Celtic - Lenny or Lawell to blame?

Why I think Neil will come to a mutual agreement with Celtic!

[font=“Calibri”]Today’s defeat at Tynecastle wasn’t just another defeat because of poor form or because we had 10 men. Our problems are much deeper. Is it the manager? Is it Peter Lawwell? Or is it the board’s fault? Let’s go back a little to have a closer look. The main reason Martin O’Neill left Celtic was due to his wife’s serious illness. He was also told about the massive cut in spending and believe me or choose not to, if you have more info as to what went on, but Martin O’Neill will never return to Celtic while Peter Lawwell is in charge. Peter Lawwell survived![/font]
[font=“Calibri”]Gordon Strachan came in and took the job on a much reduced budget and did remarkably well winning three titles in a row, the last sixteen in Europe twice. Didn’t get backed in his last transfer window, lost the league and left by ‘mutual consent’ in his last year. Took his pay-off and a ‘no talk about what when on’ clause and never said a bad word about the Club since! Peter Lawwell survived![/font]
[font=“Calibri”]Tony Mowbray came in after relegating West Brom, and also after Owen Coyle knocked the job back specifically when he was told the budget he was on. We also paid a £2.4m buy-out clause to get him and half of that amount to get rid of him! Who appointed him? Peter Lawwell survived![/font]
[font=“Calibri”]In came Neil after a trial period, and after much Lawwell/Desmond deliberation Lenny got the job. The rest of the board do what they’re told after PL & DD make up their mind. Fact! I know Lawwell sat Graham Speirs down for his opinion on the possible appointment & he also phoned John Hartson on the same and did so with other football professionals. Word leaked on what Speirs had said to Lawwell & an angry exchange followed between Speirs and Lennon. Giving Neil the job was a huge risk, BUT, if this sticking plaster approach to the problem did come off then Neil had saved much ineptness caused previously by his masters from above! Neil signed some players last season & John Park, the overseas chief scout, recommended some others! This season the only player for sure that Neil definitely wanted was Kelvin Wilson (yes I know, but let’s not lose track for the minute) He wanted a better goalkeeper and didn’t get him! He wanted a better right back and didn’t get him! He wanted another centre forward and didn’t get him. He wanted another centre half and didn’t get him. He got and signed what he could with the money made available to him. Some are not Celtic class and Lennon knows this. Lennon has made some crucial mistakes and he knows it. He will never get the team he wants under Peter Lawwell and I believe Neil will come to an arrangement to leave Celtic shortly under mutual consent. He looks haunted, he looks unwell and I believe he thinks this financially fiscal situation will be never ending. Importantly, he doesn’t deserve to be slaughtered by fans and he will NOT take being booed. He is a Club Legend and must remain so! Question is, whether it’s Neil doing the job or anyone else under such conditions - who will take the job and do the job WE require with the budget on offer? And before anyone says it, the Celtic teams who took the pitch against St Johnstone, Rangers & Hearts should have been good enough to have beaten them. The sticking plaster is not working. Neil do the best for your health as this job is making you ill. Peter Lawwell survives a fourth manager and what will he come up with now as a remedy. The mess is the same but the balance sheet looks pretty! Hail Hail![/font]

Both should go.

Lawwell is a fucking crook and I’ve had his cards marked for a long time, with particular reference to his role in the Balde saga.

Lennon just isn’t up to the job and continues to make the same basic mistakes time and time again.

Well typed mate. Impressed with your new approach.

The different font gives it an extra bit of ooomph aswell mate , well done. :clap:

[font=courier new]Thanks for the positive response guys, ive been thinking about changing fonts for a while now.[/font]

Whoever decided to break up the Hooper - Stokes partnership should be sacked. Along with the fella who decided to award Glenn Loovens a contract.

[size=3][font=courier new]huh,this thread is about my new font[/font][/size]

[font=tahoma]Sorry mate, in that case I blame neither. DB is at fault.[/font]

Letting go Gordon Strachan was a very bad idea. 3 SPL titles out of 4 and brought the club to the last 16 of the Champions League. His record pisses all over O’Neill yet he wasnt near as popular, why?

Yet he was undermined and eventually hounded out by the bigots. Glasgow Celtic get all they deserve.

Bringing in Mowbray after he presided over West Brom finishing rock bottom of the EPL to replace Strachan was ridiculous. He knew the Celtic way apparently. Lennon would not have been considered for any job probably in the top 2 divisions of any decent league in Europe. His appointment is reminiscent of Delaney replacing Kerr with Steve Staunton.

Surely Lawell only implements the wishes of his board. The likes of Desmond should be feeling your ire for the lack of funds available. Lennon is struggling as a manager but the season is long yet and McCoist is less experienced than he even is. The Old Firm derby was noticeable though that the better individual players by far were wearing blue - McGregor (awful mistake that day aside he is way better than Forster), Davis, Edu, Naismith, Jelavic, Lafferty

http://thechurchofchrismartin.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/lenny-henry.jpg

[quote=“KIB man, post: 625283”]
Letting go Gordon Strachan was a very bad idea. 3 SPL titles out of 4 and brought the club to the last 16 of the Champions League. His record pisses all over O’Neill yet he wasnt near as popular, why?

Yet undermined and eventually hounded out by the bigots. Glasgow Celtic get all they deserve.[/quote]

Strachan resigned himself. I had a lot of time for Strachan - more than most - but he had a few blind spots and they completely undermined him particularly by the end of his era. He had McManus as captain and he was appalling. He was undroppable in Strachan’s eyes despite repeatedly costing us goals and points. It was only one player but it was a disaster.

He was also far too negative towards the end. He didn’t like McGeady and started the likes of Robson and Flood ahead of him which was unjustifiable. They obviously had a falling out but Aiden was playing sometimes and just sitting out important games which made no sense at all. Dropping him at Ibrox when the league was in the balance in Strachan’s final season was a shocking decision.

You do yourself no favours with the ridiculous idea that bigotry played a part in Strachan leaving. He has nothing but great things to say about the club. He was replaced by an English Protestant.

[quote=“KIB man, post: 625283”]
Bringing in Mowbray after he presided over West Brom finishing rock bottom of the EPL to replace Strachan was ridiculous. He knew the Celtic way apparently. Lennon would not have been considered for any job probably in the top 2 divisions of any decent league in Europe. His appointment is reminiscent of Delaney replacing Kerr with Steve Staunton.[/quote]

Lennon was already coaching at Celtic - it’s a fairly regular occurrence to have someone at the club get the job. It doesn’t make it right or wrong but he did get 92 points in the SPL last season which would have won the league most seasons.

This is a very EPL-type attitude to football. The funds available are dependent on managing resources not on someone sticking their hand in their pocket. That’s the model in England for plenty of clubs but it’s not sustainable. Celtic can’t and shouldn’t rely on Desmond handing them millions of pounds every year - that’s not how club ownerships should work.

Lawwell is the man responsible for how the budget is spent. Celtic spend a lot more on wages than Udinese for example, they don’t make the best use of the revenue available. I’ve argued before that a director of football type person would suit a club like Celtic because they’d have a more long or medium term view of acquisitions and spending.

Edu is brutal by the way.

every manager has their blind spots though McManus was shit alright. If you judge a manager on their results, Strachan is ahead of all recent managers at Parkhead anyway. Also he took over an aging squad on bloated wages, had to cut them out but at the same time on a tight budget he still took the club to domestic success and were competitive in Europe. You would take that now.

I seem to recall the support had turned on Strachan by the time he had left, they never took to him anyway despite the better football and results so whether it was down to his religion or that he was a former Aberdeen player it seemed bizarre based on his record at the club. McGeady was acting the prick and he rightly dropped him. Didnt McGeady also produce his best football at the club under him at the same time? He hardly proved Strachan wrong at club or international football the following season? Your point that he dropped McGeady when the league was in the balance in his last season says it all - even in the season he didnt win the title, they were still very close. That would have been 4 from 4.

very surprised that Glasgow Celtic spend more on wages than Udinese. If that is the case why arent they off chasing decent European players rather than the likes of Kris Common? What do the likes of Scott Brown earn per week?

That is complete bullshit. Completely made up.

‘I seem to recall…’

Strachan was an atrocious manager who played the worst brand of football I can remember at Celtic in a long time. He won 2 titles by default given the mess Rangers were in and was handed another one by a spectacular Rangers collapse. He was extremely fortunate to have got Boruc (we’d have signed Niemi if Strachan had his way) and Nakamura, us getting points almost solely hinged on the performances of these two players, along with McGeady and Maloney (in his first season).

He left Mowbray with a thankless job where he had to dispense of rubbish like Hartley, Caldwell, Naylor, Robson, McDonald, McManus, Flood etc.

To say Strachan played good football just shows how little you know about football, it was long diagonal balls kicked out over the sideline from McManus and Caldwell endlessly, our whole attacking play was based on getting the ball to Nakamura or McGeady and defensively we had 4 bombscares in front of a top class keeper, who when he went through a dip in form, our results started to falter significantly.

Getting rid of Strachan was a Godsend. The problem was replacing him with two more managers out of their depth, neither Mowbray or Lennon, when they left/leave will have Celtic in as bad a state as Strachan left us in.

will be pretty hard for anyone to top the nonsense of that post.

The Ibrox outfit have been in a mess the last 2 seasons aswell. They are broke now ffs and still walking away with SPL titles. I know those have about as much worth as a chocolate teacups but Strachan still won them 3 of them in 4 seasons. He took the club further in Europe than the insufferable Martin O’Neill OBE ever did, a point that MON’s friends in the media rarely mention. He bought in Boruc yet you laughably try to slate him for it. Seem to recall him mentioning his infamous scouting trip to see Boruc before - http://sport.scotsman.com/sport/Boruc-business-well-worth-the.3323231.jp - all made up I guess.

Seem to recall the football under him in Europe being pretty decent. Most of the rubbish you mentioned were part of a 3 in a row SPL title winning side and a competitive side in Europe. Something the misguided followers at Parkhead would no doubt welcome now, maybe nights like this BBC SPORT | Football | Europe | Celtic 2-1 AC Milan. Game was also notable for a follower attacking an opposition player. Imagine that at Parkhead of all places :stuck_out_tongue:

You clearly don’t recall the end of the Strachan era very well. We were pathetic in his last season. We had roused ourselves to a great finish the season before but that was about passion more than anything. Once that was nullified we were left with very limited players playing an extremely limited style of football and capitulating completely in any testing encounter.

So Strachan gets credit for being extremely close in a league he lost, why not the same credit for Lennon?

I’m nowhere near as negative about Strachan as Totti is, and the European stuff was great - though he was fortunate to get through groups with the same points totals that eliminated O’Neill’s teams but he’d lost all momentum by the end and cut a depressing figure. He couldn’t inspire the team anymore, he couldn’t them playing at all and we meekly surrendered a title to a poor Rangers team with no signs of any improvement to come.

It isnt actually, Strachan was under pressure despite 3 titles in a row and best performances in Europe in the modern era. Equalled Jock Stein’s record for 3 in a row but still wasnt good enough.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/2008/04/08/lay-off-gordon-strachan-aiden-mcgeady-tells-celtic-fans-86908-20376520/

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Under-fire-Strachan-is-first-pick-for-Benfica-article43908.html

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/2008/05/27/charlie-nicholas-fickle-celtic-fans-may-force-gordon-strachan-out-86908-20431009/

http://www.football.co.uk/celtic/hartson__fans_forced_strachan_out_rss108740.shtml

In Europe we relied on Boruc playing the role of Superman in goals and hoping we’d nick a goal off a corner or Nakamura woud score a free kick.

Boruc was on the radar during Martin O’Neill’s time, he had been linked with us before so clearly had been identifed by the scouts. Strachan wanted Niemi though and only for he preferred Fulham over us would have ended up with him. Strachan actually had little role to play in most transfers apart from the SPL dross we bought, he couldn’t incorporate talented players like Gravesen, Donati or Jarosik. Instead he decided to stick with plodders like Hartley, Robson and Brown, watching Paul Hartley miscue 5 yard passes and tripping over the ball was extremely painful to watch.

The 3 league titles in which Strachan won were with 3 of the 4 lowest points totals we’ve had in the last 10 seasons. Rangers have been rubbish for the last two seasons but they have a habit of picking up points when they are playing badly. When the huns brought Smith back, Strachan was exposed and only for they dropped a title on the back of a gruelling season where their fixtures were piled on top of each other and made it to a European final, it would have been two out of four.

Strachan’s team were beyond turgid to watch, packed with journeymen British players who could barely string two passes together.

The huns were actually reasonably good when Martin O’Neill was in charge.

leave aside the ifs and buts, the records will state 3 titles from 4 and the best run in the Champions League. Beating AC Milan might seem a lifetime ago but Strachan had the likes of McDonald playing to a decent level. Niemi was a fine keeper for Fulham so wouldnt have been a bad signing either if that indeed was the case. Very unfair to say Strachan only had a role in the local dross that was bought, actually scrap unfair its just revisionist nonsense.

in one sentence you are slating Strachan’s side for being turgid to watch with journeymen British players and then mentioning Martin O’Neill in the next. The names Sylla, Rab C Nesbitt or whatever that clown keeper was called, Guppy, Hartson, Thompson etc must be long forgotten and the style of football that involved hoofing the ball into the corners for Sutton to chase after has probably been forgotten too. It was successful fair enough but not as successful as Strachan’s stint.

Who did Strachan spend decent money on, Id say MON had far more money but I could be wrong.

Alex Ferguson has had bad seasons too at United. Glasgow Celtic should have backed their man who had delivered 3 titles in a row, downsized wages along with the wishes of the board and brought the best run in the Champions League.