It was a long 48 hours before yesterday’s statement from chief exec, Peter Lawwell. He explicitly acknowledged “hurt, disappointment and frustration following the team’s recent results”, but the implicit backing was there for “Neil, the players and the backroom staff”.
I have been critical of Neil’s decision in recent weeks, team plans change every hour but we do not appear to know how fix the fundamental problem. What actually is wrong? is a harder question to answer than it appears. It was not playing three at the back (or four), nor was choosing one player over another. If only it was as simple as a solitary scapegoat in the team. There is bigger question: Is the problem actually the manager?
It could be. Responsibility to fix team structure certainly lies with Neil, but there are doubtlessly other things going on that few of us are aware of. Neil carries the can, but he would be gone if the board thought that was all there is to the story.
Winning the league is going to take a huge effort this month and successful recruitment next month. Having been denied the opportunity to scout players during the spring and summer, a great deal of work has gone into preparing for January. Do the club have faith in this work? Would another manager ‘put his name’ to those targets blind?
Your recruitment strategy goes out the door with the manager. My suspicion is the club weigh the need for squad additions higher than changing the manager. These are the questions that separate those who are paid the big bucks from those who write blogs. Thankfully……
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481 Comments- Pages:
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MR ANGRY, VIOLENT and MAD
You don’t even know when you are insulting people now.
Get help James , please.
You’ll feel better.
It might be worth bookmarking Paul’s article and comparing notes when the January window closes.
The inference is that our scouting team has identified the players we need to transform us and that Pedro will bankroll the deals?
Maybe we’ll offer Brentford 5-6 million for Toney now he has proven his worth. What’s thay you say? He’s now valued at 20 million? We will not be held to ransom . . .
Gordybhoy64
As the new headliner for Scotland Euro 2021 Ryan will be looking for a post-tourney bounce to get his move next season.
For us, he just needs to stay injury-free.
HH
imo we have 4 centre backs Julien , Ajer , Bitton, Duff y and you couldn’t make a decent centre back between the 4 of them.
PHILBHOY:
Maybe YOU are just seeing things that aren’t there.
My last proper post to you offered a discussion, you remember that? Your memory is working okay, isn’t it?
I’m offering it again. Put this discussion BACK on a sensible footing.
You game?
Sorry that was for Wavy at 1.44
RC:
Part of the problem there, of course, is that courtesy of our recruitment geniues we are in a situation where two of them aren’t centre backs at all; Ajer and Bitton are defensive midfielders “converted” to play centre back. This started out as tactical under Rodgers … now it’s a convenient way to plug holes.
Ernie Lynch
Yes that has all crossed my mind.
TT
Cheerio 10 in a row, so.
Timmy7-noted
I hear what you are saying about some players but I will still watch tomorrow night.
Dead rubber tonight; a last chance to turn things around and we have players that don’t want to be here.
Great opportunity to give other players a run-out and a chance to stake a claim.
So what’s the chances we play the wantaways and try to bleed every last drop from Brown and McGregor tonight – will predictable results?
Big Wavy,
Of course what you say about our players is true. However I watch players on International duty performing heroics then strolling about with arms outstretched playing for us.
I ask you : Do you think all our players are giving 100% in every game ?
Personally I do not.
Subsequently I cannot and will not support non tiers.
There must and will be certain repercussions.
HH to you.
DENIABHOY on 2ND DECEMBER 2020 1:51 PM
Maybe we’ll offer Brentford 5-6 million for Toney now he has proven his worth. What’s thay you say? He’s now valued at 20 million? We will not be held to ransom . . .
don’t mention that striker’s name on here or you will get a reputation , we brought in Ajeti who West Ham couldn’t get rid off quick enough and the same player had to go on his holidays and we had to be coax him to join us, wrong decision again.
Sorry, meant Thursday night.
GREENPINATA on 2ND DECEMBER 2020 1:57 PM
Scott Brown said yesterday they need to work harder for the manager. That suggests that, no they’re not giving 100%.
Oh my god.
GEEBEE1978 @ 1:59pm
Scott Brown said exact same thing last Wednesday before Sparta away and I asked your very same question on here same day.
Your recruitment strategy goes out the door with the manager. My suspicion is the club weigh the need for squad additions higher than changing the manager.
————-
Translation – the CEO won’t get anyone else worth his salt to work under his conditions.
I’m tempted to write something but SFTB would only try and reason it out in his fabulously philosophical way (not sarcasm but praise).
P67 can write what he likes if that’s his take on it, fair play for trying to see a plausible reason for not replacing the manager. It’s tenuous at bes.
We’re a busted flush with no ambition and I’m totally convinced they’re part for the big lie / fix
Rudderless, spineless ad invinitum
Each day just gets worse and worse.
GEEBEE1978 on 2ND DECEMBER 2020 1:06 PM
“Your recruitment strategy goes out the door with the manager. ”
Only if the manager has absolutely no say in recruitment. Whoever recruited Shved, Bayo, Barkas, Turnbull, Taylor, Boli, Soro, Klimala (feel free to add) should’ve been out of the door long before January.
——
Or alternatively, ‘the recruitment strategy remains unchanged – PL going through lists of candidates like it was the Kay’s Catalogue! – regardless of which manger comes in of out the door….’
As for those you name check:
Shved – who knows? If Lord Lucan King Billy had had a love child, there would have more chance of seeing him at Celtic Park!
Bayo – also barely seen, though seemed a bit headless chicken.
Barkas – the smallest 6’5” goalie ever to not fill a goal. Though deemed good enough to be a multiple cap winner for Greece, who unlike Celtic, have a defence
Turnbull – pursued, persisted, purloined…placed directly on the periphery.
Taylor – killie player who should still be a killie player.
Boli – gave us the fear, long before he could give anyone the Covid
Soro – Brown’s successor in a season when our captain is at his oldest…and it’s showing… risks developing bed sores from sitting on the bench and is sent home to get married in the middle of a pandemic and football crisis
Klimala – hard running, brave Polish Fenian bassa, gets assaulted during a match v St J but bounces up a rifles home a shot into the opposition net…..if I remember right, these things are called goals and make us happy.
So a mixed bag. That all share one characteristic, or two:
Utterly shite recruitment
and/or
Utterly shite management of their career development.
CrackedCrestCSC
HH JG
also who scouted barkas , as said previously we should have got Craig Gordon to grow a goatee and saved a fortune and a few shots on target.
Paul67
Your recruitment strategy goes out the door with the manager. My suspicion is the club weigh the need for squad additions higher than changing the manager.
BINGO
They’ve spent £38M between them on squad additions, and have just been beaten comprehensively at home by Ross County.
How do you think they think they got on with the dosh?
JF
Keep up the good work
Why would we give Neil money in January when it is unlikely he will be the manager next season.
It makes more sense to back a new manager in the transfer market.
Even if we start winning again the league may be beyond us. Sevco aren’t dropping points. They aren’t conceding goals.
We may have to beat them three times in the league and I don’t see this happening given the way recent games against them have gone. This is a very good sevco side whether we like it or not. They beat Porto last season and Porto have qualified for the last 16 of the champions league.
I cannot see that it is possible to turn this season around.
Hope the soft play area at Lenoxtown is finished when team come back from Milan , it will help us prepare for Sundays game.
Pingback: Implicit backing for Neil after a long 48 hours Paul67 - Celtic FC News Aggregation
JAMES FORREST @12:34pm
Your bad manners and constant attacks on our host do you a great disservice, and are tedious and boring to boot. 😐 I can’t speak for anyone else, but this is one of the reasons that I personally don’t ever visit your own site.
Besides, I thought you had vowed to dissappear from here, never to return, until you very quickly (less than 12 hours) realised ‘OH! What have I done? I’ll get even less clicks and revenue than I currently do if I dissappear from CQN.’ 😭
You might find that you might get better traction on your own site, (I might even have an occasional look), if you came on here with good grace, gave us your positive ideas and opinions (without regurgitating or linking to your own site), and engaged better with the CQN Community? 🤔
It is very rare for me to call someone out on CQN, but I don’t think your post at 12:34pm should be left unanswered.
I look forward to your positive and independent views in the future. 😊
Take Care, Keep Safe, God Bless and Hail Hail,
Yours in Celtic, 😊 🧣 🍀
TB&F. 😊 🍀
💬 NL: “Elyounoussi won’t travel. Duffy’s having his knee assessed, he picked up a knock today so we’ll see how he is. I’ll still put a strong team out and give some players some much needed game time as well.”
WESTCRAIGS on 2ND DECEMBER 2020 2:11 PM
Agree with all that but let’s not forget that we did the double over Lazio last season and they’re also on the verge of the last 16 of the Champions League. Our regression has been even more startling than Sevco’s improvement.
RC on 2ND DECEMBER 2020 2:15 PM
So expect another 90 minutes with an ageing Scott Brown and a tiring McGregor in the engine room.
I cant have any faith in January transfer window with the current mgt team in place. I just can’t.
We have players from previous windows who still cant command a starting place.
Madness
Recruitment in 2021 will be interesting now that the new Brexit rules have been clarified.
For example, under the points system, Virgil Van Dijk would probably be a no-go for us now as he would not meet the criteria.
Could possibly help us sell a few wantaways to the EPL though…..
Any notion that NL’s tactical ineptness this season is not the immediate issue is just ludicrous. So to is any notion that player recruitment this January can fix management teams incompetence this season.
Scott Brown’s positional play & overall performance has been horrific this season. He should not have played at the wkend or indeed any of our last 5-6 games. That’s down to NL, just as NL also played Laxalt & Frimpong in the full back positions over same period to team’s detriment. Not to mention swinging from goalkeeper to goalkeeper.
Gross incompetence across the entire club.
When politicians are caught out for screwing things up they usually claim a degree of stupidity rather than admit deliberate behaviour and policy choices, since the latter is more reprehensible.
Paul67 would have us believe the Celtic hierarchy don’t know what the problem is, which makes hem stupid, which you would have to be stupid to believe. But not knowing what the problem does not prevent them telling us the solution is the January transfer window, which again you would have to be stupid to believe.
Unfortunately, because we are all customers in what appears to be the only industry where we are never right we are left to speculate what the problem ‘really’ is, although we know enough to know that the solution is not the transfer window.
It reminds me of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. The British Army killed 14 civil rights demonstrators in front of TV cameras but we supposedly needed nearly 40 years to be told what happened.
We have got to the stage after being so far in front that the problem is that we are being told that there is actually so many problems we don’t know what the main one is.
Whatever happened to the CEO being the ‘accountable officer’? Or if there’s is a problem with the house you’re renting it might be the landlord’s fault?
These last few days are the worst, by far, I have seen CQN.
A mixture of petulance,anger, arrogance and ignorance does not a good blog make.
Cheerio for now from one who is still keeping the faith.
FFS ! Big Jimmy got barred for less.
free the Jimmy 1
Still taking in the good…
Previous to County game, the last time we lost a domestic cup tie Obama was president in the US, let that sink in.
I want to express my gratitude and thanks to Brendan, Neil and all the players and coaches involved in that remarkable run. Incredible consistency over such a long period. Will it ever be matched?
When I started going to Paradise paying £3.50 to get into the Celtic end and watching Biggins, Mugglelton, Payton etc, nowhere in my wildest imaginations could I have foreseen a period like which we’ve all enjoyed.
Amazing, absolutely amazing achievement!
That is all.
HH
TRUTH_BEAUTY_AND_FREEDOM:
Okay let me do this one more time for the benefit of the hard of thinking.
I do not NEED this site to promote mine. The traffic I get when I do post a link on this site is negligible.
Virtually nil.
When I do post links on here they are generally in response to something that’s being discussed. The reason I do is that it’s easier than me re-typing 1000 words.
Or maybe I just copy and paste the text so everyone has to skip it or troll through it?
My response earlier was a response to the insulting content of the lead article.
This is meant to be a forum, right? Where we can all express our opinions? And my HONEST opinion is that this site is wasted on regurgitating boardroom propaganda, and that today is PR dreck scraped from the bottom of the barrel.
I’ll tell you this; I’ve had people accuse me of having “agendas”. They never seem to know what to say when I ask them what those agendas are.
But nobody has EVER wondered whether what appears on my site, under my name, reflects MY opinion or somebody elses. In short, no wonders who’s hand is up my arse.
I would be really concerned if that was a question people regularly asked about my input.