Nine days without a game is technically not a winter break but it is double the normal interval Celtic players have between games. Ironically, it arrives when they found a formation that resolved the performance problems that plagued the club until December.
I would have preferred a midweek game than a break, with three games to make up we have applied pressure to our spring programme, although I’m sure Celtic did not anticipate the turnaround in form when these matters were settled.
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st tam
i’ve known peeple like you all of my life and none of them
impressed
Re comments on James Forrest the blogger, I find his stuff an interesting read. You could argue that him linking to his blog is a bit naughty 😯
If you don’t like it then scroll bye, my god I have a whole suite of monikers on here that once I see it’s them commentating, whoosh onto the next comment😱
PRESTONPANS BHOYS
Ha..ha no wonder you never answer me.
8-))))))))
H.H. Mick
MELBOURNE MICK on 4TH JANUARY 2021 11:24 PM
😂😂😂😂😂👏👏👏👏
Duffy to Nottingham Forest….?
Probably best for all concerned
https://twitter.com/mikreilly/status/1346225026161405960?s=08
☝️
Heard Jack Hendry on flight to Dubai.
Only kiddin
H.H. Mick
Don’t say that M. Mick, I’m trying to stay off the drink in January…
Declan Gallagher it is then 🤷♂️
MAJESTIC HARTSON/BLANTYRE TIM
At least it’s not Frank Munroe, Remember him?
Even big Jock made mistakes lol.
H.H. Mick
I like Declan Gallagher. Good player.
Duffy’ s a great lad. I really like him, but he’s the wrong fit for our team. I wish him only the best if he leaves.
Meantime Dermot showing the fans who’s boss again!
Great life. a footballer, no matter how pish, you still get another well paying job (another example Burke at Sheff Utd).
Going out now Bhoys/ghirls, been pissin down here since
that result.
Don’t think the big fhella up there was too happy either with
all his tears.
But just like the rest of us he will cheer up, and the sun will
shine on the righteous once more.
KTF.
H.H. Mick
Badabing
Chat is Chris hughton at forest in for him
HH
PETERLATCHFORDSBELLY on 5TH JANUARY 2021 12:11 AM
I like Declan Gallagher. Good player.
Duffy’ s a great lad. I really like him, but he’s the wrong fit for our team. I wish him only the best if he leaves.
Meantime Dermot showing the fans who’s boss again!
=================================
I agree and wish him all the best if it happens.
Declan Gallagher not fully convinced here.form and attitude appeared to have nose dived.will await and see what happens
HH
Declan G
watched him last year when he was getting good reviews – feckin awful
then again thought he was no bad for JockoLand (tho so was Charlie Christie’s boy)
but who am i to judge anyway – i also thought Scott McKenna was pish (does he get a game for Forrest ?)
So after 8 years and a million debates about Lawell being the ghood guy or bad guy, Phil Mac tells us that Lawell told him in a foyer that the Huns going under would cost the Tic money ????
Maybe James F can verify ;-)
Showers, Foyers, where next ? Ideas for a Celtic Cluedo where Peter Lawell always done it.
Since some of the folk on here have decided to make tonight a debate about me and the blog, I’ll repeat again what I have before. The Blog does sufficiently well that I don’t NEED to “promote” it here. This site has a regular group of posters, but the numbers are of no consequence to my overall tally.
In fact, in recent weeks I’ve taken to posting the articles without the links becasue some of you endlessly bitch when I do otherwise. Your problems are your own, not mine.
I post here because this used to be a place for intelligent debate. Now it’s full of people who throw personal invective and spite at anyone with whom they disagree.
This piece – which I’m not going to link to but publish in plain text – is for some of them. To others its a personal thing against me for reasons which exist only in their minds; if I’ve slighted them at some time or another I don’t remember it, and frankly why would I?
Yeah I might not be remembered when I’m dead and gone, but I don’t remember some of this stuff now, whilst we’re all still here. Don’t take it so personally. One of the differences between us, and there are doubtless plenty of them, is that I am willing to construct an argument in plain language.
Merely saying “Lennon has won leagues what have you done?” … does that even count? You either bring your A game, and debate on the facts, make a case that stands up or don’t waste my time. As you’re about to read, or not, the onus is on those who DO defend Lennon to make their case.
The rest of us have laid ours out pretty well, and the league table and this season’s catastrophic wreckage doesn’t lie. This goes back a long way. Lennon’s record doesn’t support the hype that continues to surround him or the loyalty, the unquestioning loyalty, like a personality cult, he continues to get.
I’ll lay out the case for you. You can read it below.
———–
Lennon Has Survived Three Major Crises At Celtic. Where Does This Loyaty To Him Come From?
Yesterday, I pondered the hold Neil Lennon has on some people at our club.
What is it about this guy that inspires the kind of loyalty no-one else would get?
What is it with him that inspires not only this continued support but a kind of fanaticism?
I’ve lost count of the arguments I’ve had with people over this guy.
I am accused of “hating” Neil Lennon so often that it no longer even inspires me to defend myself.
Tell people I dedicated a book to him and they hand-waive it as if it’s nothing. Tell them to go back and read the hundreds of articles in which I’ve defended him and praised him and they don’t want to know.
So it seems there’s little point in bothering.
I’m done defending myself on Neil Lennon.
As far as I’m concerned, the responsibility for making a coherent case now falls to those who think he should still be in the job. In my personal opinion it’s a job Lennon is lucky to have and ought never to have gotten in the first place.
Twice he was appointed temporary boss and then given the job full-time.
He didn’t merit it the first time and he didn’t merit the second chance at it either.
The question on the first occasion he was given it was “is he the best man for the job?” and the answer was no, and the question on the second occasion was the same one and it had the same answer.
Neil Lennon’s ascension to the top job at Celtic Park was a triumph for mediocrity.
Whatever qualities our directors were looking for in a manager when they hired Lennon were not evident from his CV or his prior experience.
When he first got the job he had no prior experience.
When he was given it the second time he had done nothing of note outside of Celtic Park. Those who brag on his “achievements” at Hibs are bigging up winning Scotland’s second tier, and are very quick to conveniently brush aside the way that little adventure ended.
At the weekend, when I was in a debate over Lennon’s record, I was told that Bolton was such a mess that his time there as a manager shouldn’t count when we assess how he’s done.
Think on that; a football managers on the job performance in one of the only three roles he’s ever held shouldn’t be considered when we look at his career as a whole. Another person told me that Lennon was the most successful “player/captain/manager in the history of the club” which is three pieces of outright nonsense for the price of one.
But it’s an example of what I’m talking about.
Neil Lennon is hailed as a hero and an unqualified success for his time at the club prior to this campaign. I beg to differ. That stretches the truth until you can hear the elastic squeal. Lennon had survived two crises at Celtic Park which would have swallowed another manager whole even before this campaign. I still have no idea how he did.
To me, Lennon’s Celtic managerial career should have been stopped in its tracks when, in his first time as interim manager, we went out of the Scottish Cup. That ought to have been that.
“Thanks, but you’re not ready” should have been the message.
Yet Lennon got the following campaign, and it was in that campaign that the first of the major crises happened. I still have no idea how he kept his job, but he did. It was the last time we failed to qualify for the Group Stages in Europe. We went out of the Champions League and then the Europa League in the same month, with major reversals at Braga and Utrecht.
Lennon had gotten the job in spite of the Ross County result.
League performances were improved from Mowbray’s tenure, but those twin European defeats were calamitous and expensive and were a major warning about Lennon’s abilities in crucial games.
We ignored that warning. We finished the season in second place, with a Scottish Cup to our name. The League Cup, we surrendered to Rangers.
His first performance review should have been damning.
Two catastrophic results in Europe, and a single trophy out of a possible four, if you include the league. How did Lennon keep his job? How did he convince people inside Celtic Park that he was up to it?
By mid-October the following year we were in crisis number two, and it looked like an even bigger one. We had been ruthlessly knocked out of Europe for the second year in a row, this time against Sion, only for them to be kicked out and our club re-instated.
But I remember the Sion game where they turned us over; we were an utter shambles.
Worse followed in the league, as we lost three of the first nine games.
Which took us to Rugby Park and the comeback some say saved Lennon’s job. At half time that night most of us reckoned he was done for. The salvaging of the point should not have changed that.
If I could go back to that time, and if I had the responsibility for making the decision, I would have fired Lennon that night. Even knowing everything I know now, I would have fired him. Rangers entire season was built on sand, and as I think any half decent manager would have taken advantage of it and drove our superiority home.
Fourteen days after Kilmarnock, we drew 0-0 at home to Hibs.
Still, the board refused to budge.
Our record for the first twelve games of that league campaign was won 6, lost four and drew two.
Humiliation had been heaped on humiliation in Europe.
Lennon somehow convinced people he was still the right man.
Has history vindicated that view? It depends how you look at it.
We finished that season as champions, after Rangers slid into administration and then death.
Lennon’s successes after that were won against the Best of The Rest.
The trophy count at the end of his first title winning campaign was two for seven domestically, as we didn’t win either the League Cup or the Scottish Cup.
In the latter we lost to Hearts in the last four.
In the League Cup it was Kilmarnock who had Lennon’s number, in the final itself.
In Europe we finished bottom of the Group with a single win in six, to cap the disgraces of Utrecht, Sion and Braga.
The following year was Lennon’s high point as manager; it was the year we beat Barcelona and won the League and Cup double. We qualified from our Champions League Group and if you viewed it from that perspective all looked well in the world, but I was glad to see the back of that season and hoped it would be Lennon’s last in the dugout because for large stretches of it we were awful.
We drew two and lost one in our first six games of the season, and that set the tone for the whole of that title tilt.
We won the league with a mere 79 points.
We drew seven. We lost seven.
Had anyone else in the country been able to put together a remotely decent run of form, we might have been pushed to the final day of that campaign or worse.
In the League Cup it was St Mirren who provided the annual cup embarrassment.
I remember telling people at the time that we ought to replace Lennon as manager, and them looking at me as if I’d grown two heads.
The next season was to be his last of that tenure; it should have been his last Full Stop.
We won the league with 99 points, which points to a storming league campaign, but which, again, covered a multitude of sins.
We went out of the League and Scottish Cup’s embarrassing, shamefully, early with Morton knocking us out of the first in September and Aberdeen neatly dispatching us from the second in early February, at the third and fifth rounds respectively.
We did qualify for the Champions League, after a storming comeback against Karagandy saw my namesake score with virtually the last kick of the ball on the all-or-nothing night. But even that campaign showed stunning weaknesses in Lennon as he allowed Lawwell to sell key players right from under him, even as we were trying to qualify.
When Lennon announced his departure at the end of that campaign I was thrilled.
I didn’t know the board had fully intended to keep him on.
I didn’t know that they had “offered” him an assistant from Norway called Ronny Deila and that Lennon had turned that down flat.
I didn’t know the same “offer” would be made to Roy Keane and that when it too was rejected that the proposed assistant would be offered the job instead.
This is the decision making process which led us to Lennon: The Sequel.
In the interim, Lennon failed at Bolton and self-detonated at Hibs.
Things at Bolton were so bad that key members of their squad openly slagged him in public.
The melt-down at Hibs shattered the dressing room.
In the meantime, Deila inherited a team which was grotesquely unfit and totally at odds with everything we now take for granted about players being athletes.
He lacked the gravitas to get those ideas across, but without a doubt Brendan Rodgers benefited from the effort the Norwegian put in.
Those players who did buy in – Tierney, McGregor, Forrest and others – were to become the lynchpins of the last four years.
None of that would have been possible had Lennon stayed at Celtic just one more year.
The sight of those pictures of him and Brown having a beer by the pool in Dubai are a look at the culture inside Celtic right now. The standards Deila and Rodgers tried to introduce have been shrunk.
The modern management techniques have been cast aside.
A promising first campaign, with Rodgers team still largely intact and his standards still applying in most areas of the club, has given over to a ghastly, familiar pattern; European results against sides way beneath our ranking, shocking performances in the domestic cups and patchy league form. That it’s all unravelled so fast is the only real surprise.
A handful of wins does not disguise the general malaise, nor the truth that this is Lennon’s third major crisis as Celtic manager. If he survives it as he survived the first two, the fourth crisis is inevitable.
Why do so many continue to regard him as untouchable?
How much has this peculiar loyalty to Lennon already cost this club?
Tens of millions in European reversals in anyway.
A rash of shocking cup defeats including the one in this campaign. Our singular moment of triumph this season, the Scottish Cup which completely the Quadruple Treble, was won on penalties after Hearts turned a two goal deficit.
This club cannot allow Neil Lennon a second full season in charge.
How far backwards are we prepared to go in the name of showing further loyalty to a guy who we’ve given two shots of the job and made a multi-millionaire? Whatever debt some think we owe him, when do we regard it paid? When he has a statue in the carpark? A stand named after him? How about the whole stadium?
Would that make some people happy?
The simple truth is that Mowbray, Barnes and Deila were all relieved of their duties for less than what Lennon has gotten away with this season alone and this is his third time facing down calls for his head.
He has failed in his most important duty, which was to win us this title.
Anyone still clinging to hope, I applaud you but I do not agree with you at all.
Neil Lennon is a third rate manager.
Where would he be if we hadn’t offered him career rehabilitation after Rodgers slunk back south?
If Bolton were a shambles when he took over, what does it tell you that they were still the best offer he had?
In the aftermath of Stubbs leaving, as a Scottish Cup winner, Hibs offered him the gig.
They were in Scotland’s second tier.
Where was the big offer coming from?
Where were the clubs looking for a talented, ambitious manager with a big future in front of him?
None of them were banging down Lennon’s door when he left Celtic as a “winner” and none will be when he departs as a loser.
Every day he’s in the job weakens next season’s title challenge.
Every penny he gets to spend is money the next manager won’t.
Every key decision in which he has an influence is potentially something the next man in the hot-seat has to undo.
If Lennon is still in the job the club will not sell season tickets, and they don’t deserve to.
So his departure is inevitable.
From the point of view of even starting the massive rebuild that is necessary it ought to happen as soon as possible.
Until it does this whole club is stuck in the mud.
There is no compelling football reason – none – for retaining his services one minute more.
Only that odd sense of loyalty, that sense that we owe him more than we’ve already given him. I don’t even pretend to understand it, to see what others see.
Lennon shouldn’t be within miles of Celtic Park and I will breathe a mighty sigh of relief, tinged with regret for the utter waste his tenure has been, when he’s finally gone.
The day he was offered the job for the second time should have been one of the greatest in the recent history of our club; instead many, many Celtic fans felt our hearts sink and a sick dread, the sick dread of days like this, steal into our souls.
This is our nightmare.
The sooner it ends the better.
Aipple/ US Guys.
Have a wee read of this article on Trump
Jeez.some critique.lol.
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2021/01/04/succession/
HH
I post here because this used to be a place for intelligent debate. Now it’s full of people who throw personal invective and spite at anyone with whom they disagree..
===============
Still is James.best place for Celtic debate.
However do not exclude yourself here.
Who are you to question Neil Lennons integrity?
There is a laziness about your use of
English if i may say”.Lennon this that and the other.its ripping with spite james.reeking of it
damned by your own words.a bit of respect to Celtic and its manager please..
(Pause for world fitba phone in)
Lol ah well, read your essay.good try me pmsl
You take care james.i know you do.A job and work to do.its been that way since a meting in St Marys hall in 1887.long may we differ.peace….til next time :-)
HH
James Forrest
Keep on posting on here , if folk don’t
like it scroll on by , simple really .
EDOUARD: TIME TO GO? LET’S HAVE YOUR VOTE
This has to be an all~time low for CQN
Disgraceful IMO
Good morning friends from a dark and cold East Kilbride. Back to work (from home) for me this morning. It’s been a while ;-)
Reports are that Lennon will be given the green-light to spend in January (guided by the expert hand of Hammond and Lawwell) and given at least until summer.
Makes Sevco very heavy favourites for 2IAR in my opinion. Two years of CL money and we can see tables very much being turned on and off the pitch.
I think Celtic will be ordered to quarantine on return from Dubai, nothing about it the way governments are making things up with regards to control measures as they go along with this virus would or does surprise me.
What then?
More money to a failed system with the wrong people spending it, just what’s needed.
So if you were to believe CQN; we will soon sell our best player, return our most expensive non contributing loan player and give a completely broken management team, and by management team I mean from DD all the way down to the scouting team, more money to bring in a new CH and winger. Also it appears that getting beat by the limited well coached huns and going 19!!! yes 19 points behind is a reason to give the management team more time.
We still have all the same problems with the squad that we had at the end of last season not one of the problem positions have been resolved.
Is there any wonder that we’ve been on a downward spiral for three years?
Season ticket renewal time will be very interesting this year.
Neil Lennon & McCartney on 5th January 2021 6:16 am
100% in agreement . All the more disappointing when you look at the squad dross we’ll never get rid of.
Only thing missing was an attack on the FM.
TIMMY7_NOTED on 5TH JANUARY 2021 9:01 AM
Personally, I don’t think Lennon will be here next season. But if that’s the case, we need to be building for next season.
I’ve a scary feeling a new manager will be brought in weeks before the start of the new season with no time to bring in recruitments, leaving us woefully unprepared for the European qualifiers.
Meanwhile, Sevco will be a couple of games from a £30m windfall.
Good Morning all.
CL qualification is not a given for any club and, even if it happens, funds are not allocated at the start of the season, they are allocated per match. The bulk of such funds is allocated at the end of the season.
geebee1978 on 5th January 2021 9:07 am
Based upon the evidence of close seasons over the last ten years we really can’t expect anything else, for me the only thing in your post up for debate is whether NFL will still be the manager. I don’t believe for a second we are even looking for a manager.
As usual our biggest failure is the lack of planning and strategy at the board level, groundhog transfer windows are us.
Hamiltontim,
I am sorry to inform you that my Dad died last April but of old age, not the virus.
Just to clarify, I would vote for Independence but, imo, the SNP are trying to appeal to Scotland’s shame of anti-Irish/Catholicism, which in many minds Celtic represent. Again, imo, there are too many instances of this, such as the total lack of any comment. never mind condemnation or action, on the abuse meted out to our players at Ibrox recently.
TIMMY7_NOTED on 5TH JANUARY 2021 9:14 AM
Agreed. Either way, Sevco will be rubbing their hands at a very real possibility of 2IAR.
JF
Excellent factual post.
Keep it up.
TIMMY7_NOTED on 5TH JANUARY 2021 9:06 AM
Thanks for your reply.
It grieves me to say this, but I feel that this is the beginning of the end for CQN
HH
Good morning bhoys,
Great Post James,
He should never have been near the club after his first failure.
Led a team of top pros off a cliff and is still in a job. All part of the plan, a well paid placeman and don’t even mention the word Legend. We’ll paid for everything he has put up with and if it was so bad no right minded man would put himself or his family through that again, tells us where Neils priorities.
Notfallingforit. Csc
KLV
Its okay for the Polis to suddenly ” hunt” for those outside Ipox last Saturday…WHY did they FAIL to arrest those responsible at the time, ? Why did they allow these animals to get so close to the Players and Staff ?
I may come across as extreme with this suggestion, and I realise that it shouldnt have to come to this BUT…….
Why did NO ONE with Authority in Celtic FC ORDER the Players and Staff back on the Bus and refuse to leave the Bus until those Animals were moved along and/or Arrested ?
We have seen a few occasions across Europe of Teams walking off the Pitch if any of their Players are being abused Racially from the stands…The Celtic Players and staff should just have got back on the Bus…and also DEMAND that someone in ” Authority” from Sevco be outside and tell those Animals to either GTF…OR Demand their Names and Address’s etc so that Sevco can ban then from Ipox…
I would go further and suggest that Celtic Staff and Players should have been back on that Bus pronto…and the Bus driven away, with Celtic FC refusing to play the match….Subsequently asking questions of the Polis, Sevco FC and THEIR FAILURE to provide protection etc, The FA, The SPFL…and The Scot Govt ?
As someone Posted on here on Sunday, if the Graffiti on the bridge, and the Racist abuse outside Ipox had been directed at another Group…Muslim, Jewish Community etc instead of the Roman Catholic Community there would have been questions being asked…
I wonder IF ANY of Sevcos players/Staff who may be Roman Catholic were made aware of the scenes ?
HH.