Gordon Strachan and Neil Lennon potential comparison

WGS was a successful Celtic manager no matter what you think of him. 3IAR, 2 back to back Last 16 of the UCL appearances, 2 doubles, winning our first derby Cup Final for 20 years and a total of 6 trophies in 4 seasons. Domestically he gave us some fantastic days/nights including back to back wins against Rangers in November 2005, back to back wins
against Rangers in April 2008 including an orgasmic 94th minute winner from JVOH, 2 wins at Ibrox including a Scott McDonald screamer, clinching the title at home to the Diet Huns, a 92nd minute free kick winner from Naka for 2IAR and an emotional night at Tannadice to ensure he became the first man since Mr Jock Stein to win 3IAR and it was in honour of Tommy Burns.

Also in 6 games we played at Hampden under WGS, we won every single time. European wise, we witnessed brilliant nights against Manchester United when we beat them 1-0 with a traditional Naka free kick stunner accompanied by a Boruc penalty save for our first ever qualification to the Last 16, last gap wins against European Champions AC Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk, a pulsating penalty shoot out win against Spartak Moscow to qualify for the group stages and a stunning 3-0 win against Benfica.

There were also the lows such as a general decline in atmosphere at Celtic Park, turgid football, a feeling of contempt some Celtic fans felt WGS had for them and football wise such games as 0-5 Artmedia, 1-2 Clyde, 1-2 Aalborg, 2-4 Rangers at Celtic Park, 4 back to back derbies lost to Walter Smith without scoring a single goal and being knocked out of the early rounds of both domestic cups at Celtic Park against Hearts, Aberdeen and Falkirk.

However my question is despite how highly regarded Lenny is, and rightfully so, what does he have to achieve in the next 2 seasons - taking him up to 4 seasons in charge in pattern with WGS's reign - to surpass or even match what WGS achieved? The way I view it is that clearly we will win the next 2 championships thus 3IAR but WGS's would be more impressive considering a challenge from the (ex) Huns and a strong Hearts team will surely be more difficult than what we'll have to face in the immediate 2 seasons.

Therefore only in Europe can Lenny make a real impact. Both WGS and Lenny led Celtic to being knocked out of Europe before September in their 1st seasons in charge but in WGS's 2nd season we qualified for the Last 16 of the Champions League whereas Lenny led us to a 3-1 aggregate defeat to Sion in a Europa League qualifier albeit their corruption helped us into the group stages. For me Lenny would have to qualify for the Champions League this season and either get 2nd in the group or 3rd but getting to the Quarter Final of the Europa League or beyond and then repeat this the following season. Domestically Neil would have to win a treble and a double to take his total to 3IAR and a total of 7 trophies in 4 seasons to WGS's 3IAR and 6 trophies in 4 seasons.

How do you see it?

 

Ooft, you've lit the blue touch paper there. This should be interesting.

 

Strachan is one of our best managers ever in my opinion, and as much as I like Lennon, it'll be hard for him to compare to WGS

 

Lenny's got some task on his hands to replicate or beat Gordon's success in just the next couple years, WGS had a far better team and a lot more disciplined and organised which made us better suited to Europe.

It's a * - Lennon's team play far better football (imo the best since MON) but are not as succesful
Strachan's team were boring and turgid at times as you said but you cannot deny, they were incredibly succesful and got the job done.

In my opinion Lenny will be here for many years and will come good as a manager, considering this is his first ever job, and considering just how massive as job it is, then factoring in all the disgusting and never-before-seen bullshit he's had to take off huns - I think Neil's done a fantastic job, despite the cups we've been knocked out of and games we've lost.

I praise Lawwell and the board for having the balls to bring Lennon in, could have easily backfired but they made a choice and stuck with it and it's beginning to pay off. All depends what we do in Europe but I strongly believe we have the nucleus of a team good enough for CL action, and one of the best youth setups in Europe beginning to bear fruit also, which will hopefully make Lenny's job far easier in 5, 7, 10 years time.

I really like Gordon and could never understand the level of hate towards him from Celtic fans, but now that era's over us it's great we have someone who I would say 98% of fans are united behind and we really can start a new era and get back to those old glory days.

 

Hard to compare it. Strachan had a short term experienced team, a higher wage budget and came in when Celtic were highly seeded in Europe on the back of Martin O'Neill.

Lennon is having to go about things in a totally different way, building a cheap young team, trimming the wage budget and is working in a time when Celtic arent highly seeded in Europe.

 

In my opinion Neil Lennon as been extremely average thus far in his Celtic management career. He's managed to win the league in at probably the most extremely uncompetitive point in the SPL's history. This feat could probably be achieved by any manager/man with a decent footballing knowledge. While we did well to win it last year, it wasn't difficult.

Therefore any comparisons must be made in Europe and we have been utterly atrocious in qualifying and decent in the group stage when we got put back in.

If it were up to me and we under-performed in Europe this year Lennon would be out the door. I mean why would we keep him? honestly apart from the relationship with fans there he won't have much to offer. Any half-decent manager will be able to win us the league the next few years, Europe is the only thing that will prove truly significant!

I agree that Strachan is 1 of our best managers ever and think we were foolish to ever let him go..

 

This is really unfair. Lenny has had to endure more than any manager in football history in terms of the constant pressure he was under in his personal life. He also had to totally rebuild a team from scratch after all the better players at the club were sold just as he took over. He took us to within a point of winning the title in his first season and won the cup, then won us the title with a team that looked like we would do it regardless of the dead being deducted 10 points.

He also has just a fraction under an 80% win rate in the league. All this without having a single penny net to spend. I was against him being appointed to start with but I just dont see how anyone can say he has not done a fantastic job for us.

 

It’s going to be even more difficult to judge now, given that we’re now in a one horse league as opposed to a two.

The strength of the Huns has always had a bearing on my assessment of a Celtic manager. I preferred O’Neill to Strachan for this reason. He * slapped a strong Hun side at their spending peak.

I felt Strachan strolled to two easy championships and was lucky to clinch the third.

Lennon should have won the league in his first season. He was very unfortunate not to. We played some excellent football that year.

Last season was OK. We won the league, but didn’t play as well as we did in the previous season. The cup performances were a disgrace.

 

Well said mate. I think Neil Lennon is doing really well when you consider he's only been in football management for 2 seasons. He is undoubtedly going to become an even better manager as he learns his craft.

The only area where I would mark Neily down is in Europe. The performances against Sion and away to Utrecht weren't bad, they were diabolical. He does need to do better in that area.

 

Its different times though.

Strachan bought players like Zurawski, Nakamura, Jarosik, Gravesen, Vennegoor, Donati, Robson, Hartley, Naylor, Hinkel we also had other experience during his time like Bobo, Pressley, Telfer, Keane, Hartson, Petrov, Dublin, Lennon etc players in their late 20's around 27-30 for decent fees, knowing we'd never see a return.

It was always going to do well as they were good experienced players but it was unsustainable to sign old players we couldnt sell.

The only real young players Strachan signed were Sno, Virgo, McGinn, Flood, Crosas, Aliadiere, Riordan, Mizuno, Mark Wilson and Scott Brown.

Out of them only Scott Brown ever really became a first team starter and he cost £4million+

So I doubt Strachan could work under the terms Lennon has signing young players like Hooper, Stokes, Forster, Kayal, Ledley, Wanyama, McGeouch and Matthews to build up for the future. Plus he's brought on some of the younger players who were there like Rogne, Forrest and Ki.

Also Lennon has basically had no money to sign more experienced players in their mid 20's or older like Lustig, Wilson, Murphy, Commons, Cha, Majstorovic, Mulgrew or Izaguirre. I think in total less than £2million has been spent on experienced players. Strachan in comparison spent 75% of his money on these types.

 

Without doubt but I have to say I thought, given the circumstances, we were quite impressive in Europe last season. Although we all expected to win, Sion had some pretty decent players in that team. I still believe that this season in Europe will be a learning curve but if we can keep the team together (hopefully add a bit to it) and keep the competitive edge, we should be pretty good next season. Ie, 2013/14.

 

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> Lennon has had the best signing success IMO.

That’s certainly a positive.

 

Lennon has a long way to go to reach the level of Strachan but he is young as has only had 2 full seasons so he has plenty of time to develop.

 

I'd love to hear your reasoning for Lennon winning the SPL at it's most uncompetitive.

Is clawing back a 15 point gap against a team who were cheating to try and win their 4th title in a row not competitive?

 

Well for your first point, there is no reasoning behind an observation. So your statement doesn't really make sense.

While clawing back a 15 point gap is an achievement, should we really have slipped that far in the first place?

Also while Rangers clearly broke the rules and used money they didn't have and are being deservedly punished, it's not like they just picked up the ball and threw it in the net or something. It's still a game of football, not to mention that this was going on before Lennon took over and only began to take its toll the last couple of years.

 

That didn't answer my question in the slightest...

 

Lenny compared to Gordon will now be compared on European performance.

 

Well for your first bit where you ask for my reasoning, how can I if its simply an observation that virtually any unbiased person would make. When have Rangers had a worse team than the last few years in the SPL? Aye never. So you show me a point in time where it's less competitive. Now they are gone and it's going to an even greater extent.

While you claim rangers were cheating and trying to win their 4th title, the money was spent and used in the past, not during last season with their only real signing being Lee wallace that i can recall who cost money. I.e. this cheating was done during the era of Tore Andre Flo costing 12 million which other managers had to deal with.

 

Some of the most recent dead huns team were on EBT's.

And this terrible hun team, the worst they've had in years, would this be the same team on 3 in a row and reached the UEFA cup final?

 

Aye.

Forster(22)
Matthews(19) Wanyama(20) Mulgrew(24) Izaguirre(24)
McGeouch(18) Kayal(22) Ledley(23) Commons(28)
Stokes(22) Hooper(22)

Probably Lennon's best team of signings, average age 22.2 years old. Average price, £830k.

Strachans

Boruc(25)
Hinkel(27) Caldwell(24) Loovens(25) Naylor(26)
Brown(22) Hartley(30) Robson(29) Nakamura(27)
Vennegoor(27) McDonald(24)

Average age 26 years old. Average price £1.65million.

On average Strachans best team of signings were double the price and 4 years older. Yet if I was to make a team, it would be 6-5 in favour of Lennon.

Boruc
Hinkel Caldwell Mulgrew Izaguirre
Nakamura Kayal Ledley Commons
Vennegoor Hooper
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