Gordon Strachan and Neil Lennon potential comparison

You raise a good point. By my count 25 players have been signed in the Lenny era for a total of a modest £15.0million in 2 seasons. Of the 25, I would class them in the following categories:

12 Success
Fraser Forster
Adam Matthews
Charlie Mulgrew
Emilio Izaguirre
Kris Commons
Beram Kayal
Joe Ledley
Dylan McGeough
Victor Wanyama
Gary Hooper
Anthony Stokes
Tony Watt

6 Middle/Can't Tell/Half and Half
Cha Du Ri
Daniel Majstorovic
Mikael Lustig
Badr El Kaddouri (Loan)
Andre Blackman
Rabiu Ibrahim

7 Failure
Kelvin Wilson
Freddie Ljungberg
Olivier Kapo
Efrain Juarez
Daryl Murphy
Mohamed Bangura
Pawel Brozek (Loan)

Interesting that of the £15.0million Lenny's spent, around £6.0million has been spent on my '7 failures' altho you may disagree on my rankings.

 

If someone asked me what you looked like I would guess this...

 

Well it's not the same team or even manager that reached the Uefa cup final is it? Where is Darcheville, Ferguson, Novo, Boyd, Hemdani, Cuellar etc???? Pretty much just a false statement you've made there mate.

Some of the most recent players may have been on EBT's but the damage was already done.

 

Well i would argue that Darcheville was a dud, Davis was better than Bawwy, Jelavic was better than Boyd, Bocanegra was (arguably) better than Cuellar so it could be argued that the team Lennon beat was even better than the UEFA cup team.

 

Tbh, given where the club were at the time they took over, I think it will only be fair to judge Lenny in Europe from next season. Under WGS we had a pretty solid base already player wise, although I know a few went. Lenny had virtually nothing. All our best players (imo) like McGeady, Hinkel, Keane etc were all on the way out and he had to start with nowhere near a team that could even have hoped to compete.

Now we're a year of so older and wiser but its still a young team. One which can hopefully get better. Although I dont want to, I'd tolerate a poor to mediocre season in Europe this season but after that the expectations would grow.

 

It would be a more than fair arguement as well. After der hun lost the EL final, the cardigan spent over £18m on it that summer. All they really lost was Cuellar. Still, they had nae dough

 

Well your argument would be hindered by the fact that they got pumped out of europe by a distinctly average-poor side and lost the league wouldn't it? Yea I'd agree Jelavic was better but he was only here for half of last season. Not to mention he seemed disinterested compared to the previous season. No matter what you think of the players, they performed well in europe.

 

I would have to say that Allan McGregor was a better goalie in 2007/08 than he was in 2011/12, Carlos Cuellar and David Weir in 2007/08 are significantly better than Goian and Bocanegra, Papac v Papac = Papac. Davis and McCulloch were better players in 2007/08 than they were in 2011/12. Scumbag Novo was a good player for them in 2007/08, Naismith featured also, Charlie Adam did well for them in Europe, Cousin, Hemdani etc etc I'm not going to go on but to say the (former) huns team of last season is better than the one that bored and cheated their way to destruction in Manchester is just not correct imo.

 

Strachan
Season 1 Celtic 91 points Rangers 73 points
Season 2 Celtic 84 points Rangers 72 points
Season 3 Celtic 89 points Rangers 86 points
Season 4 Celtic 82 points Rangers 86 points

Lennon
Season 1 Celtic 92 points Rangers 93 points
Season 2 Celtic 93 points Rangers 83 points

What would yous draw from that?

Lennon has had a higher points tally in his first two seasons than Strachan ever got. Rangers had more points last season than Rangers ever got when Strachan was manager.

Strachans Celtic Average 86.5 points
Strachans Rangers Average 79.3 points
Lennons Celtic Average 92.5 points
Lennons Rangers Average 88 points

 

Well the quality of the other SPL teams has dropped too, some of the other teams had a few internationals! As the importance of money seems to sky rocket, the less we seem to have when compared to rival leagues.

 

Can't really compare as even the other teams standard was so much better

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

I would conclude that it shows that Celtic were awful for the final 1/3 of the 2006/07 seasons knowing 2IAR was wrapped up and 2007/08 was extremely inconsistent and a lot of bad goals conceded and let's face it: if the huns had been knocked out at the Quarter Final of the UEFA Cup or sooner then they would have won the treble. I've used the points argument in my own point of view in MON v WGS debates but I would't say it's as vital here due to declining standards in the rest of the SPL and the huns having improved points wise a lot when Smith took over.

 

Beat me to it. I was just about to post the exact same picture!

 

How can we really measure that though. If anything more diddy teams are winning Cups now than they did then, European wise they do no better or worse than they've ever done.

 

ILoveTheCeltic

Aberdeen were far better under Calderwood than they've been since McGhee arrived and hasn't improved with Papa Broon taking over. They reached the Last 32 of the UEFA Cup, thrashed Copenhagen 4-0 just a year after we scraped past them 1-0 and they even drew 2-2 with Bayern Munich.

Hibs were obviously far better under Mowbray/Collins than they've been since Paatelainen arrived.

Dundee United have some good players but they aren't as good as they were under Levein.

Hearts came 2nd in 2005/06 and played some great football and were genuine title contenders for the 1st half of that season and even in the seasons after that they had good players like Kingston, Wallace, Aguiar etc etc

I think you're trying to convince yourself otherwise mate.

 

Im not making a judgement either way, just seeing what people think.

Aberdeen, Hibs and Hearts may have been better. But weren't Motherwell, St Mirren and Kilmarnock worse? They never had players like Thompson, McGowan, Jennings, Murphy, Shiels, Law, Hateley, Ojamaa, Eremenko, Sissoko, that mad Italian, Goodwin, Carey, McLean etc etc could also say St Johnstone now are better than Falkirk or Dunfermline were.

 

You're clutching at straws now mate.

 

Disagree, apart from Petrov and Maloney he had nothing. Aiden was unproven until 2nd season.

 

That's not quite true.

The spine of the Celtic team that won the title in Strachan's first season in charge was Balde, Lennon, Petrov and Hartson. All players that he inherited from Martin O'Neill.