New Start
With less than 48 hours until Celtic kick off their European campaign and in doing so - their season - away to Braga, Neil Lennon has an array of vitally important decisions to make, decisions of the like he hasn’t had to make in his football career to date.
Not only is it important he gets his season (and first permanent managerial post) off to a good start, but he has to put on the kind of performance against a very decent Braga side that shows the clubs fans that the team is not the limp toothless bunch that staggered pretty aimlessly through last season, and that his Celtic team can put up a good showing in Europe just as Neil did in just about every season he played in the green and white hoops.
The importance of this game will not be lost on Lennon. He could effectively start building the platform for his own success, or on the flipside, he could give the fans the first slip on his downward spiral as Celtic manager. Obviously the radical nature of the score makes it an obvious example, but Gordon Strachan was repeatedly reminded of the Bratislava brutalising, and perhaps the manner of it never allowed him to repair that initial defensive fragility in the eyes of the fans. Conversely, with such a positive performance against Moscow in his first European outing, Tony Mowbray may well have covered the cracks in his managerial reign for longer than the fans would have otherwise allowed him.
In order to ensure the fans start off on the right footing with him, its definitely more the result than the manner of the performance that Lennon will be placing importance on. While he will want to stamp his own mark on the team in time – Wednesday night will not necessarily be his starting point for that. Given that the manager admitted he didn’t rate many of the players he felt he had to persist with at the tail end of last season you might expect radical changes for his first competitive game, however I wouldn’t be overly surprised to find a relatively familiar looking line-up. With the exception of the positions left up for grabs by players departure (Boruc, Naylor, Keane and N’Guemo) – I imagine Neil will go with players and a system he has seen before at first hand. Radical departure is not always the best course of action. Tony Mowbray veered that way after both the summer and the January transfer windows, and it certainly looked like too much change at once. A sudden shift to relying on the untried and untested did not reap rewards for the big Englishman.
While the deal to bring Hooper looks close to completion bringing our tally of new signings to 6 will hopefully improve and freshen a previously toiling squad – lets hope Neil can build the foundations to allow him to bring it through to his style and ideas slowly but surely.
Not only is it important he gets his season (and first permanent managerial post) off to a good start, but he has to put on the kind of performance against a very decent Braga side that shows the clubs fans that the team is not the limp toothless bunch that staggered pretty aimlessly through last season, and that his Celtic team can put up a good showing in Europe just as Neil did in just about every season he played in the green and white hoops.
The importance of this game will not be lost on Lennon. He could effectively start building the platform for his own success, or on the flipside, he could give the fans the first slip on his downward spiral as Celtic manager. Obviously the radical nature of the score makes it an obvious example, but Gordon Strachan was repeatedly reminded of the Bratislava brutalising, and perhaps the manner of it never allowed him to repair that initial defensive fragility in the eyes of the fans. Conversely, with such a positive performance against Moscow in his first European outing, Tony Mowbray may well have covered the cracks in his managerial reign for longer than the fans would have otherwise allowed him.
In order to ensure the fans start off on the right footing with him, its definitely more the result than the manner of the performance that Lennon will be placing importance on. While he will want to stamp his own mark on the team in time – Wednesday night will not necessarily be his starting point for that. Given that the manager admitted he didn’t rate many of the players he felt he had to persist with at the tail end of last season you might expect radical changes for his first competitive game, however I wouldn’t be overly surprised to find a relatively familiar looking line-up. With the exception of the positions left up for grabs by players departure (Boruc, Naylor, Keane and N’Guemo) – I imagine Neil will go with players and a system he has seen before at first hand. Radical departure is not always the best course of action. Tony Mowbray veered that way after both the summer and the January transfer windows, and it certainly looked like too much change at once. A sudden shift to relying on the untried and untested did not reap rewards for the big Englishman.
While the deal to bring Hooper looks close to completion bringing our tally of new signings to 6 will hopefully improve and freshen a previously toiling squad – lets hope Neil can build the foundations to allow him to bring it through to his style and ideas slowly but surely.
posted by Michael__67 at 3:44 PM
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