Read on Twitter
Took a few hours to contemplate so I didn’t say anything fuelled fully by emotion. My considered view is that Lennon is a liability & we need to make the change now. His post match comments were bizarre in the context of the excruciating decisions he made that led us here.
There’s much bigger systemic issues across the club that need sorted but ultimately we’ve the biggest & most valuable squad in the country & it’s not being deployed to its capabilities. That’s on the manager & coaching staff. They need to take responsibility.
If there’s offi-field dissent with players, the manager needs to resolve that. If players don’t want to be there, you have to ask why and deal with it however hard that is. You can’t keep picking players whose form is atrocious because you’re scared to drop certain players.
We’re continually buying players we don’t play. We’ve a horrendous record for bringing youth players through. We pick players regularly out of position ahead of players whose natural position they’re taking. We’ve abandoned a proven winning style. That’s all managerial decisions.
Meanwhile we’ve stagnated in Europe with the odd spectacular result offset by abject ones when it really matters. If the manager isn’t accountable, who is? We’ve spent millions on players he doesn’t trust. That in itself is incredible & points to how dysfunctional we are.
We’ve all fallen into the trap of obsessing on the 10 as if it’s the pinnacle of achievement. Looking back it’s almost inconceivable we could have lost any of the 9 with our resources & the level of competition we faced. We’ve won shitloads domestically & gone backward in Europe.
I’m way too angry to tackle the structural issues at the club tonight but this should be the end of an era & the beginning of major change at Celtic. There’s no guarantee just now we’ll get 10, but it’ll be absolute carnage if we don’t. Time for some tough decisions and quick.
The crushing inevitability of what comes next is what really gets on my tits. At least one big money sale coming up, and an upbeat rallying call to get behind the team for the 10. Oh and buy more fucking strips please. While you pay £30 a game for an intermittent stream.
My mates & I used to joke about what we would do when we stopped going to see Celtic. Over the last year that’s been developing into semi-serious discussions, tonight it’s full-blown planning. Guys who’ve been going for 40+ years, totally scunnered top to bottom with the club.
Anyway, rant over. It’s been that kind of day.
There’s a real End of Empire vibe around Celtic just now. Worth looking at the parallels with the old Huns 1997/98 season when they crumpled under the weight of the 10, persevered with a manager who’d lost the dressing room & a bloated and aged squad. The risk here is massive.
Last night has to be taken as a flashing red light with persistent wailing alarm type of warning. Coupled with the off-field nonsense of the last few weeks & the last couple of abject league performances, the evidence is mounting that something is going badly wrong & needs fixed.
Sacking the board is an understandable reaction but that’s a conversation for another day. The priority is fixing the mess the first team is becoming. Do that quickly and this can still be salvaged. Persevering with the current coaching setup and manager is now a massive gamble.
From the club perspective, how do you market & sell tickets in a post-10 world? How do you motivate fans to stay if you win it, never mind if you lose it? Is doing just enough to beat the Huns every year really a sustainable business model? And if you don’t?
This was always going to be a pivotal season for the future of Celtic. There’s no visible evidence of a plan beyond winning the 10. The likelihood of major change is huge. How you manage the transition was a massive problem before a global pandemic, now it just looks daunting.
All small beer in the context of wider world events and people’s lives but football gives you something to hang onto in bad times. It’s triviality really but it’s our shared triviality & it still hurts to see this mess unfold. Albeit slightly less with every passing failure.
