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A Team’s Courage Starts With The Manager. It’s Time For Brendan To Show The Leadership We Need.

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I hate to argue with my man David Campbell, who always writes passionately and honestly about how he feels, but he let a lot of people at Celtic Park off too easily earlier, whilst criticising the very people with the most right to complain.

The fans are the only people who don’t deserve criticism for last night; there were a group of them who went over there and spent good money to do so who did deserve better than that. Our season ticket holders deserve better than what they’ve watched all season.

Our manager can’t escape his share of the criticism either.

Brendan’s criticism of the defence last night was right on; the standard of some of it was amateur hour. What I found a little harder to accept was his assertion that the team did not show the appropriate level of courage in the game.

Because frankly, neither did he.

The system we played last night was conservative at best, and whilst I understood why I would have loved to have seen a little more adventure. The slow passing game is not suited to us yet; Brendan could have shaken things up by playing more direct, perhaps with two up front.

This is a bug-bear of fans that will be brought up over and over again.

A goal for us last night would have changed the whole complexion of the tie. We had done the hard part, and gone there without conceding one. Score at any point, but in particular in the early stages, and their own game plan would have been in ruins.

Instead, we allowed them to dictate the terms of the game … and if you do that you are asking for trouble, no matter who you’re playing against.

Our tactical system is often too focussed on keeping possession rather than driving the ball up the pitch. It makes the stats look good, but there are games when it is painful to watch and on those days when teams shut up shop against us – which is every team in the SPL now – we often find it difficult to break them down.

I understand the logic behind it. You keep the ball, and you try to drag the opposition players towards you, creating the space your attackers can exploit. It’s not rocket science, it’s very clear what the objective is. Unfortunately, it’s also easy to counter. If a team maintains its tactical discipline and holds its shape, if they don’t commit, then you face a wall of defenders and defensive midfielders who simply will not let you get past with the ball.

At times like this, a manager needs to be adventurous and last season that was our watch-word on so many big occasions. But it seems to me that this season we’ve slowed the game down and started to be ultra-cautious at times. The number of games in which we’ve passed the ball backwards more than we’ve moved it forwards cannot be down to the players … if they were not following the manager’s instructions we’d have seen melt-down before now.

Brendan arrived here with a reputation for being an inspirational boss. The kind of guy who could get into player’s heads and make them believe in themselves. If he’s saying our players lack courage, then isn’t that his failing as much as theirs?

He’s not wrong, by the way.

They do seem to lack courage. Heads go down too easily when the going gets tough. I also think I know when it happened; the savaging by PSG was the moment a lot of these guys lost the swagger that got them through last season. They are hurting psychologically, but nobody can put that right better than the manager.

The example has to start with him.

He needs to get this group of players together for a frank heart to heart on where they are and what’s gone wrong.

He has to tell them to put the European campaign in the rear view mirror and remember what they accomplished last year … the Invincibles. Our players are no less than they were then … they’ve just lost that belief somewhere.

And it’s his job to get it back, to put the fire in their bellies again, to convince them – not that they should need it, look at the league table – that here, at home, we’re untouchable on our day. Europe was a scorching experience for these guys; their pride, their confidence, took a massive hit. The only way to get it back is to start winning again, consistently, comprehensively.

It’s going to take a big psychological effort to pick us up from this and get us through the rest of the domestic campaign. We’re chasing a treble; our players need to refocus and find the energy and commitment levels that will get it for us. The manager has a background in neurolinguistics; it’s a field of study which is used by motivational coaches across the world … now’s the time to start digging into the playbook again.

I believe in this guy. I believe in this team. They need to start believing in themselves again, all of them. If Brendan delivers a second treble on the bounce he’s made history, and so have these players, and then nobody is going to care about the bumps along the way.

And then the summer beckons, and he can stamp his mark on this club for real.

We just have to get there, to get over the line.

And we can. And we will.

Because David Campbell got the last bit of article 100% right.

In Brendan We Trust.

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