There is an outstanding moment towards the end of the first season of Aaron Sorkin’s remarkable show The West Wing where the administration of President Josiah Bartlett is in real trouble.
A senior member of the staff has just suffered embarrassment as a document she wrote whilst working for a rival politician, and which outlines the President’s weaknesses, has been published by a national newspaper; the President himself is treading water and afraid to make a move that might upset people; the staff is frustrated and some are felt to be ready to quit; key allies are lambasting the administration as soft and unfocussed and the public agrees.
The chief of staff is the most frustrated of all; the leaked document has blamed him for the mess claiming that he “steers the President to the centre.”
This, he knows, is nonsense, and in an Oval Office showdown he tells him so.
“You steer me there,” he says.
The two of them hash it out, with the chief of staff reminding his boss that the public elected a liberal who had big ideas and that the staff believed they had come to Washington to work for one.
He demands that the President now find that idealism and the courage to pursue the policies and the courses of action he talked about during the campaign.
He sums it up in a simple philosophy, which is to be the guiding principle of the administration from that moment on; “Let Bartlett be Bartlett.”
Therein lies the answer to our own current malaise.
It seems as if we’re a shadow of our former selves at the moment; we’re woolly, lacking in drive, the players seem unsure, the fans have real doubts, the club seems almost paralysed by fear.
But none of those things got us here; we are the best football team in the country, and as I said in the last article it only remains for us to snap back into that and things will start finding their rhythm again. All we have to do in order to succeed is go back to first principles.
Let Celtic Be Celtic.
And what does that involve? Well, let’s take a look ….
Bring Back The Thunder, Neil
One of the most noticeable aspects of our current form is the way the manager had apparently disconnected himself from what’s going on out on the pitch.
The Neil Lennon of old prowled the touchline line as if he longed to be back out on the park.
This one sits and watches, as if he’s a spectator rather than the man with the controls in his hands.
That is not like him at all. It’s not what we expect from him, and it’s a little bit disconcerting to see him just sitting there as things unravel around him.
Neil, we were told, was a different manager this time around; that’s certainly true.
He doesn’t get into trouble any more, he seems calmer … but the passion has been severely lessened of late and he is no longer the thunderous presence out there which he was.
We all welcomed the cooler, calmer Lennon … but not at this price.
What this team wouldn’t give right now for the man who let everyone know who was running the show.
A leader leads and right now Lennon looks more like a guy who’s sitting in his armchair at home, an observer rather than a driver of events.
The players need to see him more active and more vocal and the fans do too.
This is the guy who talked about “bringing the back the thunder” in his first spell as manager … oh how he needs to do that right now.
Let Wingers Be Wingers And Full Backs Be Full Backs
Neil Lennon likes his teams to be flexible, and for players to be able to deputise in positions other than their own … but it’s this philosophy of putting square pegs in round holes which has really done us in of late.
There’s too much of it, and especially out wide.
It doesn’t matter whether we are playing a 3-5-2 or a 4-2-3-1, it is time to blend the tactic and the personnel properly; if we’re going with the 3-5-2 then play wingers … and in their proper roles.
No Frimpong charging up the right when we can go with Forrest (when fit) or Christie.
No more playing Ryan as a striker, or God forbid, trying to shoehorn Elyounoussi into that role … play him wide left, where he belongs, and make the best of his skills.
And if we’re a 4-2-3-1 then, by all means, have overlapping full backs and play the wide men as inside forwards, because we know they can fulfil that role.
But no more playing full backs as wingers or wingers as strikers.
These are specialised roles and players play more comfortable in their natural positions and when they aren’t being asked to do anything they aren’t sure about or which exposes them to mistakes.
We will see the best from this team when the wide players are allowed to do their normal jobs … it weakens the whole team when they don’t.
Move The Ball Forward, And Fast
This current passing system of ours is so bad you can hear the clunking at times.
Of all the frustrations attendant to watching our club at the moment, the nature of our football – this slow, cumbersome build-up stuff – is the worst.
When, during a game with the Ibrox club, the players in our squad who had most touches of the ball were the back three you can see exactly where we have gone wrong.
It is chronic, dreadful to watch, and it is terribly ineffective.
Since when is this Celtic? For God’s sakes, Neil, why the timidity this season? Is it because it’s the ten in a row campaign?
We didn’t get the first nine playing this way, so why should we be so restrained in our performances now?
Let Celtic be Celtic, Neil, and Celtic has long played the most expansive attacking game in the business.
We should be hammering the ball forward, using pace and power to overwhelm the opposition.
If we can’t pass our way through them our players should be encouraged to hold onto the ball and run at them … but forward, forward all the time, all the way.
As Stalin hammered home Order 227, and its policy of “not one step backwards”, so too must Lennon tell his players to always be looking for the forward pass, and for those in front of the ball to ever be on the move to create the space for one.
This is what Bringing Back The Thunder on the pitch looks like … its return is overdue.
Unleash The Midfield Big Guns
The change that almost altered the game in midweek was the decision to take Brown off, pull Callum and Ntcham back to more familiar midfield duties and to put Tom Rogic on the park in his natural position; it led to some of the best football we’ve played in a while.
Our midfield has been shackled more than any other part of this team.
These players offer so much going forward, and instead they’ve been locked into this monotonous crablike pattern of sideways and back passes and prevented from moving forward off the ball.
Change that – as we did on Thursday – and the whole dynamic of this team will change with it.
You will see Callum at his finest, Ntcham play with more oomph and you’ll see Ryan Christie doing what he was born to do, hovering outside the box and getting shots on target.
The midfield is the strongest part of the team, but they have been so static of late that none of them has been allowed to properly express themselves.
Neil Lennon could change that in an instant.
Most important, we have two number 10’s in the squad – Rogic and Turnbull.
If he would play one of them I think you’d see the movement and the power back before long …
Rogic was on his way out of the club in the summer, but we might all be glad he stayed.
Play Two Up Front When Possible
Wherever possible, Celtic should be trying to play two up front.
It’s the Celtic Way.
Lennon has tried to work around the problem of having to drop one of his preferred midfielders in a two up front system by going to three at the back, but with so many defensive players out at the moment we need to think long and hard about whether that’s a good idea.
There are other systems we could play. 4-3-1-2 would give us the same midfield power, at the expense of our wingers, and we could still play two up front.
The standard 4-4-2 would mean leaving one of his preferred players out but it would give the team balance.
Indeed, the 3-5-2 is an excellent system when it involves moving the ball at pace, even if it does sacrifice something at the back; it’s just than in the current state of our team it’s unwise to throw a young kid in at the deep end as it pulls Duffy out of position trying to cover for him.
Most people will understand, therefore, if Lennon moves to the 4-2-3-1 at the weekend, but only until we have the defensive players back.
In the main, however, we should utilise the talents of our formidable strike-force to the full.
We have four excellent footballers there and we should be looking to use them all.
Blood The Fringe Players And Show Our Strength
We have a talented and expensive squad here, which is one of the hallmarks of this club; we’re the biggest in the land and we flex that muscle by assembling the best overall team in the league.
But you know, there’s no point in doing this if you won’t utilise that strength.
Celtic has too many players who don’t appear to do all that much; we have Klimala who drifts in and out of the team, we have Soro, who hardly a soul has seen, we have Turnbull now, sitting on the bench every week, we have Griffiths and Rogic …
It’s time we gave some of these guys an extended run to see what they’ve got and demonstrate our power.
If these guys are good enough – and you’d imagine they are – we’d not only see what they’ve got but send a clear message to the rest of the league.
This, after all, is where the real power of Celtic lies and there’s no point in us not showing that off and using it to the fullest.
Show No Mercy
In everything we do, we should be ruthless and merciless.
Every player should be going in hard for every 50/50 ball.
When we have the ball our players should work furiously to keep it.
When we don’t have it we should be battling like tigers and harassing the opposition until we have it back.
Our defenders should take no prisoners.
Our midfielders should let nothing past them.
The strikers should want to run all day … and score all day.
When we get a lead we shouldn’t sit on it but go for more.
When we have a comfortable lead we should be trying to run up a cricket score.
This season come down to a handful of points, or even goal difference … we should have a relentless drive towards first getting ahead and then staying ahead.
We should be fighting this same battles off the field too, complaining about every decision we don’t get whether it changes games or not.
Using the media to ratchet up the pressure on officials, the SFA and the opposition every chance we get.
Everyone at the club should have it hammered into them what the stakes are and we should be willing to do everything within the letter of the law to get victories and to turn them into the momentum we need to win this title.
Nothing less will do.
We are Celtic. It’s time we started acting like it.
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