Tomorrow is Cup Final day although you might not believe it to look at the papers.
We know what’s at stake.
We know what the prize is for us, not only another trophy but an achievement of immense and historic proportions which is outside the realms of anything any club side in this country has ever managed before.
For Hearts it’s a huge chance to win silverware and, as I said earlier, to settle some imagined vendetta against us.
Lots of elements go into determining a game like this one.
There are a lot of factors that will come into play.
They will decide who wins and who loses, who stands and who falls, who succeeds and who fails.
Each are important.
To win the cup tomorrow Lennon will need to get most, or all of them, right.
If he does, we will write another page of history.
In this article, I’m going to look at what the five crucial factors are for this one. They lie, mostly, in the hands of the Celtic manager; if we get the important stuff right we’ll win tomorrow, and there should be no doubt about that at all.
Get enough of these wrong, though, and we’re going to struggle badly.
The Manager Has To Get The Midfield Right.
Absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt, the most important decision the manager will face during the next 20 hours as we prepare for the game.
If he picks the right midfield this won’t even be close. If he gets this critical decision wrong it could be a long afternoon.
Most people think this comes down to just whether or not he starts Soro and Turnbull, and those are massive decision to make. But actually, there are other critical elements to this which may prove to be just as important, such as who he plays out wide and the precise way the midfield is constructed.
Does he go with a four? Does he go with a five?
Go with a four and you can’t play Soro, McGregor and Turnbull.
Go with a five and you play only with one striker, unless you play two up front and three at the back.
Do you play Frimpong on the right wing and Elyounoussi on the left?
Do you select the attacking fullbacks and thus restore Laxalt to the starting eleven?
Or do you play Christie on the right and Elyounoussi on the left?
That would seem to be more attack-minded and give the forwards (or forward) better support.
Clearly, the decision as to whether or not to start Scott Brown with McGregor will be the critical choice, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking it is the only one. Neil Lennon has to get the midfield spot on. A strong midfield feeds the strikers and protects the defenders; it is quite simply where this match is going to be won … and lost.
Who Do We Pick Up Front?Â
The decision as to who plays upfront really comes down to two things; the formation and the personnel.
If we go with one up front the manager has to decide who the one is.
If we go with two up front, which is what most Celtic fans want to see of course, the decision becomes one of which partnership we go with.
Lennon has taken to playing midfielders as strikers in the past.
I hope to God that if he goes with three at the back that we don’t have any of that continuing nonsense.
Neither Elyounoussi nor Christie is a striker and it’s high time we saw these forwards of ours paired up correctly.
Partnerships need time to form.
Players need to be in the same team at the same time for that to happen.
We have four strikers at the club; playing one up front constantly means we are basically pissing away resources.
There are some who might argue that a cup final is the wrong time to be going all-in, but I firmly believe that as we’re playing a second tier club that it would be a great time to unleash two strikers and try to win the game early.
My preferred forward line, in the absence of Griffiths being fit, would be to go with Edouard and Ajeti up front.
If Griffiths is ready, team him up with the Frenchman.
But no experimental nonsense with Christie or Elyounoussi as a second striker.
It does not work.
How Does He Organise The Defence … And Around Whom?
The first dilemma; who does the manager choose between the sticks?
This is an important decision, and something tells me he’s not going to select young Hazard.
I think he’ll go with Barkas.
It’s a cup final and this guy was signed to play in big games.
The second dilemma; who does he play in front of the keeper?
Does he go with Jullien and Duffy with Ajer on the left and Laxalt on the right?
Does he go with a central defensive three of Ajer, Duffy and Jullien?
Does he drop Duffy and play Frimpong on the right and go with Ajer and Jullien in the middle?
These are critical decisions for the manager to make.
Where does the danger lie from Hearts?
Do they play up and down the wing or through the middle?
Where do they see us as being weakest?
I’d say down the right hand side, but if you play Ajer at right back I think we look much more solid, although it’s not his natural position by any manner of means.
He’s played there the last two games, and we won.
We’ve also played Duffy the past couple of games, but does his form overall merit a cup final place?
He still looks shaky at times.
He will be facing off against a team who will try to get in his face and force him to make mistakes.
Can he handle it?
Have we worked on set-pieces?
If we’re pushing high up the pitch are we covered in case of a fast break by their forward players?
Have we learned anything from previous matches and our previous mistakes, or are we going to see a repeat of them?
Will He Keep The Players Focussed On The Job, Not The History?
The successes under Brendan Rodgers were notable not only for how many of them there were, but in how, for the most part, they were achieved.
He kept the players focussed only on the matter at hand; he was ever aware that history was being made but his attitude towards that was that he wanted the players to treat every game the same way.
One game at a time. One opponent at a time. One job at a time.
The principle focus was on winning, not on the making of history.
Do the job first; worry about the history after it’s made.
Lennon has accused his players of wilting under the psychological pressure at certain times; I personally think this is garbage.
Nevertheless, it is up to him to keep their minds on the task rather than to let them think about all the extraneous stuff around it.
If this team simply approaches this is another match to be won, another job to be completed, and lets Hearts get torn up on the psychology of the occasion they will be easily good enough to win the game. If players do start worrying about all that they could very well struggle.
The manager is the one who introduced this element into the discussion, and ever since he did he has acted as if he bears no responsibility for it … but he does.
I remember Rodgers talking about this over and over again; we take each game as it comes, and we approach each in the same way and with the same mentality.
That’s what needs to happen here.
And it is entirely the responsibility of Neil Lennon to make sure it does.
The Manager Must Know When To Make Changes If They Are Needed.
Lastly, too many times this season we’ve seen Neil Lennon struggle to think on his feet and adapt his tactics and his game-plan in the middle of a match.
Too many times, he has either made changes too late or too ineffectively.
We’ve seen it all, from tactical substitutions which left his own players baffled to like for like changes in personnel when the problem was clearly in the tactics and system being used. This remains one of the biggest worries about Lennon as a manager.
Tomorrow he needs to be tactically flexible when and as necessary. We have to be better at responding to changing circumstances; Rodgers famously had a game-plan for every scenario including playing a game with ten men.
It was never better revealed than when we won a massive tie at Ibrox a man short.
I hope that Lennon and his coaching staff have started to work on coming up with more flexible responses to the changing conditions of a game.
There has to be a greater emphasis on this stuff at Parkhead right now; too often we chase games by employing tactics right out of public park football; moving defenders up front, bringing on additional attacks and leaving ourselves hopelessly exposed at the back … it’s a grave concern.
Tomorrow Lennon simply must get these kind of decisions right.
Substitutions have to be more than just about taking one midfielder on; if we’re chasing the game or trying to break the deadlock, a like for like change isn’t going to cut it because too often this isn’t about individuals not performing but about parts of the team not functioning right.
On top of that, changes need to be made in a timely manner as well; too often Lennon delays making changes until a situation is hopeless.
That simply can’t happen in a game of this importance.
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