Last week, Neil Lennon wired into the debate on what went wrong at Celtic last season. Neil is as much a Celtic man as you or I, so I suspect he’s still as raw as the rest of us on this topic, I’ll therefore cut him some slack. For me, it is too soon for sound perspective, we need to let it settle for a while before insight kicks in.
To help gain some of this commodity for myself, I switched between the Scotland and Ireland games on Saturday. Reports of how well Shane Duffy was performing in the English Premier League this season sounded remarkable and I wanted to see with my eyes what my ears did not believe. All I know for sure on last season is that the Shane Duffy I watched for Ireland is not the same person we had at Celtic. No DNA test could convince me otherwise.
Ireland’s Duffy did nothing spectacular, but he was where he should be throughout the game, no wandering off, no concentration lapses. There will be books written on what went wrong last season, I doubt any of them will explain the performance of the player we loaned from Brighton. That Ireland defender is solid, though, if only we signed him instead.
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Get him back !!lol
was sure he was the final piece in the 10 jigsaw ……………what do I know ??/
Completely different playing as a “last ditch” defender to playing at a team doing all the attacking and having to play further up the pitch and be good with the ball. Also have to factor in differences in coaching ability and having a clearly defined way of playing, which Potter obviously does.
Anyone wanting to know what went wrong last season won’t find much if their starting point is last season.
Not a fan i spoke to wasn’t convinced Duffy, Barkass and Ajeti were the extra push to clinch the 10.
Holding on to Eddy made it almost certain.
Then the football started,,,
Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to pony up for the season books.
Looking forward to seeing some of our long term injuries back.Also looking forward to Turnbull showing us all he has the credentials we all thought he had when he 1st joined.Has to be up for the fight,and not drift in and out of games.He plays better with Calmac there,as do many.A return to Fir Park hopefully fires him up.
Unless Mc Carthy has made astonishing progress ,fitness wise,I hope he has,I would go with Bitton again.
But things can only get better,as we used to sing.
NOTTHEBUS on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 12:40 PM
Not a fan i spoke to wasn’t convinced Duffy, Barkass and Ajeti were the extra push to clinch the 10.
Holding on to Eddy made it almost certain.
Then the football started
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Yep. Plus we also signed a Uruguayan full back. What could go wrong 🤔.
A win at Motherwell could set us up for a nice run of wins.
what could go wrong went wrong.
winnng a ten did not matter to some players, they were not as emotionally invested in it as we or Neil or Duffy were.
lesson learned ………….. never ever keep an unhappy player.
Neil is as much a Celtic man as you or I,
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We’ll he’s certainly a lot wealthier than you or I, courtesy of our club.
I’ll be honest, Neil Lennon wouldn’t get the time of day from me now.
Not because we lost the league last season, but, because, his conduct towards the fans as the season progressed was breathtakingly arrogant – a feature Neil seemed to inherit from his friends in the boardroom.
Neil Lennon will no doubt write his own book on last season when the pay off dwindles and he’s looking for a few quid. I won’t be buying it.
Nothing really to be gained by diving into the wreck that was season 2020/21. That ship started sinking this time last year but our PLC Captains found the lifeboats and emerged unscathed. Their blazers just needed a bit of dry cleaning.
Ship Master Nicholson has proudly taken the wheel and will steer us to……………………………..
Just on Duffy and our defending…
I don’t think we’re at the point where we can look back and wonder why we were so poor at the back last season.
Mostly because we’re still gash at the back. Let’s sort our current defensive problems out then talk about Duffy last season.
What NL does/says/thinks affects Motherwell game-
HOW?
What/how SD played affects Motherwell game – How?
Doesn’t imo.
Have all our internationals returned? Who is available?
Quite honestly Neil can haver bout last year eternally,its gone and its nowt to do with Motherwell game.wont affect it one jot but keep feeding the trogs.
HH
as long as you remember that Neil Lennon is not a top coach and that he is not a people manager then everything about Shane Duffy and the other issues we had can be analysed. Neil Lennon was employed as a leader only; once players don’t respect or wish to follow him, you are in trouble.
Shane Duffy was signed because when we went 3-5-2 in jan 2020 we started winning games and looked less moribund than the 1st half of 2019/20. The Gerrard implosion and Covid shutdown covered up the fact that we were poor in some of those games.
The manager assumed he had found gold and could sit back on his 3-5-2 and canter to 10. When it didn’t work, he panicked on team selection and shape every week.
If you zoom out though, we were getting worse every season after 2016/17 so the money given to Neil Lennon was a great chance to get back on track.
he claims that it was experienced players, drunk on success, who let him down but excluded Brown and Mcgregor. He is absolving the new signings as well(i can’t get my head round that) so who are we left with?
Eddie, Ntcham and Jamesy? Ntcham never held down a place and James was injured most of the season so it was all Eddie’s fault?????
The man thinks we are thick
SAINT STIVS
… lesson learned ………….. never ever keep an unhappy player.
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and never play without fans. I’m convinced our shit show would not have happened, had the stadiums been full.
its been done all over before, but what in Neil Lennons phyche makes people think he would take a telling from hysterical supporters ?
bombs, bullets, death threats, real assualts, car chases on the m8, relocated in the middle of the night, verbal abuse everytime he appears in a public place, then his own supporters turn on him in an even more vicious way than the unionist norn iron supporters.
did he back down on the park while playing ?
did he back down to pundits and press ?
did he back down to those who assaulted him ?
in the clash with jim duffy he said “thats lenny, he wont ever back down”
a serial winner, battle hardened, he did not appoint himself to the job.
its not arrogance, it is defiance.
and god bless him for it, he won us more than he ever lost.
JIMDOM
Ship Master Nicholson has proudly taken the wheel and will steer us to……………………
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I think he’s steering the Mary Celeste. We haven’t heard a murmour in ages.
AN DÚN on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 1:13 PM
Just on Duffy and our defending…
I don’t think we’re at the point where we can look back and wonder why we were so poor at the back last season.
Mostly because we’re still gash at the back. Let’s sort our current defensive problems out then talk about Duffy last season.
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I think most of our defensive issues are of our own making this season. I know I might be in a minority of one and I know there’s lots of forward thinking coaches out there who are happy, insist that teams play from the back even to our goalkeeper when he’s on his line and has 2 or 3 opposition players near him, but I’m not sure my heart can take it for a full season, especially in Europe! The other being having two slow CBs having to cover when a team breaks at pace after one of our full backs (wingers?) loses the ball and it’s 2 against 3 or 4 or 5!
On Lenny he has put up with some of the most heinous abuse, threats and assaults of any manager in Europe, now there’s a book if Lenny wrote it, I would buy it particularly if he spills the beans on the Constant Gardener, sectarian/racist abuse he whispered into Lenny’s ear? Who knows what he said? Lenny does. He’s entitled to speak to any tv, radio or newspaper journalists about ‘what went wrong last season’ but that doesn’t mean we need to listen. I’m sure if he wanted to talk about the industrial size cheating of the game’s administrators (5 Way Agreement) referees and silence from all clubs (including our own) on the criminal enterprise that is Sevco, then all of a sudden no one would want to hear from him and that’s ‘all water under the bridge’, or whatever euphemism is in vogue for cover up.
ZIGGYDOC1
Evolutionary initiatives due out along with Strachan’s Report, probably around the time of the January Review, which is only 10 months late.
AD- got to agree, his lack of self awareness is zero,and the Trump/Johnson defence of ‘nothing is my fault ‘ doesn’t wash with me.
Laxalt was a big disappointment.
He looked pretty good at WC 18 apart from the dodgy barnet.
NOTTHEBUS on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 12:40 PM
Not a fan i spoke to wasn’t convinced Duffy, Barkass and Ajeti were the extra push to clinch the 10.
Holding on to Eddy made it almost certain.
Then the football started,,,
——
Your points are well made and totally correct.
The board for all its faults (& successes) could not have done much more, other than sign CR7, or, Messi, at the start of the season in a attempt to get 10iar over the line. That all the signings didn’t work could not have been foreseen – two players from EPL clubs, one from Serie A and a top-rated Greek keeper, all internationals – yes of course we were all confident that 10iar was ‘in the bag’.
We were facing a season without crowds, and, as we have seen, serious losses, despite the efforts of our wonderful support paying tens of millions to sit at home watching a stream. The expenditure on players plus keeping the winning squad intact was a brave (right) decision and a signal of intent by the hierarchy.
Those on the field let us all down badly – let’s not conflate that with other issues.
Michael Nicholson, a legal-eagle, is probably the right man, in the right job, at the right time, in what may be shaping up to be a difficult couple of years off the field at Celtic.
Intresting article…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemeehallwood/2021/10/10/understanding-ange-postecoglou-and-the-cohesion-that-could-make-celtic-click/?sh=2141c5f7f24a
Structure, coaching and fitness are all available when Duffy plays with Brighton.
Not being exposed in a one versus one, 10 yards inside his own half , without a team mate close by also helps Duffy’s frailties.
We didn’t do our homework properly. After we signed Duffy we didn’t adapt our tactics, apart from when we drew away in France .
https://twitter.com/OffTheFence222/status/1447253302421434371?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1447253302421434371%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2Ftwitter.min.html1447253302421434371
Sorry for the Nigel Farage video, but…..
While on the subject of signing the Duffy that plays for Ireland how about signing that Bitton that plays with Israel
Paul67
Any news on big Julien ?
Drama Queens CSC
I’m afraid I’ve gone right off NL. He undermined Ronny D and recently tried to undermine Ange to save his own reputation. Even his pal Chris Sutton criticised him for that. His reaction to last season’s mess was first to criticise the supporters and then certain unspecified players. Now he’s saying Israel is a wonderful country. That does it for me. No half-decent club will want him as manager.
It’s good to see Lenny doing well and on good form. And showing a bit of fight.
If we can see beyond the projection of what we think he was thinking, or that money has much bearing on anyone’s mental health, it’s important to remember he’s someone who would have been more desperate to beat the Huns and win the Ten than any of us.
Getting put in hospital, viable bombs sent to your home, bullets in the post, he’d have pretty good reasons for wanting it more than any of us.
He’s also got a history of depression, which anyone who’s suffered from it will tell you is not somewhere you’d want to go back to if you can avoid it. But he put himself back in the firing line and put himself and his family at risk again in the most fraught period.
Thankfully it looks like he’s come through what must be crushing disappointment in reasonably good shape. Long may it continue, I hope he finds happiness in his next job, hopefully as a manager, which is obviously what he enjoys doing.
It’s the least he deserves.
Maybe we should learn from the past and skip the bit where people who do gear things for our club are painted as villains abd get straight to the but where they’re seen in a more favourable light
I really do wish Lennon would shut the f### up.
He is irrelevant and will struggle to get another managerial job.
Then again I here Tennents bar are looking for a manager for their Sunday league team.
If I was suffering from a bout of paranoia, I would be convinced that Neil Lennon is actually going out of his way to deliberately antagonize the Celtic support. Even to an extent that he is being egged on by our majority shareholder.
The Israel is a beautiful country comment. Is that aimed at the Palestine flag waving occupants of Section 111 ?
Move on Lenny, and find some peace and an enjoyable life away from all this nonsense.
JIMDOM on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 3:27 PM
Agreed
It’s as if the MSM are actively trolling the support by taking such an interest in what he thinks.
When did the Scottish MSM ever GAF about what Neil Lennon thought about anything?
Sad to see him evidently not realise he’s being played.
CELTIC40ME on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 3:06 PM
It’s good to see Lenny doing well and on good form. And showing a bit of fight.
Totally agree, the demonisation of NL is a contagion from Scotland at large ” He brings it all on himself ” .
An unpopular people’s choice fair do’s, but doesn’t make him the devil incarnate, and that’s before you dissect his record compared with any other Celtic manager. I believe like most Celtic supporters that he should have fallen on his sword around Ross County, if not Ferencvaros.
The impotency of the Celtic board who IMO hid behind him instead of replacing him, is another story.
Neil Lennon didn’t give the PLC custodians tens of millions of £’s season ticket finance during [all] of the past 9 years of keeping Ibrox viable by any means necessary policies.
But [ALL knowing] Celtic season ticket holders did.
And they are plastic Paddies.
Singing songs about the 800 years of [troubles] in Ireland, the land of the real Paddies.
Then doing the direct opposite of what the fantastic heroes who were being sung about did.
The heroes in the songs would never fill their pants and cave in to the financial demands of a bunch of dubious deceitful Tories who constitute the Celtic PLC custodians.
But fake rebels who sing songs about these fantastic Irish heroes and heroines, are the very definition of cowardly deceivers who pass themselves off as being on the same page as these heroic legends.
Well these folk who sing about rebellions then fill their pants for a bunch of millionaire Tories should be banned from waving the sacred tricolour or singing these songs as your cowardly deceit brings nothing but shame.
Real Paddies bow to NO Tories, but plastic Paddies do, and its your fault that there was a Tory Celtic board in place to carry out all of their failures collusion and cheating of the past 9 years, despite the trophy haul in a one horse league leading to the [sell out] 10 in a row season.
Plastic Paddies are killing Celtic fc with their financial backing of a Tory Celtic PLC board, who’s bottom line is about preserving the old firm.
Plastic Paddie Celtic fans financed the structures of betrayal that blew the 10, Neil Lennon did none of these 👆things.
BOURNESOUPRECIPE on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 3:34 PM
👍
I don’t think Lenny’s history suggests he would ever quit. I don’t blame him for thinking he could turn it around – he’d done it before.
When you have the sort of mentality he must have, to have faced what he’s had to and come out in one piece I don’t think failure or quitting is ever part of his thinking.
I think that’s probably true of most successful football managers
CELTIC40ME on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 3:06 PM
I hope he finds happiness in his next job, hopefully as a manager, which is obviously what he enjoys doing.
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I too hope he soon finds his next job. Hopefully out of sight when it comes to all things Celtic.
An inept appointment from an incompetent board.
I found out many years ago is the most important person in your work life is the one you report to. Since Lenny came back up the road tae replace the late great TB that person wisnae WGS but DD.
BHOY FROM THE BOYNE on 11TH OCTOBER 2021 3:58 PM
How long before he’s allowed to talk about Celtic again?
What’s the acceptable time frame?
How about if he stops disagreeing with your version of events and making you feel uncomfortable?