Like nearly every match this season, there is a lot of angst about the performance of the team and NL's formations and tactics which are mystifying even those with a better understanding of these things than I have.
Many come on here and criticise NL and/or the team and many others come on and back him and/or the team. If people want to do so, that is their opinion and they are entitled to that. People shouldn't really be getting it in the neck for criticising him or the team or, for that matter, supporting him or the team and for doing so in an open forum. I thought the only closed forums are where the huns indulge in goat glorification.
I, for one, am sceptical about NL and this is probably exaggerated by NL describing the performances and "outstanding" and "fantastic". I missed the other night's game because I was working late and will have to watch it back but from the performances that I have seen this season and a lot of the comments on here, I am not expecting to see anything other than what would have been a nerve-shredding performance if I had been watching it live.
Some say that NL is a former player, he has been though a lot, he must be under a lot of pressure. WGS and the Snake never played for us but they did well enough so I would argue that having played for us, whilst a benefit, is not the main qualification (eg Tony Mowbray, Lou Macari); NL came back to Celtic and knew what the demands would be so if he didn't want to be challenged, he should have turned down PL's offer; NL may be under pressure but he knew it would be so in the supporters' quest for the 10 and he gets paid plenty for being under the pressure.
NL and the players, as I have said before (so am probably sounding like a scratched record) are professional sportsmen who get paid plenty to perform and more than most of the others in Scotland. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to expect Celtic to win every game. This is not based on entitlement like the manky mob but on the rationale that a player earning £15k a week is better than one earning £3k a week and if a team of players on £165k a week turns up with the same attitude as a team of players on £33k a week, the team earning £132k per week more would be expected to win.
I read the post from Fisiani and. though long, it makes a valid point. The players shouldn't be going into games thinking that they could miss a crucial tackle, drop the ball or send a shot into the roof of the stand instead of the roof of the net. They need to be thinking that they are good players so they know that they will take the ball off an opposing player, catch the ball like there is glue on the gloves and get every shot on target and away from the opposing 'keeper. A shorter way of explaining it would use the film The Rock. The Nicholas Cage character Stanley Goodspeed says to Sean Connery's character John Mason (I know, a bad choice!) "I'll do my best" to which the response was "Your best? Losers always whine about 'their best'. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
I used to run in races and though I wasn't going to win in most of them, I had to go into them knowing that I could keep going at a target pace to get the time I wanted or beat the other people from my club who would have beaten me if I hadn't kept the hammer down. (Mind you, I wasn't getting £15k a week for that... or even £3k!) Celtic players need to go into matches knowing that they will win if they perform to their ability and I would hope that they do.