So today ends the SPL campaign.
Once again, we are champions. We have collected the trophy, and the players are enjoying their triumph. We all are.
But this has been a season of ups and downs, and highs and lows.
We have learned a lot in this campaign. About loyalty. About disloyalty. We have learned who we can rely on and the sort of people we cannot. We have learned what this team is made of – the very best. This team has come so far. They have a long way still to go.
The next one is a big one.
We’re going for nine in a row, folks!
But what are the most important lessons we learned in this campaign?
That We Are Still The Only Show In town … By Far.
The first thing that this season proved is this; everything in Scottish football revolves around us and that shows no signs of changing. In particular, we are the singular obsession of every person at Ibrox, from the manager to the players. So many times this season, before crucial games, they talked about us even when we weren’t the opposition.
It even extended to how they viewed the disciplinary process; slanted in favour of Celtic (and of Scott Brown in particular.)
This is important to note for two reasons; first, every team wants to be the one to stop us and this means, usually, that when they play us they put as many men behind the ball as they can. Every time changes its own system against us, even the Ibrox one. In the cups, the team that stops us will celebrate it like taking the trophy.
In the context of Ibrox it’s important because they consistently forget that there are ten other teams in the league, and so they underestimate those sides over and over again, to their detriment. They still believe that they can win leagues simply by getting the right results against us; irony of ironies, the two sides took six points out of twelve. If they’d been better against the rest they would have been in with a chance. They still don’t get that, and focus on us.
We can use this to our advantage all the way through the next campaign, as the rest of the teams watch us for signs of weakness they will cut each other’s throats again and again. This is normal when one side dominates to the extent we have; perversely, it puts the pressure on those clubs when the pressure should really be on ours. It’s beautiful.
That Some Members Of This Team Are Dead Tired.
There are a handful of our footballers who have played more games than any other players in Europe, and those guys are now feeling the effects of three consecutive seasons of it.
It is unbelievable how hard the likes of Kieran, Callum, Scott and James have worked over the course. When you consider the number of European qualifiers, group games, knockout round matches – and this is just in continental competition – it’s the equivalent of half any other side’s whole season.
Then there’s our unremitting success in the domestic cup competitions … for other sides, they get free midweeks and weekends because they are out. We just keep on winning and so the games just pile up. The SPFL’s idiotic decision to slam the League Cup Final into a slot before December continues to disadvantage us because it deprives us of free time in which to prepare for European ties. There is no sign of this ridiculous scenario changing either.
The result is that a significant section of our side is running on empty and has been for weeks. Kieran has broken down, finally, after the most unbelievable schedule in the whole of world football; virtually no player on the planet has been in so many matches.
Added to this was an injury crisis which kept many of these guys – Scott Brown, Callum and James – in the team when their might have been options to rest them. The next manager needs a stronger first team squad to work with, and cover in each position. Whilst not a big fan of rotation systems, there are players in our side who simply can’t be asked to continue like this. They will be dropping like flies eventually, and probably at the worst possible time.
That One Tactical System Will Just Not Suffice.
In Brendan Rodgers first campaign, the 4-2-3-1 worked wonders.
The slow and steady build up was an alien system for every side who played us, working to tremendous effect in Scotland. Teams who expected us to play traditional domestic football were amazed when we slowed our whole game down to draw out defenders and make space for players to move into.
By the second season it had gotten stale, and predictable.
We went almost the full campaign without winning four league games in a row, doing so eventually but never putting together the sort of winning run that came in Brendan’s first season, the winning run which shattered points records and gave us the title Invincibles. It was a winning formula we seemed reluctant to dump.
Amazingly, we still won a second treble, but the cracks had begun to show. When we started this season playing exactly the same way, with every club knowing it by heart and many having learned how to effectively counter it, I knew it would be a long campaign.
Several managers had it so well figured out that Rodgers struggled against them time and time again. One of the managers who was most effective at stifling it was Neil Lennon; incredibly he has persisted with it, including the lunatic tactic of playing one man up front against packed defences and crossing the ball into the box.
He says it’s because players are “comfortable” with it. Yeah, and so are opposing players in going up against it. Our players will just have to learn something new, all the better to catch rival clubs off-guard all over again. Do that right and we’ll run away with the title.
The 4-2-3-1 has had its day. One up front might have too. That system has got to go, or at the very least it has to be married to at least one other formation and tactical plan. A manager who is flexible in his approach, and can change it to adapt to each team we go up against, would smash through this league like a wrecking ball.
That We Cannot Count On A “Level Playing Field” Next Season.
The number of incidents, this season, in which players who have committed brutal fouls on our players is ridiculously high. The witch-hunt against Scott Brown has reached dazzling proportions. The Ibrox club racked up a huge number of red cards; just as significant were the number of times their players got away with stuff no other club’s footballers would have.
And this is only the beginning. Operation Stop The Ten gets more intense the closer we are to the number, and if this season was bad you can only imagine what next season will bring, especially if we have Neil Lennon – no stranger to being singled out by the media and the authorities both – sitting in the dugout.
Our enemies will go all-in to stop this.
Celtic hasn’t done nearly enough to push for the kind of reforms that would ensure transparency and take this element out of the equation. As a result, it is this – and not what any club might do – which seems to represent the biggest, and most obvious, danger to our chances of success.
An SFA which allows our players to be brutalised whilst also punishing us for any indiscretion, can shave points off us better than any opposition striker can. This potential for this is so obvious that it is frankly astounding that we’ve yet to tackle it properly.
If we don’t do it by the start of the next campaign, we are putting ourselves at the mercy of people who think elbowing our captain in the face is a booking. I cannot think of anything more dangerous than that, and it will cost us big time unless we act.
That The Stability Of The Club Is Vital To Continued Success.
From an early point of this season, until the moment the final whistle blew today, our club has been a house divided, and the whole place reeling of instability.
I knew how bad it was at a meeting at Celtic Park on the morning after the AEK game at home, when Peter Lawwell expressed his frustration at the manager, who the previous night a “Celtic official” had slammed to the BBC.
I knew that day Rodgers was not be at the club next season, and I feared what must be going on behind the scenes. When the manager could not contain his frustrations in January when talking about the Shved signing it eliminated any hope that things had been resolved, or could be.
Rodgers was gone inside of a month, and plunged us into more instability.
Had Lennon been made interim boss whilst we conducted a search for someone better the whole thing might have been more calm; someone thought to tell the press that he would be in the running for the gig based on how the remaining games went. That was never likely to be unifying.
And our club is risking failure unless it is united.
Our club is a house divided as this season closes, and the sad truth of it – especially for those who do believe in Lennon – is that his appointment will only open the divisions wider. Even I am aghast at how deep the opposition to him goes, and I am part of it.
Call this a tragedy, call it unfair, call it a disgrace or even high treason if that’s how you feel about it; it remains a fact, as hard as that fact is to accept. A new manager will re-set the whole club, unify it behind him and move us forward again. It has to, because God forbid we go through another year of instability like we just had; it is a minor miracle that the players have remained strong throughout and come out of it as winners, on the brink of history.
Rodgers has a lot to answer for; his selfishness and ego were part of this and he proved that in the shameful way he departed Celtic Park. Others, still inside the club, have to answer for their own part in it, because they were equally selfish, equally egocentric.
That Our Board Needs To Seriously Step Up Its Game.
Lawwell is lucky that the manner of Rodgers’ departure was so beyond the pale as to easily paint him as the villain of the piece, because the CEO had his own part to play in the chaos that we were plunged into and it goes back to a catastrophic summer transfer window where his performance was nothing short of appalling and his failure to back the manager nothing short of disgraceful.
Lawwell and those around him mismanaged that window to such a degree that if it had detonated the club – as it could have, easily – they would have been instant hate figures on the level of those who took us to the brink of bankruptcy in the 90’s. It is inconceivable that any of them could have remained at Celtic Park. This season’s triumph was in spite of them, and they should feel a deep sense of shame if they even attempt to claim credit for any part of it.
Have they even looked for a replacement for the manager? If they come out after the Scottish Cup Final and say that time is against them every one of them should be called out for it because to squander more than two months, as they would have, would be unconscionable.
Hey, they had a simple decision to make here. They either believed in Lennon enough to give it to him or they harboured doubts. If they harboured doubts they should have been busy right from the moment Rodgers signed the Leicester deal.
If it’s Lennon many of us will consider that a backward step of momentous proportions, and a sign that they have massively scaled back their ambitions for the club. But whoever is appointed manager will need to be backed properly regardless, and from the start. Another window like the last two will spark an outcry like nothing they’ve ever seen before.
Let me put it this way, if it’s Lennon and he doesn’t get backed then those who clamoured for his appointment will conclude – and they will be right to – that with the support so split the board are effectively throwing a good man under the bus.
Those of us who opposed it will see it as further proof that the downsizing has begun in earnest and our fury will be no less.
If it’s not Lennon then failure to back him properly will be a dire beginning, and because that person is new in the job he will be forgiven if he fails to hit the ground running … but they will not. The board needs to understand the position they are in here.
Serious reinforcements are needed and they have to be delivered, and in a timely fashion.
Brendan Rodgers delivered in spite of it all. Neil Lennon has delivered in the league, and we expect he’ll deliver in the cup. Those two men did exactly what was required of them. The fans continue to pack out the ground and spend money. And the players? My God, what can you say about them except bravo, bravo, bravo for coping in the midst of it all.
Those players are legends, every one of them, a title they’ve earned.
Everyone involved has performed magnificently … except the board. It is high time – it is past time – that they upped their game. If we were grading them on this season they’d get a D … D for dreadful, and they are lucky it wasn’t D for disastrous.
That Even In A Difficult Year, We Are Still Too Strong.
With our club having been mired in behind-the-scenes nonsense all season long, and with the media and others playing their own games, next weekend will be one of the sweetest in our history if we secure 3Treble. I cannot imagine how I will feel when the final whistle blows in the game; it is a level of success beyond anything I ever expected.
This team has shown the kind of mental strength and fortitude every other club in world football would kill for. They might be tired – indeed some of them are clearly exhausted – but they soldier on. They endure. And they succeed in spite of it.
If the manager gets the reinforcements he needs these players will be playing less games and under less pressure than at any point in the last five years; remember, this is still Ronny Deila’s team we’re watching here, that’s the incredible thing about it.
So many of these players have grown into their roles and their positions. Some, like Ajer and Edouard an Ntcham, still are. They will only get better.
I am amazed at how consistent these guys have been over the last three years. So much so that even now, in one of our hardest years in a while, we’ve not only been successful but are on the brink of an almost impossible achievement.
That This Team Can Just Go On Making History.
Imagine these footballers next season playing as part of a strengthened squad under a manager who has changed the tactical style and caught the rest of the league by surprise.
Imagine them all fit, and raring to go, taking that winners mentality with them into a campaign on the back of 3Treble, a side that has been untouchable for years.
Is there any reason why we cannot easily secure nine in a row and put at least one of the domestic trophies in the cabinet with it?
Is 4Treble really beyond the realms of possibility? The perverse scheduling of the League Cup means that with the right start to the campaign we could have a sizeable league lead and the first trophy already won by Christmas.
As with last year, the League Cup Final is the day to aspire to.
If we’re there and we win that, who the Hell would bet against us to do another clean sweep?
It’s all in front of this team. That’s what should scare our rivals most.
The bulk of this squad are still in their twenties; there are years left in most of them.
A careful process of planning should ensure that the next generation are being blooded even as we continue to win things, and don’t forget that all of this is on a self-sustaining model and so we can just keep on moving forward. Far from being at the end of a cycle, I think much of this team is just starting, and there are players in the squad like Ryan Christie and Ajer who are growing into their shirt more with every game … they will be the lynchpins of the next great Celtic team.
A Stressful League Campaign Is Over. The Quest For Nine Starts Now.
The club will need to be remade in the summer, but that is not the daunting task many people appear to believe it is.
Those who think that we’ve already let the clock get away from us are ignoring how quickly Rodgers was able to come in and make an impact. There is no reason to believe that the next guy won’t be able to do the same, whoever he is.
The quest for nine in a row starts now; indeed, it should already be underway.
The board should have been busy sounding out managers, the scouts should have been busy looking for players, the analysts should be going over data and identifying the areas where training could be improved and on and on. A football club is like a shark; it has to be permanently in motion or it dies.
Sun Tzu knew that success is all in the preparation.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win,” he said, and that is the key.
We ought to be well in front of this already.
The next few weeks will be telling.