It should embarrass board apologists that we ended that game today with such a ridiculous eleven on the pitch.
Before this season began, if you’d told anyone we’d make a dozen signings over two windows and end that match with Ralston on the wrong side of the pitch, Welsh and Scales at centre back and Rocco Vata wide left they’d have looked at you in angry bafflement, hoping you were joking but recognising with the Lawwell’s in charge you might not be.
Without a doubt, they are to blame for the mess we are in.
Without a doubt. Let no-one dispute that for one minute longer. Four transfer windows under Lawwell junior have produced precisely one player who would be starting every week if everyone was fit; Alastair Johnston. And we can wonder whether or not he’s what we need in the present circumstances because he was dreadful today and he has been dreadful for weeks now.
I am loathe to hold the manager accountable for any of this.
If people want to scrutinise Rodgers then scrutinise the things he’s been saying from the moment he walked in the door.
He looked at this squad and knew immediately that it did not meet his needs. He has not been shy about letting us know that. Even off the back of a treble, he knew this side needed major changes if it was to play the style of football he has set out to play.
Pace and power. This side is completely absent those things. The midfield is as lightweight as I’ve ever seen it. Luis Palma might have been a star in an Ange Postecoglou side, playing high up the pitch, but in Rodgers game plan where he needs to be quick on his feet to get away from people he’s not living up to the job. That’s just one example.
There are people who think the answer is that Rodgers should just play “Ange’s football.” Since this is Ange’s squad, that should work, right?
But seriously? You need to have a very limited understanding of the game not to know that it won’t. If it was as easy as one manager playing the same sort of style as another one, we wouldn’t have needed to hire Ange Postecoglou or Brendan Rodgers in the first place, would we?
We could have flung a tactical study on Pepe Guardiola at John Kennedy and told him to get on with it. It simply does not work that way. It has never worked that way.
Brendan Rodgers is Brendan Rodgers and he must be allowed to manage in Brendan Rodgers’ way with Brendan Rodgers own players, specifically chosen to play within his system. Or there’s no point in having Brendan Rodgers in the job to begin with.
And yet, for all that, one thing is glaringly obvious; the manager is not getting a tune out of these players in this system and right now, and until the end of this season, these players are all he’s got.
This is not a problem he created; sadly, it is a problem that he is going to need to deal with.
Other clubs in this league have a genuine lack of resources, and although it is horrifying how swiftly this squad has gone backwards under Lawwell & Lawwell, he still has enough at his disposal to win this title with room to spare.
But not the way we’re playing right now.
He doesn’t have the players for it, and he knows that full well.
So, he can bang his head against the wall or he can adapt. He will have to adapt because otherwise we’re not going to win this league, and if we don’t win this league, he will be the one who swings for it. This board will throw him to the wolves without hesitation.
And I’ll tell you, that would be the biggest tragedy of this whole campaign, if it was Rodgers who ultimately carried the can for their lamentable conduct and disgraceful hiring practices.
Every other element of the football department, from the scouting to the coaches he’s surrounded by screams second rate and are stacked with board cronies and placemen; it is a shameful situation and it ought to make it clear that without changes above him that the manager falling on his sword will bring no relief, and offers no solution to our current problems.
All getting rid of him will achieve is it will let them hire yet another yes-man, and with their low level of ambition it might be far worse than this, and we might even look back on the Neil Lennon appointment with something like nostalgia.
It is imperative that these people have no reason to sack, or excuse, to sack Brendan Rodgers.
The only person who can avoid that now is him, and he has to if this club isn’t to end up in a worse position than we’re in right now, and I don’t care what he has to do to accomplish winning this league and assuring his own survival and neither should he.
Whatever it takes, he needs to do it.
I don’t think they sack Rodgers,, he’ll not hang around long enough I don’t blame him
he should NEVER have been appointed…and he should NEVER have accepted…he knew better than ANYONE that celtic fc is run by a board full of self serving bastards….whose ONLY aim is to increase dividends…and to that end, the prick desmond will happily play golf into the sunset…
i think BR seems a good bloke…but i don’t think he’s an “elite” coach, maybe he was several years ago, but not now…if he was, he wouldn’t be where he is now…
for his own sake….he needs to get to fuq…
we need another automobile fire at the lawwell residence…only this time, make sure lawwell and junior are in the fukn car…and the doors are secured…
JOKE OF A CLUB !!
FAIL FAIL !!
Totally agree, they’re a fucking poison within our walls. Get them out
I disagree. Rodgers is responsible for this, win or lose. He has signed up to the conditions under which he’s working, so he is responsible.
He inherited a treble-winning squad, minus Jota and Starfelt. We have added about a dozen players since then, and he publicly admitted he’d ok’d them all.
We are weaker at the end of the January window than we were at the start.
If Rodgers feels he’s not getting the backing he needs, he should have walked. He chose to stay, so the responsibility is his.
Hi James,
The difference is quality of management. Poor
So much wrong with this post it’s frightening.
Totally agree, they’re a fucking poison within our walls.
He needs to get Desmond on the phone pronto and tell him some home truths. The mood is ugly and the smell of rebellion and a sack the board campaign in in the air.
Rodgers does have to change system/ style to suit the players we currently have to get us over the line this season .
I think your being kind to Palma saying he may have worked in an ange team ,personally I think he is a large part of the problem with Kyogos form he rarely passes ,raerley hits the bye line and cuts ball back or crosses it’s always cut inside onto right foot and shoot seems he is one of those where he has to be the whole cheese mr fancy Dan look at me the type.
The type no hard working team player want’s near the team, if he’d played for some of the teams I’ve played in he’d have got booted out for some of the nonsense he tries ,not a team player.
ORiley wildly over rated. Needs rested but we have no alternative. If he gently side foots another ball towards goal I will scream
James, calm down. We will win this title at a canter. Panicking achieves nothing. We still have the best footballers in the country. By far.
Really? I’ll bet you 100 we don’t for charity. Our squad has been stripped the bones. We’ve bought 22 players with one certain starter, wakey, wakey. Your faithful through and through is clouding your awareness and judgement.
Hans are you for real,can you not see what’s happening here,I wish I had your misplaced optimism.
Still to witness plan B apparently Kyogo hasn’t scored away from home since October.
Unfortunately it’s there to see. This team have gone backwards and I feel the club as a whole are throwing the title away. The players aren’t playing the manager isn’t managing and the board isn’t backing.
You posted yesterday about Aberdeen in crisis and how we should go for a statement win. I never thought a statement win was required, just a win to settle everybody around the club. This expectation that this group of players can win a statement is laughable and obviously false. We both spend too much energy on how the other club are doing and taking the eye off our own ball. They will fcvk up without our help.
You’re dead wrong. I have NEVER taken my eye off the ball, I keep a close watch on our club.
Why do you think I’ve barely mentioned Ibrox in the last few weeks? When I need to turn the big white light at Celtic, I do it ruthlessly.
And PLEASE CONTINUE DOING THAT James !
James, Peter Lawell said that we need a cash surplus in case we don’t make the CL, here’s a novel idea instead of buying ten project players at £20 million buy the four quality players Rodgers asked for at the same price to make sure we get there. The Lawell’s are a cancer on our club followed closely by the Desmond’s, there’s £60 million up for grabs for getting to the CL but we’re throwing it to Ibrox all because Lawell thinks he can spot a player better than our manager. There’s a reckoning coming for this board there’s too much nepotism and cronyism like you said in a piece the other day, if we lose this league title they won’t know what’s hit them. The only way to get change is to stop buying merchandise, programmes and food at the stadium, it would hurt the team short term but in the long run Desmond would have to change things for the better.
Of course Rodgers should take some of the blame he accepted the terms from this board,fool him once fair enough but after his first term under liewell he should have known better,he is every bit to blame for when sevco take our crown and all the CL riches,we blew that today how can an ELITE manager as James calls him get bested by an Aberdeen coach
Rodger’s should get a job as a painter so he can watch it dry by himself instead of making us watch his style of football
While we are all on a right downer that comment by the murdy guy is a disgrace i would like to think we are above that kind of talk
Someone once said that Rodgers doesn’t stick around because the opposition learn how to play him after the first year.
I think it only took the Aberdeen interm manager the first half to suss out how to play him in the second.
Rodgers is apparently a really good manager and astute adaptable tactician. I’ve seen none of this since he came back. We play the dire football his latter 2019 team was known for. Slow, ponderous, predictable.
I don’t disagree that he has to make the team his, but to not have even tried something different until now is pretty pathetic. 4 3 3 is not working under his style. Change it. He can’t get new players in so now it *is* on him, like it or lump it.
It is totally understandable that we are hugely unhappy with our performances and the inaction in January. There is definitely discord throughout the club, and it’s so unhealthy at the moment ! Some of the comments you read are perfectly justified, and others, from ‘Celtic fans,’are outrageous!
We all realise that our club needs fresh ownership and a clean broom. Ownership that will take us forward in a positive direction and the requisite changes made at every level of the club.
Presently, we have a title to win, and starting Wednesday, the absolute minimum is 3 points. Every Celtic fan should be supporting our team and manager to get this done.