Neil Lennon **The Official Thread**

I think Lennon - in terms of selection - really messed up by picking Ambrose and not starting Ledley and Matthews. However, tactically, in terms of shape and philosophy, he got it almost spot on. We had to be all over them to stem the supply to Pirlo (which we did very well, for the most part), and by and large we kept the ball quite well. However, as some have pointed out (and as I've been saying for the past year or so with regard to so many other games), we were just far too direct at times. Often we played good, patient, passing football to put them under pressure, but on the other hand, too often we got hasty and went for the daft 20-yard shot or risky cross, squandering possession.

 

The biggest mistakes of the night was his decision to play Ambrose and his subs for me.

Taking our best player in the middle of the park off (Kris Commons) and the man who was intercepting everything and playing the ball back into play for us (Scott Brown) was not the wisest of decisions.

 

Couldn't agree more on that last point: Brown off was the worst substitution of the entire campaign. He and Lustig had been running the show on that right hand side (until Lustig got injured anyway).

 

I can understand wanting Kayal on, battling qualities and good on the ball but not at the expense of Brown, who was like 3 guys in the midfield. The only reason I could think of was that he had been booked.

 

Having had some time to digest Tuesday's events, I now feel even more disappointed in Neil Lennon's team selection. I think he made a couple of errors there. I'm not even saying this with the benefit of hindsight, it's something I felt as soon as I saw the line-up.

There were 3 selections he got wrong in my view.........

Efe Ambrose - I don't think this one needs much explaining

Joe Ledley/Beram Kayal - Having both these guys sat on the bench for such a big game was a big mistake. At least one of them should have played.

James Forrest - He's the guy who should have been on the bench to make way for Ledley or Kayal. Forrest has barely kicked a ball this season and would never have been in my starting 11 for what was the biggest game of the season.


We all have off nights I guess. Unfortunately for us I think our manager had one on Tuesday night.

 

It was a disaster. Lenny made some bad decisions. The biggest one was not accepting the 1-0 scoreline. It comes down to the dream vs the reality. 0-0 at home gives us a chance.
4-5-1 we looked like the most solid unit, the turnaround is quite unbelievable.

I agree Forrest shouldn't have started, but he did a good job closing down players. Hooper was a key player for us and i have to say at set pieces, he doesn't look to score he looks to get in front of the keeper. So at set pieces and corners he's not in the right position to score. It also slowed the play down, which is what Juve wanted.

So, Hooper was told he should stay to play in this game, when we should have sold him and strengthened the team specifically with this game in mind. A target man would have been far more effective because we were allowed to fire the ball into the box at will.

So playing Efe was a massive blunder. The personnel on the bench and the substitutes meant that if Efe tired, or Lustig got injured (all high probabilities) what was the backup plan? It's easier to bring attackers on, than change the defense mid game and Lenny knows that, or at least he does now.

In my opinion, it goes to some unnecessary decisions back in January. Bangura is good in the air. Maybe not so good on the deck, but with the ball flighted into the box, he'd get on the end of them. I reckon this is the thing that was missed about Bangura.

So he goes back on loan after scoring a great header in the one game he got.

Now, we did well in the transfer window, but these players were omitted from the squad, as was Paddy McCourt - love him or hate him, he can unlock defenses in a way no other player can.

Rogic signs with the golden carrot of the Juventus game, omitted from the squad, plays in the league and gets player of the match.

Gershon - absolutely looks like an amazing threat at set pieces and corner kicks.
Omitted from the sqaud.

So rather than strengthen the sqaud for the Juve game, we weakened it and it was unnecessary.

Hooper got bullied against Juve, second leg he'll get bullied again. What Juve don't like is players up front who bully defenders. Hooper, Commons and Forrest can't do that. They offer other things like vision and pace and they all played well, i'm not saying they didn't.

I just think we went out and played into their hands. It nearly worked and we could quite easily be sitting having a completely different converation, but the reality is we got hammered.

We needed to think about the game over two legs and we played it as if we needed to win 3-0. We got greedy and impatient and it cost us.

Added to that the subs were a joke, the bench was a strange one and we weakened the side in January, not the side for the league, but the side for the Champions League.

4-5-1, for sure maybe it's a boring game - but that's what Conte didn't want.
He looked at the selection and said, well i don't even have to field my strongest side here. 0-0 or accepting 0-1, we'd have a chance but greed cost us the game along with all the other factors.

 

I dont even think Efe had that bad a game, 2 mistakes for goals aside and the bit he kicked the ball out for a corner, the rest he done well. He actually had a worse game in the game we beat Spartak Moscow 3-2 where Emenike had the beating of him 5/6 times. People are going on about it like he was getting ripped the pish out of throughout the game, when it was only really 2 mistakes which can happen to anyone in any game.

Was a gamble to play him since in the previous 48 hours he already played a game and spent 12+ hours in airports and on planes. But in the actual game it wasnt as bad as being made out, I never even thought he had a bad game until I seen the two goals on TV at the game they just looked random goals but he should have done better.

 

I thought his tactics were brave and for the most part worked;Playing three up front did'nt give pirlo the chance to influence the game and forced their defenders to defend deep.It was as simple as Ambrose having a bad night and not having a striker of the quality that they have.Obviously the ref did'nt help.

 

Aye when we were keeping possession he was good, actually. Unfortunately that's not what people remember. I feel really sorry for Efe. We knew he was going away so we should really have got cover in January.

 

He also missed a complete sitter that would have seen us right back in the tie. Granted he's not in the team to score, but * sake doesn't matter where you play you should be able to score a free header from 10 yards out in the middle of the goal. He also blocked a shot from Forrest that looked goal bound but you can't really blame him too much for that.

 

Aye the tactics were brave, but as it turned out they were stupid. It doesn't matter how close it was to working because we got beat 3-0 and they had other chances to score.

All the chances came down the same side of the park. So instead of setting up a defense and midfield that had no weakness, we now face the most embarrassing aggregate score in our short history in the Champions' League.

It was something we should have tried later in the game, when Juve's team weren't expecting it, but we had a weakness on Efe and Commons' side every time Juve went forward.

Realistically it could have worked, but the simpler approach would have been to stick with the tried and tested system. Then went for it as the game progressed, and we can be really chuffed about it being "close" to working but 0-3 isn't anywhere near close to working because of the weakness down the right, not just in defense but in midfield, because Commons goes out of position from time to time and Efe was used to playing a different system you see.

He spent a month playing the system Nigeria play against teams nowhere near this level.

If you add up all the factors, 12 hour flights etc, Efe should have been protected from this outcome.

Again, if Efe plays and we lose, it's fair enough. If we go 4-5-1 and lose it's fair enough, but losing 0-3 is unacceptable. It could end up 6-7 nil on aggregate, when we coould have given ourselves a chance and kept it exciting, especially for the fans going to the game in Turin.

 

I thought the tactics were spot on, formation and tactics. It was a lapse in application by an individual that resulted in 2 goals. It`s easy to say not to pick Ambrose, but you have to put in your best players and Ambrose & Wilson is the best partnership.

Gordon Strachan got it spot on. The potential opponents of Juventus in the next round, would only need to look at how we disrupted their play (45 minutes in particular) and replicate it.

 

To be fair, it's not the first time he's done that. I seem to remember 3-4 times he's been in a great position to head home and fired it over the bar or past the post. I think the fact that he got it on goal is actually a marked improvement.

 

And others would complain about not playing to win and trying to eke out a draw at home - you're never going to please anyone. If you ask me, our best chance of getting through the tie was to take something from this game and go to Turin with a lead. The game-plan took a kick in the nuts with the first goal, responded well but then just couldn't capitalize through a combination of poor finishing, shoddy refereeing and * luck. On another day, we score a goal or two and it's a different game. As it was we missed our opportunities and were deprived by the ref and then a quality side capitalized on what they created and were given. That's football.

 

Efe was in there and i'm sure he holds his hands up and takes responsibility for two of the goals. I put it down to a bit of inexperience. The first the boy just patted him on the shoulder when he went to jump.

Efe being the player he is, was maybe thinking about cushioning the header to one of the 3 players next to him. If that happens again he'll clear it.

This experience will ring in his ears for a while, hopefully it will help him become better.

I said a while ago we should play the way we played, but 0-3 is what's remembered.

If we go into the game and think we just need to win 1-0 we'll do OK.
If we go in thinking we need to win 4-0 we'll get killed out there.

We go for 1-0, if get it to 1-0, we look to win 2-0, if get it to 2-0 we still need to keep it tight.

That's the approach, 1-0 is a good result and we go out - so what. as long as we don't get cuffed it will have been a good education.

We're almost good enough to go all out attack, but we're not quite able to for 90 minutes, so for me we go to spoil the game keep possession and be patient and be absolutely clinical.

 

I know khunter, i totally agree. But the reality was at no point did we think, right OK let's be realistic here. 4-5-1 is what works for us in Europe, then changing it later in the game.

Results matter more than how we play is what i'm getting at. We went for a big result and we ended up with the reverse. So whether we think it was the right thing to do or not, it completely backfired.

You can't post all the blame on Efe, other players were around him.

The ball played high for the first had a lot of backspin on it, maybe even swerving too. He goes to jump and finds his momentum gets stopped by a simple wee tap on the shoulder, he's on the wrong side of the player, but it was a great pass, that you rarely see.

Second goal he has the ball, is looking for a pass and everyone is static, they are all bunched up and ball watching.

Third one the same thing, the guys are caught cold, the ball goes, ping-ping at a really high tempo. Again, he loses a yard on the boy, but by this point Efe's on the biggest downer of his career, because nobody will beat themselves up more than Efe.

He can however correct it in the next game.

 

That's the thing, all the players can correct it next game, maybe not get through but gain some respect from going out and playing well, even with 4-5-1

 

At the end of the day great football for spells during the game or not we were beaten 3-0. In a two legged tie its about still being in with a shout come the second leg.

After conceding the second goal we should have been far more conservative in our approach, we continued to go gung ho trying to get that goal back and we then concede a third.

Albeit the third goal came from Ambrose being an idiot playing about with the ball on the edge of his own box. During the group stages and against Barca we started off conservative, allowing ourselves to settle into the game and making sure we don't concede early. Why did we change our setup that was tried and tested.

Now fans may say we would cede possession to Juve but to be honest even playing 4-5-1 and having a few more players behind the ball i could still see us dominating the midfield battle. They were nowhere near as good as i thought they would be. There were at time huge gaps in midfield which is where the second goal came from, too many players not focused on their duties and from a thrown in we left pirlo, the most dangerous man on the pitch free in the centre circle.

For me it was more than just two awful mistakes from Ambrose, we set up for an all or nothing approach, when we should have been a little bit more cautious.

 

Exactly EB, we bought into this myth that Juventus are better than they actually are. If you look at our away form we haven't been conceding lots of goals away from home in Europe. So the sensible thing was to stick to the percentages. What was our best chance of going through, not conceding and going for a 1-0 away from home or a 4-0.

We found out how good we are in possession against them, so it bodes well for the next game.

Whatever they come out and say in the press, we should do the opposite. They're at it with the mind games already.

This team are big on the mind games. Lichtenstein coming out and trying to say stuff, Pirlo saying we could go out and play like Liverpool or whatever.

I hope that we can go back to our system and still play as well as we did.
It's just really Samaras in place of Forrest. Then Forrest on second half down the right.

With Ledley in place of Commons and Commons coming on as a sub or Commons from the start. We'll find a system. We're not far away against the best teams eh.