Neil Lennon

That's debatable.

But in any case, if it were one game in isolation it might be an acceptable mitigating factor. However, Lennon's been outplayed and outthought by Gerrard on several occasions, including two of the games we fortunately managed to hang on and win - the 2-1 game at Parkhead in March 2019 and the cup final last season.

And it's not just Gerrard who has schooled him, you can go back to his first tenure and see two humiliations handed out by that managerial collousus Ally McCoist - one of which took place after the old Huns had been placed in administration.

He is very, very fortunate to be managing Celtic.

 

But there's too much of that.

To be clear: Rodgers was giving players detailed dossiers on their immediate opponent for routine league matches and Lennon was musing on whether he had given the players too much or too little information after a big European game.
No one can deny that we have clearly regressed tactically and that tactics are not a particular strength of Lenny's coaching. That is obvious.

It's not at all obvious that he is tactically incompetent, though. Rodgers is one of the best coaches in the UK.

 

@Random Review if Eddy scores a belter and everyone posts "That was a * great goal"

Will you ask for evidence and reasoning as to why in their opinion it was a great goal?

This is all a bit bizarre

 

Evidence, stats...

 

The one thing I will add is at all his other clubs and this spell with us is he has fell out with players, that’s part of the argument that he hasn’t moved with the times. You cannot constantly flip flop on players, he is throwing them under the bus one day the next he’s building them a lounge to harmonise the squad. So what’s happened from say after the break last season when we were absolutely ruthless? You can’t sack a full team even if the spineless * are as much to blame, so the buck stops with Lennon. Though we also know it goes way deeper than that aswell.

 

We can all see Eddy's goal directly. We can't see Lenny's coaching, we can only infer things from its indirect results. Results which have multiple causes, Lenny's coaching being one.

That's exactly the kind of domain where you need evidence to claim something as a fact.

 

It does seem remarkably similar to the end with Hibs. I really wish he had learned from that.
In hindsight, it probably wasn't good for him to get the Celtic job so soon after he fell out with the players at Hibs. It must have made it hard not to feel justified and to sit down and analyse what he did wrong. I guess he'll do that this time; but that's not much help for us.

 

We can also see the shape of our team in and out of possession, the marking at set pieces, the spaces and positions players occupy during a game.

Those all come from the manager and coaching team.

Some football journalists/bloggers literally make a living by writing about the tactical ideas of different managers and systems etc. Again, anyone with half a brain can watch football matches and make observations and judgements based on what we’re watching.

 

* me lad, that would be a long list!

Right, let's take the last hun's game for example, and make it simple:

Regardless of what players Lennon had at his disposal, he chose to operate with a 3-5-2.

Huns strengths are without doubt in the wide areas.

Right away Lennon * it by having one Celt against two huns on either side of the pitch.

Remained with one man isolated up front against a very together defence.

Tried to pack the midfield to counter hun dominance through their 3-man midfield, they totally bypassed our players.

Look at every single one of our midfielders (actually every one of our players almost to a man) - when the opposition players have the ball our players go toward said opposition player. Do they put a tackle in? No, or at least very rarely - what they do is they try and harrie them (jockey) which is the equivalent of trying to waft away the smell of a fart with a tennis racket.

Don't even get me started on the shape and organisation of the defence, and the ridiculous attempts at continuous zonal marking...

 

Lennon’s a diddy. Get over it.

* *.

 

Where’s your evidence to back it up?

 

TBF There's a lot of fair points there; but they're all from this season. I know he's having a mare.

 

Stats don’t tell the full story with what he offers.


Or whatever the pish was he said about Browny x

 

For what it's worth ..and I've been here before with some members..BUT

I've yet to see Lenny outplay Gerrard and win convincingly....even his 2-0 Ibrox win was a pretty even game from my point of view.

 

There was a study published in Nature recently: nature.com/lennonisadiddy

 

Ok then, last season.

Completely obliterated in the cup final by the huns. Without debate. Honestly still to this day I cannot believe we managed to * that win.

Lennon carries on with the same flat team shape and selection the following game at Celtic Park. Loses 1-2. Outplayed and outfought at almost every single aspect.

Finishes the year in 2nd place.

To his credit though, switches to 3-5-2 (or 3-5-1-1) and steamrolls the opposition for the remainder of the year.

Then, this season, reverts back to 4-2-3-1...

 

It is like arguing with a conspiracy theorist. You cannot win.

 

He also started Callum McGregor at left back last season against Cluj, to get his “best technicians” on the pitch. The game where we shipped 4 goals at home.

Nothing to do with the tactics, though...

 

The cup final, Eddy was missing for most of it and we looked immediately better when he came on (even though he wasn't fit). We had to play with Morgan (who isn't even good enough as a winger) up front.

Sure, we didn't lead at New Year. That happens sometimes when you have real rivals, but as you say we put together a to * of a run afterwards to pull away. Some of my favourite titles involved comebacks (e.g. that one under WGS).

Then, when assessing if he is tactically incompetent, you can't just pull up his mistakes (and of course he has made some); you also have to look at the good things he did. While a lot of it was the players and there was a degree of luck involved and I don't for a second think it was down to Lenny being a great tactician, you simply can't qualify from your CL group or win your EL group if you are tactically incompetent. It's not possible to be that lucky, because you don't have superior players to rescue you like you domestically.

Yes, he also had seasons were he made bad mistakes in Europe too. It's a bit of a mixed bag. I'm only arguing here that he's not incompetent.

 

Rodgers made the same mistake against the Huns. Rodgers is an excellent tactician and he literally made that same mistake. It's clearly an easier mistake to make than we imagine.