does not always equal preferred team😀
You know my views on playing Brown (everyone in 406 at CP do) and it has nothing to do with his age.
He will keep getting game this season , maybe not the full 90
So Paul offers a moderate opinion that playing for a clean sheet is not a bad idea.
Response? Let`s just say not very positive.
I am becoming pretty fed up with the constant negativity on here.
In my experience, people think that making negative comments is indicative of a sharp, analytical mind and they would like others to have that opinion of them . Positivity is seen as being an easily led happy clapper.
I was going to type more but there is really no point.
ADI_DASSLER NOT FOR 2ND BEST on 9TH DECEMBER 2020 1:06 PM
Where’s Big Jimmy McCririck when you need LIFT ?
………..
You will NOT believe this but I placed a “Lucky 15″ Bet Online this morning, on FOUR Horses to win Today.
I have just watched the first Horse win at odds of 3/1….DESPITE being at odds of 33/1 ” In Running”……because it was a distant 4th with only Two fences to go and well behind the first Three horses.
It sped up to the line faster than ….a Celtic Team Bus escaping from Celtic Park !
HH
29 + 6 on loan, Reserves 13 + 6 on loan and an Academy. Only 1st games are played
We have plenty players we shipped out Gordon, Hayes Simunovic for good reasons but mainly to allow space for new players, There are still squad players who are a waste of wages as Lenny never plays them.
The Board never sold any of the big hitters at the request of the Manager as he reckoned we needed all of them, Ironically, Edouard N’tcham, Ajer, Christie have been some of our poor performers at times.
ADI_DASSLER NOT FOR 2ND BEST on 9TH DECEMBER 2020 1:06 PM
……………..
I will have you know that I am better looking than John McCirick….
LOL
HH
QUADROPHENIAN : “…dumbfeckery of an elite order…” is a very eloquent phrase – I like it – I’m keeping it.
HH
BGFC
My friends in Celtic,
“Why is it easier to be negative than positive?
The reason for this is that negative events have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones. Psychologists refer to this as the negative bias (also called the negativity bias), and it can have a powerful effect on your behavior, your decisions, and even your relationships.”
Cheer up guys, we have a history making national cup final to look forward to.
How many millions of football supporters would love that opportunity.
HH to all.
Greenpinata
500million sevcoites
Barkas ,julien , Duffy , Ajer , Bitton , Elhamed
Nurse ,Nurse, Nurse.
Greenpinata – Count me in. Again.
Lets reset and go for it.
COYBIG
HH
D :)
Roughly a year ago Mike Ashley made an offer to buy out Debenhams.
The dinosaurs at Debenhams said, “what sell our company to him “…Never….
or words to that effect.
Everybody and their dog new that the company was fecked, but the directors of Debenhams were having none of it.
A year later the company is being wound up losing thousands of jobs.
The comparisons are uncanny !!!
HOT SMOKED on 9TH DECEMBER 2020 1:19 PM
Pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will is probably the only realistic approach if you want to stay sane.
QUADROPHENIAN @ 12:34 PM,
Good thoughtful defence of Lenny, I’ve got nothing against him, in fact I used to go and watch him when he played at Wycombe.
Even so, never really understood the “legend” thing and this season has just confirmed my thoughts.
CELTIC40ME @ 12:37 PM
Thank you…
BHOY FROM THE BOYNE @ 12:41 PM,
Got it thanks, I’d been visiting it, it has a piece at the top from May 2018, I thought they’d stopped updating that site.
Now scrolled down DOH!!
Cheers
Hail Hail
Christie is suspected for tomorrows game so this would be my line-up:
Barkas
Julien
Ralston Duffy Taylor
Soro
Turnbull McGregor
Frimpong Edouard Griff
We won’t keep a clean sheet in either half.
Christie suspeneded
Oh no who is going to take all the corners and free kicks…
It will allow someone else to have a go.
D :)
I’m glad we’re talking about expectations for the game.
I really dont like all the talk of ‘dead rubbers’. Theres no such thing.
We should have expectations for every game, realistic and appropriate.
Personally, I’d be satisfied with a single goal margin tomorrow.
We need to call out unacceptable results. So many of late.
Does a football mgt team have KPIs? CSFs?
Are ours meeting them?
What are the contractual consequences if not?
David66,
NL could well play LG for that reason!
Coneybhoy…
Your red card has been rescinded…
:)
HH
Team for tomorrow
………………………Barkas
El Hamed……Julien……Ajer……..Taylor (All 4 of you don’t cross the half way line)
……..Soro (DM and protect the CHs)….Ntcham (anchor the midfield)
…Turnbull………….McGregor………..Elyounoussi (press, press, press…)
……………………Eddie……………….(press, press, press)
I liked our goals against Milan, breaking from our own half at pace through the middle.
We fall into the trap of the slow build up from defence, to midfield with endless back passes and side passes to Laxalt/Frimpong then across the penalty box packed with defence and our lone striker surrounded by 2-3 players because the opposition has regrouped. It provides great passing/possession stats but no end result.
UNCLE JIMMY on 9TH DECEMBER 2020 1:48 PM
We should have expectations for every game, realistic and appropriate.
We need to call out unacceptable results. So many of late.
Does a football mgt team have KPIs? CSFs?
===============
Uncle Jimmy – you are so right. The air of defeatism is shocking – from Board downwards (through to the CQN leader articles) – the attitude is –
– we are rotten
– we know we are rotten
– we can’t work out why we are rotten
– we don’t know what to do to stop us being rotten
– we are crossing our fingers in hope that the next result won’t be as rotten as the last one
– we don’t mind too much if we keep being rotten…
– …because we can’t countenance changing anything to make us less rotten
It really is astonishing.
HH
BGFC
Focus the team planning on achieving a clean sheet?
Maybe they could focus on getting a Nobel prize if they all master String Theory while they’re at it.
We really do have the makings of a very good team.
If NL could sort out the midfield shape and pick players in positions/formations that plays to their strength.
Would be great to see Turnbull start next few games and see if he can lift the team akin to what Christie did in LC semi final v’s Hearts couple years back.
BIG WAVY on 9TH DECEMBER 2020 1:53 PM
I like that team.
To be honest I’d be tempted to start Christie as a 10 with McGregor on the left.
Not an ideal situation but needs must. I’ve not been convinced by Elyounoussi’s pressing or defensive work this year.
Bhoy from the Boyne – LG should be starting with Eddie every week. IMO.
D :)
Paul67
Trying to restore some credibility to our season is not best served by having to play teams from the Europa League right now, and a clean sheet is highly improbable never mind unlikely when the sieve is already in full flow domestically.
The Europa squad as registered like the deck chairs on the Titanic will be rearranged.
Like most Celtic supporters we’d much rather Celtic and Neil Lennon would just ‘dae
something’
As ever CSC
We all have our own biases towards positivity and negativity and to selectively look for signs that reinforce those prejudices.
KevJ’s post of this morning is a classic example of that; he posed the question- “Who has the right to criticise Celtic” and set out the KPIs required to answer that poser, unsurprisingly arriving at the catchphrase of Harry Enfield’s know-it-all dad “only me!”.
We look at the guys who have been here during our poor perfomance period this season and assume that the departed players “Forster, Sinclair, Simunovic, Lustig, and Hayes” would have made it different. We stop short of allowing Jack Hendry into that elite group but, even he, is being rehabilitated. Many of the players who failed to break into the team and maintain a place (Kouassi, Shved, Bayo, Liam Henderson) are looked on as potential saviours who were not shipped out due to their failures but were victims of Neil Lennon’s or previous manager’s blind obstinacy in failing to spot their virtues.
And we do this because the guys who remained, who saw off these lesser players, are the guys who have let us down currently, so they must be in the firing line.
Just like WGS’s teams, we had a manager who was not wanted by much of the support and confirmed that status with a disastrous start at Artemdia, so his reputation was sealed. 3 leagues won and 2 last 16 CL finishes were not enough to overturn those first impressions and so, on the 4th occasion when it was predicted, a league was eventually lost, posters saw their predictions belatedly fulfilled and were quick wiht the “I told you so” responses and the attribution of the blame for this to the happy clappers who had tolerated his previous success and had not had the foresight to realise that it must end in failure.
We have had posters stating that a “paranoiac” mindset is important for evolutionary survival and ernie has posited that intellectual pessimism and an optimistic will is the required dosage that suits a balanced personality.
But we come in difernt shapes and temperaments and we meet situations that dictate we have a range of different responses and temperaments in our armoury. There are times to be cautious and pragmatic and there are times to be brave and take risks. There are also circumstances where fear is justified but the paralysis of fear is rarely an asset to survival.
Judging which situations justify which response leaves all of us with a lot of wriggle room to say thet our favourite, and oft repeated, approach is now justified, even when circumstances have changed form when it was first advocated.
As events proved; it was wrong to dispute Neil’s appointement , following Tony Mowbray’s demise, as he built in much more resilience into Celtic than the former WBA man had. But that does not mean that Neil is always the answer. The success he has had with us in the past does not give him any “right” to fail this year, any more than Scott Brown has earned the right to rest on his very successful laurels. It is neither necessary nor desirable to talk down and diminish Neil’s work with us, usually accompanied by a false memory of how positive we were with his predecessor (read what we were saying on BR”s 2nd and 3rd seasons), because it has gone tits up this season.
There is only one way that Neil, and the players, earn the right ot succeed or fail this season, and that is to start winning matches regularly and dropping points rarely.
We have not seen any signs of this bad run stopping. A good result tomorrow would be next to irrelevant. Only the league games and the Cup Final results and performances will have any bearing on the board’s promise to continue to back him.
Neil and the players know they are drinking in the last chance saloon. Closing the gap on Sevco will probably buy them all more time but the pessimistic tone, the diminishment of their achievements, and the calls for change, will remain until such time as an actual drawing level or overtaking of Sevco occurs.
A betting man would surely predict a sacking is more likely than a strong enough winning run. But this remains a magical club that has defied many odds, many times.
SFTB,
love your analysis of Kevjungles posting style absolutely spot on and very funny into the bargain.
I had a post deleted yesterday for making the same point in a more aggressive style, yours is way better.
If you’ve wondered where the CSA is at the current time, in a circular to its members their EC has suggested that most aren’t doing too much complaining as our season comes apart. Maybe it’s time that they did.
https://thecelticblog.com/2020/12/blogs/key-celtic-supporters-group-says-its-members-arent-complaining-as-the-season-unravels/
First it was the team lineup that was getting leaked, now it is the team’s objectives – a clean sheet no less, that’ll confuse the Lille manager. How does he set up against that?
Key Celtic Supporters Group Says Its Members Aren’t Complaining As The Season Unravels.
Utter Poppycock.
D :)
DAVID66:
Which part? The article? Or their assertion?
Phil Mac Giola Bhain has published an update on Res11/12 at
https://philmacgiollabhain.ie/2020/12/09/statement-from-the-resolution-11-12-group/
The responses at AGM to shareholder concerns should tells us whether or not Celtic are really going to take the burden of pursuit from suspicious shareholders and if they do not give assurances whether the wider support really care about being cheated and Celtic allowing it to go unchallenged.
If they do then the enlarged CST is the vehicle for doing doing so.
Res12 has taken an unwilling horse to the poisoned well. what happens next is down to the horse.