Reports we have agreed terms with Liam Shaw.
19 year old who plays in defence/midfield for Sheff Wednesday and has made 12 appearances for them this season.
His contract is up at the end of the season.
Is Lennon going to be still “managing” Celtic next year?
Doubtful I’d say once Lawwell goes.
The two of them are thick as thieves though so I wouldn’t be surprised if he sees it through.
Liverpool.in for him?
Doesn’t say much for his quality. We’ve seen Duffy completely unable to cope with the step up from England.
Big time
Avoid
Announcement tomorrow is what people are hoping…
I’ve been hoping that since theday Lennon arrived for his second stint cc @fulvio.
I reckon the board were completely asleep at the wheel, and their only thinking was that sevco were so poor that a dog with a mallet up his hole could manage Celtic to tiar. They may have been correct. Unfortunately, NL couldn’t.
Hooper is 33 playing India
Bring him home
Jonjoe Kenny RB in on loan from Everton seemingly
What is the point of this?
Lawwell tops his bonus up with the sale of Frimpong then plugs a gap with a loan.
We have nothing to play for. Just give Ralston a run at it until the season is over. Let the new manager identify a player for it in the long term.
Must feel like a prison sentence for Kenny coming into that setup.
I’d agree, although we do actually have to still ensure 2nd place.
I think Ntcham will bolt tomorrow, which makes sense for everyone. Christie can fuck off too if anyone throws in an offer
How many are worth keeping and don’t want out?
McGregor, Jullien, Turnbell, Soro
New manager might change the attitude and the desire to stay overnight, but I genuinely wonder if lawells bonuses get bumped with every sale, in which case he’ll asset strip the club whilst Lennon stands in the bar with a finger in each ear looking grumpy.
Christie on 8k a week. Joke.
I’d keep
Julien, Ajer, Soro, Turnbull, McGregor, Forrest and Eddy
Of them Ajer/ Julien/ Eddy probably have one leg out the door already and Eddy/ Ajer are into the last 18 months of their deals
I’d keep Rogic, Christie, Griffiths, Barkas, Bitton, Johnston as well and give the loanees like Hendry, Shved, Bayo etc a chance if they return.
I don’t believe whatsoever that the players are the problem.
One of the Celtic podcasts was saying life must be hell for Barkas. He is over there by himself with no support and nowhere to go due to lockdown…said he must be very isolated
I feared that what’s happened this season would happen sooner after Rodgers left. As big a club as Celtic are, the SP(F)L is a relative backwater and it was fairly unreal that we had the great man in charge - an elite, world class football manager. The standards he brought with him and the quality set up and training was always going to be missed. I felt players might become disenchanted if these standards weren’t maintained. Or some might see him leaving as a cue for them to move on too, and not even want to stick around for the next manager to prove himself. I thought results could turn and some players might start to agitate for moves or go through the motions a bit. I never thought it would it be to this extent though.
I know there was friction between Rodgers and the board the summer before he left, but I think they were blindsided by him leaving mid season. I don’t blame them getting Lennon in as a temporary appointment; the big mistake was giving him the job permanently in May 2019 in the dressing room after the cup final. It was an emotive kind of decision when they needed to be calculating and engage in a proper process to get the best person possible. I do take the point that I’ve already said we were punching above our weight with Rodgers, but at least try everything to replicate that type of appointment.
You’d almost forget that Lennon’s won 5 trophies in 2 years since his return. The heavy lifting was done by Rodgers for the first league and the huns capitulated after Christmas last season before the pandemic brought an early end to the season. Fraser Forster beat them on his own in the 2019 League Cup Final, but it was nice to win the two Cup Finals. I think Lennon deserves some credit for the trophy haul and for not letting last season’s Champions League qualifier exit to Cluj to completely railroad the season. The team responded with a good Europa League group campaign.
But to get very wanky about it, the principles and control that Rodgers instilled had long gone. Lennon was only in the job five minutes when he was talking about being more direct and getting more crosses into the box. I had a very uninteresting conversation with @Rocko and @Cesc4 a while back about how the modern game is so scripted, played to patterns and templates at the highest level. When our defence has the ball, we all move in sync this way and then that way, to pull the opposition out of position and then get the ball through the lines and into the attacking phase and so on. A lot of the randomness is gone out of the game. Under Rodgers we might have been playing someone shit but we’d still be recycling the ball and waiting for the moment to inject pace into an attack. We might beat some cunts 2-0 or 3-0 having only created 5 or 6 quality chances and had around double that amount of efforts at goal. But we’d have had complete control of the ball and not given the others a sniff.
With Lennon that type of modern/progressive approach went out the door. The build up from the back, through the lines and with everybody being in unison and the team playing with total cohesion was gone. Just look at Copenhagen’s winner in Celtic Park last season as an example of Celtic players being strung out all over the pitch, them pressing a centre back, him giving it away into midfield and then them having a run in on goal. Or how the huns came to Celtic Park in October, played with a medium block, let Celtic’s back three have it and only pressed when they tried to advance it into midfield. We didn’t have a notion of how to play through them and didn’t have a shot on target. Basically we don’t know how to build up the play any more against anyone half decent as we don’t train for it. In hindsight, our success last season against the likes of Lazio was in large parts down to randomness/favourable bounces/now regressing to the mean, opposition failings, individual class at opportune times masking systemic failings and Forster.
This season has been a disgrace in every way. The signings have been atrocious, Lennon throwing the squad under the bus after Ferencvaros was never going to end well, the Covid upheaval, players not bothering to be fit enough, the messing with team selections and so on. It was probably bubbling beneath the surface (is that a phrase?) but everything came to head almost simultaneously this time. It’s mad that an incredible degree of domination has been squandered so easily.
Bullet point version:
- We lost a lot with Rodgers;
- We shouldn’t have appointed Lennon;
- What a fuck up.