stop this ungrateful snipping at WGS

People really need to wise up. Everyone in the game really rates WGS. Its just a core of Celtic fans who would never have liked him no matter how much he won. He knows more about football than all the WGS haters put together and his record spearks for itself. Only Stein and Malley had that rate of success in our 121 year history.

He may have made mistakes but he assembled and/or has developed into first picks a great core of senior players - 2 brilliant goalies in Artur and Zaluska, a German international RB who we will not better, Caldwell, Loovens, Crosas, Brown, Robson, Naka (OK he is away), Maloney, McGeady and Skippy. THere are many useful squad players who may yet bloom into great players too including most of the guys who beat Spurs. That is a great legacy of good mainly youngish talented players he has left behind. These guys will probably make up at least 8 of Mowbrays first 11s this season. Why? Because there is a core left behind by WGS who are very decent players and we will simply not better given our financial limitations.

That is in sharp contrast to MON who left behind a dying team that he hadnt strengthened significantly in 4 years. Most of the players in that team who left when MON did or within a year of WGS coming were never to play at the top level or do much at all again (Douglas, Hedman, Agathe, McNamara, Varga, Sutton, BBJ etc). That showed WGS was right to punt them. BBJ and Lenny too only had one good season left in the tank and he was right to punt BBJ when he did (get well big man). Thommo IMO hadnt been much use for some time before WGS arrived so he was no use and a waste of money.

Essentially, the only player who had more than a year left in the tank at a good level or who had any substantial transfer value to bring money in was Stan Petrov. MON really let the team run down and other than the Bellamy loan had not signed a decent player in the previous 4 years once the big cash splash in his first season was over. The only decent cheap players he ever signed were Bobo and Agathe. He showed himself to be pretty useless in the transfer market after his first season when he was looking at the sort of low transfer fees WGS has normally had to live with.

Note too that MON inherited an unique core of quality that he was to make use of like Lubo, Lambo, Larsson, Mjallby etc to add to a first season transfer kitty that allowed him to spend 20 millon in the space of six months. BTW 20 million 9 years ago is probably well over 40 million now in trasnfer terms. MON essentially had the best deal of any Celtic manager in history but left a legacy of a first 11 who were all bar Petrov well over the hill and never to play regularly at the top level regularly again. Despite all this advantage, he achieved less than WGS (3 in 5 SPL, nothing in the CL beyond group) and (what is often forgotten) he lost 2 out of his last 3 SPLs. MON had the best deal and got completely different treatment than WGS despite him achieving more in far more difficult circumstances.

SO lets stop all this ungrateful snipping at WGS and if you want to point fingers at a manager who let the team run down and in his last 3 years underachieved in terms of the trophy cabinet then look at MON not WGS. Can you imagine the * WGS would have got if he had won only 1 of his last 3 SPLs and hadnt signed a new first pick player in 4 years. The attitude a core of fans have to WGS compared to the far more advantaged but less successful MON is nothing short of a disgrace.

Now of course we are getting all this Mowbray is such an improvement on WGS despite the fact that he is playing most of the same players in exactly the same system as we were last season. Its nonsence to have all this love for a guy who has 3 friendlies under his belt YET actually use this to bash our ex-manager who won us 3 out of 4 leagues and 2 CL last 16s. That is such a good demonstration of the irrational dislike of WGS that a core of our fans have. Its beyond irrational and that sort of talk just makes you look like a loont WGS hater.

We should be very very grateful to WGS for achieving more than you could possibly have expected in tough times when our ability to compete for players collapsed. I hope I am wrong its almost certain Mowbray will not better it.

So please just enjoy whatever success Tony brings us and do not use it to bash WGS while at the same time keeping a stain glass window of St. Martin in your heart. The time to make comparisons with WGS or MON will be when he has achieved what they did and that will be impossible for at least 3 seasons. Using every improvement or success Tony brings as a means to criticise WGS would be a sadder than sad mentality.

 

* that, mate. I supported Strachan 101%, but nothing couldn't be done. Let it go, we have Mowbray in charge now and our future looks bright.

 

Totally agree.


just asking for more sniping by creating yet another Strachan thread,

We only wanna talk about Mowbray now.

 

i've got to agree with most of you what you said about strachan building a good squad, but i think the main difference between wgs' approach and mogga's is that wgs set out his system and the players had to be disciplined and fit into it no matter what

i think with mogga we'll see r flair players given more of a chance to express themselves and play their game, the shackles r off so to speak, the difference in style is quite noticeable at the moment, with the ball being kept on the deck most of the time

whether this works r not, time will tell

 

I think if Strachan was as good as all that, he would have won 4-in-a-row without too much trouble (we had a better team than the huns throughout his tenure) and we could have played a style of football that wasn't so soul-destroying to sit through.

I think more fans would have appreciated his, admittedly good, record more if it wasn't such a chore to sit though that awful, predictable style of football.

I know its only pre-season but Mowbray already has us playing nice football with basically the same group of players. I'm grateful to Strachan for the trophies he won but I'm also grateful he's gone.

What I've seen so far from us under Mowbray has me excited for the future and I can honestly say I never felt that way under Strachan.

 

I agree with what you are saying Gunt, but it was Strachan's time to go the standard of football we were watching was getting worse, sometimes it felt it was getting worse by the game.

I hope Mowbray can bring us as much, if not more, success than Strachan did but it will be a hard act to follow, when you're time is up at a club it's up, he should of course be remembered for the success he had as manager of our club.

 

Lol someone clearly didnt like MON. At the end of the day, we have a new man in charge and the futures exciting me amongst many others at the moment, and long may it continue. This thread will only provoke conflict, what happened before is now in the past, whereas we should be looking beyond this and getting behind our new manager 110%. C'Mon the Hoops !! Hail Hail !!

 

i got barred from the huddleboard for backing gordon strachan up, thats how bad it became, i feel your pain brother lol

 

very good post mate , agree with every word

 

u cant argue with his record but i thoug the style of play was boring much more exciting the mogga way

 

I've not even read that first post, but I will tell you this.

Yes Strachan cut the wages at the club and brought in some good players, he also bought * like previous and future managers of every football club will do.

He set out a system to play the right sort of football but never really achieved that with any sort of consistency. One week we're * all over St Mirren 7-0 and the next we get beat 1-0 by the same team. Never had a consistent team or a reason as to why he made key changes.

He was a horrible man manager. If you didn't want to kiss his *, forget about playing, a lá McGeady. McGeady is headstrong, * me, he went toe to toe with Lennon at half time during a game. I like that in a player and because McGeady was like that, Strachan didn't like him. He wouldn't bow to his demand. I also believe that players didn't generally like him, most looked unhappy at times and a lot of potential signings were lost due to the manager. Not a great trait to have. Hence why I don't think he delt with a lot of transfers personally, it was a stumbling block.

He was completely and utterly arrogant. The only time I've ever seen him appear humble was during Tommy Burns tribute match. Up until then, he came across as a complete *. I know people who have attended charity dinners with him there and say that's exactly how he is.. a small man with small man syndrome, just a complete * and totally full of himself.

To compare him to the like of Jock Stein is a joke tbh. Why?

Strachan had arguably one of the luckiest/easiest times as manager of Celtic. Rangers were in complete turmoil from the moment he started with us. Alex McLeish, was on his last legs before the season started, Rangers fans knew it and so did he. Was anounced to be replaced mid season, hello? What a stupid thing to do.. it appeased their fans, but we had an easy league.

Le Guen? League was won all too easy with Ferguson ousting Le Guen in the end. Over by Christmas.

That's two leagues won so far.

Along comes Walter Smith, Strachans first REAL test as a Celtic manager and he only just manages to scrape through on the very last day of the season. I said at the start of last season, Walter Smith's second year in charge that we would lose the league and Strachan would either be sacked or walk. Why? Because he was never good enough to live up to a real fight from the other half of Glasgow. Walter Smith gave him yet another test of his team, even slipping up here and there to give us a major boost and an easy chance to win the league, but true to his form, Strachan played mediocre football, didn't know how to change it when losing and was so arrogant that he didn't want to change it, because as far as he was concerned, the team he picked and the tactics he chose should be working.

So for me, to compare Jock Stein to a manager I personally reckon had one of the easiest times as Celtic manager is not even worth looking at.

Along comes Mowbray and I'm excited about the future, I love hearing him in interviews and look forward to the football he's playing. Time will tell how it goes as I felt the same with Strachan to begin with.

 

Can't really add much to whats already been said, although I agree with much of the O/P - there is still an atmosphere around here where people throw in sly anti-Strachan results. I mean a few people even posted "You can * your zonal marking Strachan" or something along those lines. Some people remain bitter and still snipe whenever they get the chance - pure saddos.

His record speaks for itself. I personally enjoyed so many WGS games and I admit the last season was really really hard, but I will blame the board and certain players before I'd blame Strachan.

Heres to TM and all the best. I hope he can convert the flair of these friendlies into actual SPL and European results. Certainly looks promising right now.

 

Snipping. I don't think anyone's trying to cut him up.

Sniping, however...

 

@ Phatron

I think the most-board friendly way tod escribe your post would be billious rubbish. I'm at work so don't really have the time to go over everything, but perhaps the most obvious point was:

"Rangers were in complete disarray when Strachan took over Celtic".

Aye and so were Celtic.

 

How can you say this, no-one knows why a potential signing would turn us down, but I'd be willing to bet in the majority of the cases it had nothing to do with who was in charge and more to do with money.

 

Were we? We had financial issues, other than that, we hadn't very little to worry about. MoN leaving was the only issue we had and what he left behind. Strachan done well to cut wages and win what he did, but to say that Rangers were not in complete turmoil is just overlooking the obvious.

 

Then why are we forking out £3.8m on a striker who will be picking up around £25k a week? I personally believe the manager had problems with certain players at the club and also the reason we didn't sign some players.

It's a personal opinion. I never liked his attitude or the way he played the game. It was great what he done for the club in terms of the future of the club and what we have now, lower wages etc.. he done well on that budgets, but I also think he wouldn't have done so well if Rangers were moer stable at the time. They went through 3 managers during our 3 in a row.

 

I think the Fortune situation is more the exception than the rule, imo the majority of players would go for the money.

I agree Strachan didn't get on with some players, but I also believe that happens at every football club up and down the country.

I agree it was Strachans time to leave Celtic as the football we were watching was of such a low standard - some of which has to be down to the players not performing as well as we know they can, however, some of the anti-Strachan comments that are still prevalent on the boards even after he's left are unnecessary imo. He was a successful manager for us, should be thanked for that success and now we should concentrate in supporting Mowbray as he tries to win back the league.

 

I agree completely. What he's left us for the future is fantastic, and the fact that we won 3 titles during that time was great. I was merely making my points on why I wouldn't personally put him in the same ilk as Stein.

 

What he left behind was an ageing and expensive complete and utter disarray. Not making excuses for Strachan here because we should never have been beaten 5-0 by Artmedia but it was the restructuring required due to MoN that lead to our rookie team getting whipped.

Over the 4 year tenure Strachan done amazing to keep us winning trophies while simultaneously turning us into one of the most financially viable football clubs in the world.

The squad TM has inherited is 1000% better than what WGS picked up.