Neil Lennon

Made that much more difficult than it needed to be.

Delighted for him but that was yet more evidence that he ain’t the man for the job.

 

Decisions today were baffling glad we've got the quality to dig out wins but he's making it so much harder than it needs to be.

 

Getting slaughtered for the Hayes sub... but he did make the call to throw him in in the first place! A decision many scoffed at.

Hayes was on a booking, Madden was the ref and we should of pushed on against 10 men regardless of Jonny * Hayes.

I didn't particularly like the sub, I don't want Lennon as manager next season, but he doesn't deserve this stick IMO.

 

* bless you, Neil Lennon. You stood up when Celtic called. But today was surely the day you lost the permanent job.

Celtic moved on as a club under Rodgers and we shouldn't be going back to being a team who have to battle to get wins against teams as poor as Hearts, Dundee and Sevco.

 

So Lennon has won at Tynecastle, Easter Road and beaten Rangers at home. He won at Dundee and a fairly drab draw at home to Aberdeen(who have the best away record in the league). Unbeaten in 5 after coming in on short notice and with a legend of the club at the time leaving so suddenly. Some people just have their mind made up he isn't for them and it's pretty obvious they won't change their stubborn mind. Personally I am happy enough on Lennon getting the gig full time.

 

Substituting Hayes when Tierney was not 100% was mental.

 

Wasnt sure over the selections of Hayes or Ntcham but both played well. Hayes sub I an understand with the yellow and Sinclair was far from the worst in the last 2nd half. I was happy with Rogic coming on but after seeing him, he doesn't look ready yet. 2 injuries unlucky.

Intensity dropped majorly 2nd half and that's my biggest concern. We let 10 men into the game and could have easily came away with a point or even nothing.

 

Burke should’ve been on instead of Sinclair, apart from his chance I thought he was rotten.

 

Aye I mean Burke or Weah were options too. I can understand why he put on Sinclair though, been there and done it

 

He saw a demolition Derby at half time and went for the jugular with Sinclair as oppose to Hayes protecting. Nearly backfired horribly.

 

Hayes had done nothing wrong and shouldn't have been taken off at half-time, unless there is an injury that we don't know about. It really seemed to be Lenny wanting a hammering without thinking about it clearly. The best way we could have went about a hammering was continuing in the same manner. KT wasn't 100%, Ntcham wasn't 100%, so why needlessly risk a substitution when we were so dominant? If he had left it for ten to fifteen minutes he would have seen how these played out. Hayes had hit some decent set-pieces and got stuck in, I know there was the danger of the second yellow, but there was nothing to suggest he was going to pick up another.
We started the second half well, but Ntcham was clearly tiring, so if he wanted to go for the jugular, it wouldn't have been ridiculous to take Ntcham off for Weah or Burke and play a 4-4-2. They were down to ten and struggling in midfield anyway and it was clearly too soon for Rogic as soon as he came on.

Look, if Sinclair scores we are probably talking about how clever the substitution was, but he didn't and the unnecessary nature of it stands out. It caused a domino effect that ended up with ten men on the pitch. If Hayes wasn't injured, that is just really unprofessional. As is the fact that he seemed unaware of how ready Rogic was. `

 

Yaaaaaaaaaas Lenny get those hun * telt!

 

Neil Lennon's here for ten in a row!

 

Ye raging with the score?

 

This narrative is all going one way. I want to start a different one for a bit of balance*.

That second half was the kind of mentally weak, gutless performance we've seen too much whenever the going gets tough (in Europe or last time out at Ibrox) from Rodgers' team the last two seasons. I hope Lenny can continue to turn that around. The first half and the way we didn't fold in that last 15 minutes like we did at Ibrox shows that he is at least making progress. * bless Neil Lennon.

* Do I really believe that narrative? Not completely, the truth is somewhere in the middle; but I wanted to balance things out, because he's getting way too much stick for today. Toljan was forced on him and I would argue Hayes off was too (because, well, Madden). Ntcham was exhausted but replacing him with an unfit Rogic was a mistake; but lets not get carried away with one mistake.

I tell you one thing (and I mean this quite genuinely): given that their game plan was (again) to turn it into a physical battle and that our performance for much of that second half was very reminicent of Ibrox and finally given he would have played Sinclair instead of Hayes from the start and that his teams almost never seem to rally again once their heads drop unlike the guys today in that last 15 minutes today, I genuinely think we'd have lost that today under Brendan.

 

NL: "It was a brilliant win, it was a brilliant game. It was a cracking Glasgow derby and I’m delighted we’ve come out on the positive side of it."

NL: "I thought, overall, we deserved it. Obviously, when Rangers scored they gained a psychological edge and it got a little anxious around the stadium, and they really threw things at us.


NL: "We came through it and scored a great goal to win it and I couldn’t be more happy for the players and the supporters."

NL: "All this football over the past two-and-a-half years sometimes catches up.
@kierantierney1
was struggling again, and there are a few aches and pains in there. And we lost Dedryck to a bad hamstring injury. So that’s a real blow for us.

NL: "
@ScottBrown8
gets elbowed and then he gets punched in the face. It’s disgraceful, and you can’t put the two in the one basket. Our players kept their discipline really well and Rangers should have been down to nine men rather than 10."

NL on
@Oedouard22
: "He’s a quiet boy and takes a bit of getting to know, but he had the shackles off today, we let him loose and he was outstanding in all aspects of his game today.

NL on Forrest: "James is a great player, a big-game player who produces big moments in big games, and Jamesy knows what I think of him

NL: "It was a good triumvirate there in midfield with
@ScottBrown8
,
@OlivierNtcham
and McGregor, a strong midfield with a good balance to it, and it looked that way for as long as Olivier was on the pitch."

 

Used all of his get out of jail free cards today. Got it so right in starting Hayes and then so badly wrong in subbing him at half time.

He obviously smelt blood and went for the big win but it just never worked at all. In the end 10 men had us on the ropes and it nearly went so horribly wrong.