Neil Lennon

NL: We were fantastic and thoroughly deserved the win. I'm so happy for the players and the club. Our source of frustration was going out the Champions League and there’s no denying there’s been a hangover from that but since then we've won seven-in-a-row."

NL: We had to be physically strong. I thought we lacked aggression in our play in the first-half but second-half was a lot better and the game went our way. A little bit of luck and we could've won the game by more.


NL: Hatem did a great job coming in for Nir so early. You can see the players are coming into their form now. It's a big night for us, another group stage and hopefully we can make inroads now in the competition."

NL: On Nir Bitton: "He's been superb. He rolled his ankle, twisted it so it's a bad one. He won't be available for the weekend or the international matches. It's another blow to us because he's been in brilliant form."

 

Shall you tell him or shall I?

 

You tell him.

 

Sneakily fixed ;-)

 

Not fantastic Neil, we havent been all season bar the odd moments.
Frustration came BEFORE that defeat in the CL.
If there has been a hangover from that, then why is it still not fixed? Keeping in mind he has told us every game has been fantastic since then - in fact even that game he claimed was a good performance, so not sure what hangover he thinks we have, if he equally thinks every game has been brilliant in some form since then.


Feel like hitting the head against the wall any time he does an interview now, but the main thing is, and he is quite right, 7 wins in a row since that shambles, and we are through to the groups.
Job done.

 

I think he got a word from the board after the ferencevaros game, every post match since then has been a variation of "we've been excellent, they boys were fantasist and controlled the game"

Might see more realistic post match interviews after the transfer window in closed....

 

What is it people expect the manager to say after a dominant performance away from home in Europe?

I swear the moaning is just moaning for the sake of it now.

Two away wins in Europe to reach the group stages, put a run together in the league where we will be top if we win our game in hand and yet we still aren't firing on all cylinders.

Is it not about time we cut the man some slack? FFS

 

Wasn't that long ago we couldn't buy a * win away in Europe, now its not good enough all of a sudden? I honestly don't understand it.

The * thing is I think this is going to run until we drop points in the league and people are going to get tore right into him again.

 

Congratulations Neil. Great job.

 

Never saw the game, set my alarm for 2:15am, woke up said ill close my eyes for 2mins, thats me just woke up :|, but ill take any win, would have been disappointed not seeing Turnbull get a start though, but job done.

 

Said in the match thread but I don't know why anyone would have expected Turnbull to start tonight. It was never going to happen and neither should it have.

Lads got a bright future but he's practically just in the door and had a good 45 minutes for the club.

There will be plenty of European nights for him going forward.

 

Brown would not have started for me, whilst he played well against Hibs, I would have predicted Sarajevo parking the bus so would have needed more creative attacking intent. But as I said I never saw the game so can't really judge, just happy with the win.

 

I'm sorry but that is utter madness. You would have dropped one of most decorated players, our captain and the guy who has a wealth of CL and EL experience for a young lad who has had a good 45 minutes for us after a year out of action, in one of our biggest games of the season?

Bizarre man, utterly bizarre.

 

Nothing bizarre about it at all, he has been well off par, one good game doesn't remove that fact. We have enough experience already in the side if your justification for starting Brown is “decorated and experienced” then that’s equally bizarre.

But he might have played well tonight which is good, but still nothing bizarre about dropping him.

 

Like any manager, he makes mistakes (I would count Cluj and a couple of the Hun games as examples of that) and criticism is warranted when that happens, but he's got so much right in both spells here that it's clear he's done a very good job overall. I can't understand why his achievements constantly have to be justified. Elaborate (and flimsy) arguments are constructed to explain away all his many achievements here and at Hibs, attempts to address these resulting in epicycles upon epicycles upon epicycles to make them work (forgive the non-football analogy). People talk as if they know exactly what his motives are for his decisions as if they could somehow read his mind or something. They dismiss his own explanations in favour of apparent mind reading. Take Ferencvaros. Eddy was injured, Ajeti wasn't fit, we all know about Griffiths and Lenny said Klimala wasn't ready (something that he has clearly been shown to be right about since IMHO). But no, we don't need to take his explanation seriously. Maybe it's that he's stubborn, or he doesn't learn, or he knows nothing about tactics...

It's just loopy. Some people might remember that it's not the first time we've gone into CL qualifiers with no fit players for key positions under more than 1 manager too. Someone should look at that...

So, yes, what you say is exactly what will happen, because it always happens. And the arguments will be the exact same when it does.

I've said it before, but I'm convinced there's a framing around Neil Lennon that starts with the media and too many of us accept that framing even as we reject the specific contents of their bullshit articles and the framing is pure poison.

 

He did struggle a bit the last 10 minutes TBH, but before that he had a really good game and was a big part of why we controlled the game almost right through.

 

There is nothing equally bizarre about dropping a player and replacing him with a youngster in such a high pressure game. Broony probably has more games in Europe for us than Turnbull has professional games in his entire career. Even if Turnbull had started more games for us in the league before tonight it would still have been a massive gamble and one you better believe would have been used to slaughter the manager had he done it and we lost.

Its moot anyway. Broony played and we won. Turnbull will have plenty of European nights for us I'm pretty sure of that.