An Accident Waiting All Summer to Happen

When have we ever got the players we need in early for the the CL? I must have missed that year. So, my view would be let’s try that. Let’s face it, not doing it hasn’t really paid off. Or, did I miss when it did too?
Tell me any targets that we have never known about that we have negotiated but could not possibly go that extra bit, instead of ones been plastered all over the rags who seem to have their B plan in place before they advertise Celtics interest.
You think running a club is a piece of cake good luck with that thinking.
 
What's really worried me is that Lenny seems oblivious to the primary mistake he made, which was to play CalMac at left-back. He claimed that McGregor played excellent as left-back, but while I'm not interested whatsoever in criticising him for playing out of position, Cluj were getting success down the left or from the left time and time again.

Lenny claims he put CalMac in at left-back in order to fit in Ntcham and as many 'technicians' as possible in midfield - the harsh reality now is that if he wants to do this, and I don't necessarily disagree with the basic logic of it, he can't sacrifice arguably our greatest technician and stick him out at left-back. In truth, and we have to really cast our minds back to last season when Broony was out of the team and we went on a rampage scoring 20 goals in 4 matches, beat RB Leipzig and won the league cup, if Lennon wanted the best technicians in the team last night, Brown should've been sacrificed.

For me, the core midfield should be McGregor-Ntcham-Christie.
 
the fact that league 1 players in England look like world beaters in scotland shows how the standard of our overall league is rank rotten

Scottish football is very sick

our players are overpaid but in England are underpaid

and every other Scottish team are not capable of affording vanarama players

but that game at home should been a win

Lennon is to blame for me last night
Its a very good point. People sometimes forget, players do as they are told, otherwise they dont get picked. Look at how we played under BR, all that sideways passing and keeping possession was HIS instructions, now under NL the players are encouraged to get the ball forward quicker. this leads to punts up field and the loss of possession, thats all well and good if you have a solid defence, we dont. Its Russian roulette, with only one empty chamber.
 
I'm not quite in my "happy place" after last night, Boab, but I'm still not rattled by the zombie threat either.

The board, the backroom staff, and the players owe us a few big performances after last night. They can do themselves a lot of favours by getting the work gear on against the huns and to remind us all how good it is to be a Celtic supporter.

I'm disappointed by the fact, that for the second year in a row, we've been knocked out by a team who were beatable (and comfortably beatable too).

We seem to struggle against wily old pros and the tribute band have more than a few of that type in their ranks. Some of the Bhoys have to become men at the midden and put these dimwits to the sword once again.
SP every team is beatable Cluje beat us. We have skelped the Man Cities, Barcas, etc, I am not happy but I am not gutted its football , i have seen this movie several times and will see it again. My next thought is we we go and beat Dunfermline and then Hearts and then the Huns and then...................
 
"An accident waiting to happen all summer," I really believed FINALLY that lessons where learned last year after CLQ exit in Athens, and you know what, it's gonna be the same again next year, that's if we are in the CLQ's. Those disco lights will be dated by the time we reach the CL group stage's.:mad:
 
I'm not entirely sure how it was Peter Lawwell's fault last night. I'll be honest. I haven't heard one convincing argument. With the group of players we now have at our disposal, from what we've all seen, we should not be losing 4 goal at home to Cluj. Peter Lawwell is to blame for none of that.
 
Peter Lawwell can only really be accused of incompetence if he doesn't react to this grievous blow against our club by going on the offensive and releasing the funds necessary to bring in new players, notwithstanding the now absent Champions League incentive we could've had at our disposal. If Lawwell uses the lack of CL funds to further restrict squad investment, then you can solidly blame him for something.
 
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Everybody writing off a team who are on form in their own country and 5 games in undefeated and scoring a plenty.

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Who was 'writing them off'? I think almost everyone conceded Cluj were no walkovers and were a team full of savvy, experienced, physical players who were dangerous on the break. But there's not a person alive who'll tell me that on paper they have a better squad than us or, to put it another way, we didn't have the squad capabilities to beat this team. FFS, we beat RB Leipzig with essentially the same squad, the main difference being the defence. Well, we've spent £10.5 million on that defence so far and we should've been beating Cluj after that first leg.
 
Who was 'writing them off'? I think almost everyone conceded Cluj were no walkovers and were a team full of savvy, experienced, physical players who were dangerous on the break. But there's not a person alive who'll tell me that on paper they have a better squad than us or, to put it another way, we didn't have the squad capabilities to beat this team. FFS, we beat RB Leipzig with essentially the same squad, the main difference being the defence. Well, we've spent £10.5 million on that defence so far and we should've been beating Cluj after that first leg.
Okay then an experienced team beat us on the night and hats off to them, its something we have achieved ourselves.
 
If Lawwell uses the lack of CL funds to further restrict squad incentive, then you can solidly blame him for something.
You mean like he did last year? The reason people are blaming him is that it is exactly the same as hss happened before. We lost over 10 players from our first team squad and were repeatedly told by our manager the idea was to get in fewer higher quality replacements in key positions - everyone I know agrees this is correct.

At each phase of the qualifiers our manager was saying he wanted to bring in 2 or 3 new signings before the next round. This never happened so we continually played players out of position which is a risky strategy.

Then when we sell one of our very best players the narrative suddenly changes to we have to offload even more players before getting new players in.

That is why many fans are pointing the finger at PL. And yes, this does not excuse Lennon for his baffling tactics or team selection which was directly responsible for last night's fiasco. And some players weren't up for the fight either or played poorly (but people singling out our best player for blame is bizarre) just like at Ibrox twice last season.
 
Tell me any targets that we have never known about that we have negotiated but could not possibly go that extra bit, instead of ones been plastered all over the rags who seem to have their B plan in place before they advertise Celtics interest.
You think running a club is a piece of cake good luck with that thinking.

Everything’s good and on the up. No need for change. What was I thinking? Me bad.
 
Everything’s good and on the up. No need for change. What was I thinking? Me bad.
No-one said you are not entitled to your opinion, but apparently we are shite according to your posts it's we are doomed mentatility nearly every post. You have to give a bit of credit occassionaly we are fucking still alive and kicking thanks to a bit of prudunce, bigger mega millionaires have cashed in and failed, maybe sometimes the best players don't live upto the price tag,but we cannot just keep replacing the batteries if the bulb is fucked and won't switch on.
 
You mean like he did last year? The reason people are blaming him is that it is exactly the same as hss happened before. We lost over 10 players from our first team squad and were repeatedly told by our manager the idea was to get in fewer higher quality replacements in key positions - everyone I know agrees this is correct.

At each phase of the qualifiers our manager was saying he wanted to bring in 2 or 3 new signings before the next round. This never happened so we continually played players out of position which is a risky strategy.

Then when we sell one of our very best players the narrative suddenly changes to we have to offload even more players before getting new players in.

That is why many fans are pointing the finger at PL. And yes, this does not excuse Lennon for his baffling tactics or team selection which was directly responsible for last night's fiasco. And some players weren't up for the fight either or played poorly (but people singling out our best player for blame is bizarre) just like at Ibrox twice last season.

There was absolutely no need for Lenny to play ANYONE out of position last night. That's just a fact. Yes, we had a disastrous transfer window last year, but my point was about this tie against Cluj. We've spent £10.5 million on the defence. We've brought in players like Shved who was also nowhere to be seen. We're playing our best midfielder at left-back, with a left-back whose confidence is growing sitting on the bench. We've got a £7 million centre half sitting on the bench. We've got the Griff sitting on the bench, yet we're bringing on the vastly inexperienced, unconvincing Lewis Morgan for Mikey Johnston when chasing the game late on. We've made tactical mistake after tactical mistake on this one.

Yes, of course the Celtic board have to be held accountable for not adequately strengthening our squad, but we HAVE a squad capable of beating Cluj - we failed to beat Cluj not because of under-investment in our squad, either last season or this season, but because our manager made a series of very bad decisions and I think while everyone goes on about our defence, we need to take a serious look at the dynamism (or lack of) in the midfield with an ageing Scott Brown in there.
 
The bottom line is that team should never have beaten us last night, nae wonder we're all scunnered and blaming everybody from Lennon to Lawwell.

Tactics and money not spent seems to be the main reasons for what happened, but for whatever reason it's still sickening not even getting to the qualifying round.

Aye boab your right we might have seen it all before over the years but it still doesn't make it any easier does it?

Personally I would take an embarrassing slaughtering against the big teams in the CL every day of the week rather than getting knocked out by them last night..I'm away now to drown my sorrows and get fkn blootered..btw misery needs company so does anybody want tae Join me?
 
There was absolutely no need for Lenny to play ANYONE out of position last night. That's just a fact. Yes, we had a disastrous transfer window last year, but my point was about this tie against Cluj. We've spent £10.5 million on the defence. We've brought in players like Shved who was also nowhere to be seen. We're playing our best midfielder at left-back, with a left-back whose confidence is growing sitting on the bench. We've got a £7 million centre half sitting on the bench. We've got the Griff sitting on the bench, yet we're bringing on the vastly inexperienced, unconvincing Lewis Morgan for Mikey Johnston when chasing the game late on. We've made tactical mistake after tactical mistake on this one.

Yes, of course the Celtic board have to be held accountable for not adequately strengthening our squad, but we HAVE a squad capable of beating Cluj - we failed to beat Cluj not because of under-investment in our squad, either last season or this season, but because our manager made a series of very bad decisions and I think while everyone goes on about our defence, we need to take a serious look at the dynamism (or lack of) in the midfield with an ageing Scott Brown in there.
Yes, Lennon takes most of the blame for last night's ridiculous performance. But to state that this has nothing to do with under-investment in the squad and then to highlight the lack of dynamism in midfield due to an ageing Scott Brown! Bloody hell, if only there had been a perfect long-term replacement who had been playing very well in the SPL, who was Celtic daft, who was available well within our budget (for transfer fee and wages) that had been convinced to join us already by our manager that fell through because PL's ego had to win a contract negotiation so he went in with lowball offers! Of course that player could never have been good enough for Celtic, but ended up being player of the season for Aston Villa. Maybe PL could have used the £7.5m sell on bonus from VVD to pay for this player - a position that still has not been filled over a year later, and Broony is not getting any younger.

Maybe it is for reasons like these that PL is being looked at by fans for the long-term strategy rather than individual matches where the management team and players are responsible.
 
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Yes, Lennon takes most of the blame for last night's ridiculous performance. But to state that this has nothing to do with under-investment in the squad and then to highlight the lack of dynamism in midfield due to an ageing Scott Brown! Bloody hell, if only there had been a perfect long-term replacement who had been playing very well in the SPL, who was Celtic daft, who was available well within our budget (for transfer fee and wages) that had been convinced to join us already by our manager that fell through because PL's ego had to win a contract negotiation so he went in with lowball offers! Of course that player could never have been good enough for Celtic, but ended up being player of the season for Aston Villa. Maybe PL could have used the £7.5m sell on bonus from VVD to pay for this player - a position that still has not been filled over a year later, and Broony is not getting any younger.

Maybe it is for reasons like these that PL is being looked at by fans for the long-term strategy rather than individual matches where the management team and players are responsible.

We played our best football last season without Brown or, erm, John McGinn in the team. The team that beat Leipzig had a midfield three of McGregor-Christie-Rogic. That team essentially scored 20 goals in 4 league games and won the league cup.

We had the resources last night to play without Scott Brown - we could've played with my preferred midfield three of McGregor-Ntcham-Christie, with the £3.5 million left-back we signed playing at, erm, left-back. The McGinn transfer saga was a huge fuck up, but not the proximate cause of last night's exit.
 
We played our best football last season without Brown or, erm, John McGinn in the team. The team that beat Leipzig had a midfield three of McGregor-Christie-Rogic. That team essentially scored 20 goals in 4 league games and won the league cup.

We had the resources last night to play without Scott Brown - we could've played with my preferred midfield three of McGregor-Ntcham-Christie, with the £3.5 million left-back we signed playing at, erm, left-back. The McGinn transfer saga was a huge fuck up, but not the proximate cause of last night's exit.
We both agree we had the resources to win last night and didn't due to bad management and some players not performing as expected (this is the case for every match - it is always won or lost on the pitch and not in the boardroom, but that is not to say it doesn't influence the outcome). I was kind of hoping to have a better team available than to just win the 3rd round UCL qualifying round. This is achievable within our budget!

I brought up the McGinn saga purely because you complained about Broony not being dynamic.

I too prefer the more dynamic midfield and also think it is a good idea to play defenders in their correct position.
 

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