Who's To Blame For Last Night's Result?

Is it the Board for failing to or refusing to invest in the team or Lennon for getting his tactics and team selection wrong wrong? Or a bit of both?

I felt we had a good enough team to beat that shower last night and the early signs were good but putting in a brand new CB pairing in such an important match was crazy. Has Lennon not learned anything from past mistakes in that department?

However, selling three of your best players who made up the spine of your team and not replacing them is criminal and there's a pretty good chance that the Board's oh-so-typical penny pinching could see us lose out on a potential £20m jackpot.

 

.... and playing Liverpool a friendly instead of having a competitive match

 

Do we get a poll?

 

Naw.

 

The players are to blame. They played ****e against not very good opposition and lost deservedly.

Yes if we had better players, it would be nice, but the current mob should've done a whole lot better last night.

 

1 - The board for selling the 3 best players in core positions and not strengthening. Gambling that this squad is good enough to make the Group Stages.

2 - The board for arrangeing a friendly after the season has started and before a qualifier.

3 - Lennon for his tactics:
CB pairing, 1 was not fit and they two of them haven't played for a while.
Not having an out and out defensive midfielder sitting in front of the two CBs
Not playing a Striker ...especialy 1 who was bought for the purposes of bnreaking down defences who sat back.

4 - The players

 

Should've had enough still to beat them.

That game was lost tactically last night - not by being outplayed by better players.

Pretty telling that, at one point, the Shakhter fans were roaring encouragement when a ball broke to their right midfielder 30 yards from their own goalline - this led to the second goal and their fans knew they could counter like that.

The flat back five they played with the full backs tucking in to almost become extra centre halves at times and the industry and cohesion of their team overall ****ed us.

New centre half pairing for us plus wrong personnel selection ****ed us - we had good enough players to get us through and deployed them wrong.

The board take the blame (overall) if we don't make the Champions League but, last night, was solely down to the players and the manager.

I know he's like a sacred cow on this board but Joe Ledley was ****ing awful last night.

 

Put it this way, last night was the first time in the history of Kazakhstan that the rockets were in Astana and no Baikonur. 11 of them were wearing Celtic tops.

 

You're to blame, ya big prancing ****da.

 

Lennon got a lot of things wrong yesterday, the worst was the pairing at the back and not playing another forward.

Also Forrest is regressing quite dramatically, he's an absolute pussy these days and needs to grow a pair of baws.

 

I agree with all you've said here. I'm just not a fan of 'blame' culture. The board, manager or players didn't set out to deliberately lose the game (unlike, it would appear, a certain Sevco player who backed against his own team). A gamble was taken and it backfired badly. Annoying as it most certainly is, it happens to all clubs at times so I just hope sufficient lessons have been learned in order to turn things around next week.

 

This

 

Or perhaps, just perhaps, they are a better team than Celtic.

 

Did you see the game ER, Shakter were terrible. I mean really poor.

 

If we had taken our chances early on we'd probably be discussing who we want in the CL group stages.

Don't get me wrong. They deserved their win because they fought for it but they are a pretty poor team who rode their luck. And we were ****e on the night and made too many mistakes (Lennon and the players get the blame for that).

 

I have a feeling they will be quite adept at parking the last bus to Kazakhstan in the penalty box and we will be catching a taxi to the Europa league

 

Seconded.

They beat Bate with two clean sheets home and away.

Judging by last night, they've used that flat back five before - they allow crosses into the box once a team has pushed numbers forward then counter.

The only way we'll get round them is either on the deck or having big Balde on from the start (the latter option worries me slightly as I don't rate the big man yet and he'll end up being a scapegoat if it doesn't come off)

 

That impression also pervades the centre of my nervous system.

 

Why were Rogic, Stokes and Balde in the squad if not fully fit but McGeouch & Watt didn't make the squad?

Lennon has been going down in my estimation since the turn of the year. Another mistake easily avoided.

 

I was at the Cologne game in '92.

All is not lost.

I can only hope for a repeat of that.