Neil Lennon

You kidding on man? Have you not watched us this season, don't think we have played well for a cumulative 90mins all season, his subs, or lack of, and playing with a midfielder up front and getting us * out of Europe just for starters.

 

Gerrard also outfoxed Rodgers. Is Rodgers tactically inept? I think there's quite a bit of very hard evidence that Lennon is no tactical genius, not even on the level of Gerrard, let alone Rodgers; but that's not evidence that he's tactically inept.

Rangers have been punching well above their weight in Europe for 2 seasons now. That suggests that Gerrard is either pretty good tactically or that he really does have Rafa and Klopp on speed dial. So he's outfoxed Lenny, so what? That just means Lenny is a mediocre tactician, it's not hard evidence that he's tactically incompetent.

As for what I'm trying to say, you know fine well it's not that suggestion in bold. I'm not even saying anymore that you are wrong to say Lenny is tactically inept (I still think he isn't, but I'm not as sure as I was a couple of months ago). What I'm asking is why the standards of evidence needed to criticise Neil Lennon are and always have been so much lower than for most people. It's really blatant that this is the case for us in general and I wonder why.

 

Lenny has done a bad job this season. Only an idiot could deny that at this point. That doesn't necessarily mean he's a bad tactician or even a bad coach. See my reply to JamesM09.

 

Stop mate... he played with no strikers in a one off Champions league qualifier at home. Genius...Should of been sacked for that alone.

Don't even need to point at the rest its been listed by someone else...its a long list

 

He is, though.

You can write as many essays in response to people as you want, and talk yourself round in circles like you always do. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s blindingly obvious that Lennon is not a good tactician, or a good coach.

It’s December and he can’t settle on a formation or lineup. He constantly fails to make the right changes in personnel and shape in game to change the outcome of a match. He’s failed to change our system against the huns despite the same thing happening each time.

For the last few months we’ve been pathetic at defending set pieces, and we regularly get done on the counter attack. And every single player in his squad has either failed to improve or has simply regressed in the last 18 months. If that isn’t the sign of a bad coach then I’m not sure what is.

 

C’mon mate the games up, he doesn’t even go over videos studying our opponents. He * it at Bolton and Hibs and was lucky enough to get a second chance at us, I know you will defend him to the death but he is finished it’s just a matter of time.

 

The high-quality evidence is right in front of our eyes every time we lose the ball.

You see how well a team are coached when they are dispossessed. We look like a team of under 12s who run back when we lose it and run forward when we have it. No one in position anticipating anything.

Basic things like players movement off the ball should all be synchronised as they’ve shadowed attacking phases in training every day.

Our organisation from set pieces is shambolic, in both boxes.

Almost every aspect of our play is lacking due to our sad excuse of a coaching team.

 

I think he's finished here too, mate, and I don't deny he's done a bad job this season. I have conceded that point since the first Prague game. But folk are acting as though his doing a bad job this season is proof that he was always pish. I don't think his record shows that. If people want to argue that, they have to make a separate argument for that. No one has provided anything like a watertight argument for that, but they act like it is as settled as the fact that he has * up this season.

 

I think all of that's true... for this season.

 

Gerrard managed one 1-0 win v Rodgers in a game where we had neither a striker nor a left back.

And even then we were always in it, McGregor (from left back) had a legitimate goal ruled out and Ntcham had a late goal bound shot blocked on the line.

Regardless, Rodgers would never have allowed us to be outplayed by them on several occasions thereafter.

Lennon said he didn't even watch the cup final back because the next fixture would be a "different game"... and what happened? We lost the next game with a performance identical to the cup final.

Horrendous management.

He hasn't a clue. We'll be destroyed at the Bigotdome in January BTW.

 

@Gyp Rosetti to be 100% honest, I suspect that the game and coaching itself have both moved on since MON's days and that Lenny still tries to coach as if it were 2003. I also think it is quite plausible that the gap between how Lenny coaches and what a club like Celtic expects has grown since 2013. I wanted him, but probably I was wrong. I thought he'd take on board all the analytical and high-tech stuff Rodgers brought and add that to his own skill set, sadly he doesn't seem to have done that.

But it is annoying me that folk are acting like he is shockingly incompetent. The majority of his seasons at Celtic were successful. Last season was extremely successful. They talk about Bolton and try to explain away Hibs.

He's done a lot of good things. He's not what Celtic need in the modern game, but folk arguing that he's always been incompetent haven't demonstrated this assertion. It's annoying me that they keep repeating that as if it were an obvious, uncontested fact.

That he's doing a bad job this season is obvious and uncontested and so is the fact that he is incoherent in his interviews this season.

That he's not kept up with how coaching is done at big clubs in the modern game is looking more plausible by the week and has a fair degree of evidence to back it, sadly.

But that he's always been an incompetent coach... tactically inept... doesn't develop players... and any number of other such opinions you can find being stated as if they were facts on this thread, those things are very far from having been demonstrated. I will continue to argue against them.

 

1) You can't actually know what would have happened with Rodgers.
2) Lenny had more key players missing for the game this season than Rodgers did.
3) Most importantly, no one is arguing that Lenny is as good as Rodgers. What's happening at Leicester shows that Rodgers is still one of the top 5 or 6 coaches in the UK.

The point is that Gerrard is quite good tactically (see their EL results over 2 seasons) and that being outfoxed by him on several occasions (not every occasion!) does not mean you are tactically inept.

It's absolutely not good enough for Celtic, but that's a different claim altogether.

 

I might be wrong but I haven’t seen anyone saying he was always incompetent. He’s majorly out of his depth and incompetent now in the current game.

Before that he was simply a bang average manager, even in his first spell.

 

Lennon's weakest point has always been his tactics. I don't need fancy stats or other than what I have seen with my own eyes since 2010 to back that up.

Lennon's biggest attibute is that he has been a motivator. This season has shown evidently that he is failing abysmally to even do that.

 

There are loads of posts stating exactly that in this very thread.

 

You're entitled to that opinion, but people who feel the same way as you need to stop stating that opinion as a fact.

You may not need facts or stats to be correct, in general your football judgement has always struck me as quite insightful; but members do need them if they want to claim that their opinions are facts.

 

People have said he’s always been poor tactically, which I think is fair enough. As Paddy said, Lennon’s biggest strength according to players was always his motivational skills and man management. It wasn’t him being a genius tactician or a fantastic coach.

Now the man management, or at least the motivational stuff, appears to have gone out the window and there’s very, very little left.

 

I think it's fairly clear that he's not "a genius tactician". That's a total straw man.

 

It’s not, because it was a facetious comment. I know nobody thinks he is one.

Jesus...

 

Thanks, I appreciate that. I've close to 30 years experience of watching football under my belt.

Tell me, what method would be used to stick it down to a "fact" then, for argument's sake?