Neil Lennon

Aye cos Lenny shat it when Forrest missed the ball coming over, and Lenny shat it when El Yanouusi missed the target fro 5 feet. Aye blame Lenny...

 

Ffs the drama after a defeat is * disgusting sometimes.

Let's forget for a moment that this is the second time in 4 years that the opposition has made these stages of this competition, which obviously brings experience...

Let's go over the game.

Did we have chances to score? Yes

Did they look like actually scoring? Not really.

How did they score then? * individual mistakes. Short passing at the back. Defenders jumping in. Defenders getting caught out by school boy stuff.

On another night, we take our chances, don't * up at the back and win 4-0.

Too many people are quick to blame Lennon for the 4 at the back formation and point at Ajer at RB - whilst forgetting that young Frimpong was ripped a new one the week before and they same people I bet, would question him starting after that display (if we lost).

Brown looked unfit to me. Not as much as Ntcham would have and Christie was banned too, which would leave Sorro chucked in at the deep end....

I also think that 2 up front would be great but in Europe is different to Scotland and asking Forrest to defend like that isn't going to work like it would domestically.

Get off the * back. He's kept the huns in their place when so many of our fans gave the title up after the Scottish cup last year when he got the job.

He knows more about football than any of us ever will and you need to accept that no one can win every game.

 

You don’t think this was the best chance in a long time we’ve had of going deep in Europe?

I would say Copenhagen are definitely inferior to Inter, Zenit and Valencia.

 

No, it is no different to any year. Long time escapade, out early, heart break disaster.
Europe is a fun money making distraction that may give us a misty eyed Seville.

In the big scheme of things it matters not a monkeys * foreskin, not a peep. It's only drama queens and manager haters with no sense of perspective that get * about Lenny and Europe....here we go 27 in a row....* European football once Santa has been.

 

Just got round to listening to Lennon’s interview after the game midweek as I avoided any post match stuff due to how * off I was.

Surprised with how calm and collected he was after such a massive disappointment. I got a good vibe from it and particularly liked the ‘we win as a team and we lose as a team’ quote, whilst refusing to single anyone out or making excuses.

Expect us to bounce back and put in a strong performance today.

 

It is different this year because we couldn’t have handpicked a better last 32 tie.

9 points behind Midtjylland in the Danish league, injuries to key players, just back from winter break and playing poorly.

This was the best chance we’ve had in years of going deep in the competition. Had we beat Copenhagen we’d be playing Basaksehir for a place in the QF - wouldn’t be easy but that’s a winnable game again for a team of our quality.

 

Nonsense.

 

A handpicked better side, says who?

And then the Turkish team, easily winnable....

Priority Lequge...then cups....Europe, fair play....in that order.

 

Which part?

1. They aren’t 9 behind Midtjylland?
2. They aren’t missing key players due to injury?
3. They aren’t in poor form other than beating us?
4. We are capable of beating Basaksehir?

 

All conjecture mate, we got beat, we didn't progress, the Turkish mob would have fancied beatng us..we lost fair and square.

It was a very good campaign

 

Says me and anyone who followed the Europa League group stage.

Didn’t say the Turkish side were easily winnable.

I agree the league is the priority but it doesn’t mean we should be happy to lose to a poor team in Europe.

 

It was a very good campaign which is why people expected us to beat a poor side and make the last 16.

Anyway we’ll agree to disagree that this was our best chance in years to make it through to the last 16 and beyond.

 

If I live to be 139 I will never get moist over the Europa league....its a fun distraction for a while till it gets full of English *....after than I'm hoping for a coronovirus postponement

 

Celtic in Europe is Celtic in Europe mate.

Maybe I’m a dreamer but I felt we had a great chance to make it far this season after topping a group which contained the team top of Serie A.

Whenever I see who a Copenhagen/Basaksehir draw I’m gonna be thinking we could have drawn them and beat them

I agree with you that the league and quad treble is obviously the most important thing to us, but I don’t think that because Europe isn’t our main priority we should stop caring about losing against teams we should be capable of beating.

 

Lost you after the second paragraph there mate as I could only hear John Lennon after that.

I get it mate, we're probably saying the same thing only differently.

 

We should all still be massively behind Neil Lennon, he has done a brilliant job since returning.

As I said, the worrying thing is that we've lost in those kind of circumstances to Cluj, Rangers and Copenhagen and we don't seem to have learned from it. Inferior sides with less talented individuals just coming to Celtic Park and being more patient, more organised and taking the victory.

As I said earlier in the season, there is a time and a place for putting your foot on the ball and being patient. Although Lennon has been quite clear that he doesn't like that style, hopefully he now recognises that there are times where it would benefit us.

 

Fully agree we should all be behind Lennon but see our problem as probably the opposite of how you see it. I think we should be pushing our players forward more and playing higher up the park and pressing teams harder in the final 3rd. The way to beat the opposition high press is to press them even harder. That's what we did at Ibrox and it worked - Gerrard said after the game they didn't cope with our aggressive pressing. I think we retreat back to the halfway line too much and give teams too much time on the ball in their half. I want to see 2 strikers, 2 wide men and a couple of CMs closing teams down aggressively in their half and not giving them a second on the ball - winning the ball back in dangerous areas and creating chances. I think that's what we were doing at the start of the season when we were winning games easily but for some reason it changed and we started struggling to put teams away especially through December.
We have done this a bit more since going to 352 after the winter break but I'd like to see us pressing even more aggressively.

 

Partly agree, but I didn't really think Copehagen - and certainly not Cluj - pressed us that high. I think our problem was that we pushed too many players forward, left too many gaps and allowed ourselves to be exposed.

I think the riskier style of play works very well domestically, where we don't always need to be as careful or as structured as we were under the previous manager, and the riskier, higher-tempo style as often served us well.

We pressed, but we didn't press right up the pitch. If you watch the game back we did allow their centre-backs to have the ball and blocked off the passes into midfield and pressed when they came into the middle third. That's how we got our first goal. We were also pretty patient on the ball that day. I remember being impressed by how our back 4 took their time, slowed the game and frustrated the Ibrox crowd that day.

Again, partly agree. But there has to be an organisation to it against better teams. Too often Copenhagen, as with in previous games I mentioned against Cluj and Rangers, were picking the ball up in our midfield and having space to go at us because we had too many players out of position.

 

I think against Copenhagen Lennon did actually try to take a more cautious approach by not having 2 strikers and he's taken a lot of stick for it. I think his tactics were actually working quite well until Simunovic's mistake and then for some reason after that we seemed to fall apart. I think if that mistake didn't happen we would have gone through with a 0-0 or won by one or two nil and Lenny's tactics and team selection wouldn't be questioned. The players seemed shell-shocked when they scored - they had to show a bit more composure after going 1 down.