THESE DAYS it is a tough challenge for the Celtic bloggers trying to second guess Neil Lennon’s team selections. On Saturday The Celtic Star got 10/11 correct and predicted the formation accurately, suggesting before the match that James Forrest would start on the left wing.
Both BT Sport and the BBC got that one wrong incidentally. The one error was suggesting that Elhamed would start at right back ahead of Bauer, who had picked up an injury in the match against Kilmarnock that kept him out of the midweek win over Partick Thistle.
Gone are the days when Brendan Rodgers would have his team up on a board at the team’s pre-match hotel the night before a match, available for plenty of non-Celtic employees to see.
So getting 10/11 right, coming just after we told you that Jeremie Frimpong would be making his debut against Thistle last midweek, was particularly satisfying.
It has to be acknowledged that Neil Lennon has got most, nearly all decisions in fact correct since returning to the club in the dramatic circumstances that transpired at the end of February. It had been a gathering storm at Celtic that one and it had its roots the previous summer when failings in the transfer market caused unrest and ultimately an irretrievable breakdown of the relationship between the CEO and the manager, Brendan Rodgers, who incidentally seems to be doing rather well at Leicester City.
The cost of all that turmoil was outlined in stark terms in the Financial Report made by the club on Friday evening and analysed by Niall J on The Celtic Star yesterday…‘Lawwell’s step towards mediocrity – Celtic’s European star is descending,’ Niall J – see HERE.
However in ONE game Neil Lennon did get things BADLY wrong and he’s still not in the most comfortable place as he tries to deal with what happened on that awful August night when Celtic made a complete pigs ear of things to somehow manage to find themselves eliminated from the Champions League.
In a year from now, the club will release financial results that will be broadly similar as Friday’s IF we can progress through the Europa League group to the knock-out rounds and maintain our domestic dominance. But after that awful August night we’ll not be taking a step forward and we’ll still be talking about Cluj.
Disasters against AEK Athens under Rodgers and Cluj under Lennon has cost us the services of Moussa Dembele (£20m) and Kieran Tierney (£25m) with that money going to shore up the damage those defeats cost. It is a situation that must not be allowed to happen again.
To be fair to Neil Lennon he seems to be taking the correct steps to ensure that we are ready for the Champions League qualifiers the next time around, assuming of course that the league is won. Guys like Kevin Clancy are determined to make that a closer contest that perhaps would otherwise have been the case.
In yesterday media, as reported by Daily Record, Neil Lennon talked about Christopher Jullien – signed in July for £7million from Toulouse – not having been ready to play in that game against Cluj. We will come back to that but take a step back and consider this comment from the man who picks our team.
If a July signing is NOT ready to play in the tougher third round of Champions League qualifiers then don’t sign players for these games in July, sign them in flaming January!
Incidentally playing or not playing Jullien that night was NOT the issue. Jozo Simunovic and Kris Ajer were solid enough – the problem came from not playing Bolingoli, or even Jonny Hayes at left back and instead taking Callum McGregor out of the midfield to play him there, despite having evidence from the match at Ibrox on 29 December – and John Kennedy was there alongside Brendan Rodgers (presumably Neil Lennon was watching on television) – that this does not work.
Maybe focusing on Jullien and the central defence was easier to justify that the crazy decision regarding the left back selection? Boli Bolingoli had a poor game in Cluj, as did Lewis Morgan ahead of him on our left hand side. It was clear that Cluj were going to target him in the return – and who could blame them. But the choice was to trust the £3million player or if not go with Hayes, who seldom if ever lets Celtic down when he’s asked to play. Anyway, here’s what the manager had to say about Jullien not playing that night.
“Christopher wasn’t ready. He was still looking a bit off it. We felt that it was only after the window shut that we started to see the best of him,” Lenny explained.
“He did find his feet slowly but surely after that and with more game time he’s looking far more assured.
“He wasn’t ready that night against Cluj and I don’t think anyone could disagree with that.
“We did the same with Virgil against Karagandy as he wasn’t ready either and we won 3-0.
“If we had thrown Christopher in to that game it might have killed him or dented his confidence if it hadn’t gone well for him.
“You make those decisions as a manager and I don’t regret it one bit. We scored three goals and should have gone through but we shot ourselves in the foot.
“But we’ve learned from it as the reaction since has been very positive.”
The van Dijk comparison is interesting, another summer signing not ready for these games. If it can happen to a player who is now regarded as the best defender in the World then it can happen to anyone – so the conclusion is clear, sign players in January not July if you want to get through these difficult qualifiers.
Last January we signed Jerry Toljan, Timo Weah (another exclusive on The Celtic Star on Christmas Eve), Oli Burke – all on loan and all contributed absolutely nothing to our Champions League campaign as their loans had ended. Bayo was the only signing and he was injured for most of the year, only starting to make an impact in recent weeks.
So NOTHING happened in the January window last year that helped us qualify for the Champions League in the summer. If we are going to need new recruits for next summer, January is the time to bring them in, not July.
ALSO ON THE CELTIC STAR…
Celtic v Cluj – ‘I think we owe them one, especially me,’ Broony’s Revenge Mission…see HERE.
Born on this day in 1944, Jimmy ‘Jinky’ Johnstone – The Greatest Ever Celt…see HERE.
Rangers 0-6 Celtic – Beautiful Sunday! Celtic Women Academy side runs riot in Glasgow Derby…see HERE.
