Celtic FC - 2013/14 Season Thread

I'd go with the same. Mainly because Lenny's comments at the weekend hinted heavily that Sammi will be starting this one up top...

 

Whipped at home. No great surprise. This result just proves what many of us already know, that this current Celtic side is one of the worst we've seen in quite some time. Middle to front we have no presence at all. We lack movement, ability and football intelligence to hurt most teams. This in turn applies more pressure on to our defence, the best part of our current team. Usually they are up for the job but not last night obviously. As for the great big zonal marking debate, the fact that the same question (zonal marking - good or bad) keeps getting regurgitated is clue enough to give you the correct answer.

What exactly are we doing in training week in week out? What are we doing to coach an improvement in the attacking side of our game? We have been anaemic middle to front all season long regardless of whether we play domestically or in Europe and yet I see absolutely no change or improvement since the start of the season.

The usual incumbents need to either shape up or ship out. I've seen enough of what they can and cannot do. Time now to give the younger players and the new recruits an extended run in the team to see if they can offer anything going forward because this side needs dismantled and rebuilt. Whether Lenny is the man to do that or not remains to be seen. But hopefully he starts by giving Rogic, Fisher, McGeough, Biton, Balde, Boeriggter and Pukki an extended period of first team opportunities. That would be a starting point.

The whole team is stale. So much so that the atmosphere even on a CL game like last night, is starting to feel stale. Fresh ideas are required with fresh faces to support them. Possibly on the pitch and maybe in the dugout as well.

We have maybe two players that are of decent CL quality in our whole squad (Van Dijk, Lustig) but at the very least we should be able to provide good quality football for our supporters to watch domestically and that is far from the case right now. We are slowly slogging our way through this domestic campaign and with every passing game the malaise and indeed, the boredom, continues to grow. Gordon Strachan still gets it in the neck from a lot of the support with regards to how poor his team were to watch. Well at least he had two CL quality players that you could deem to be match winners on their day - Aiden and Naka. Where is that kind of player in our 2013/14 squad...?

 

The best way is to probably give you the full Green Brigade response to it all -

As a member of Fans Against Criminalisation the Green Brigade are fully committed to highlighting, challenging and tackling the systemised campaign of criminalisation and harassment - orchestrated by the Scottish Government and implemented by Police Scotland - against the Celtic support.

At the risk of covering old ground, the Scottish Government are responsible for drafting and implementing a ridiculous piece of legislation which, through their own admission, aims to make the arrest figures between both sides of the Glasgow divide even – regardless of the act or crime in question. In practice, for the Celtic support this has resulted in expressions of Irish identity, culture and politics being deemed illegal.

One prominent example is the criminalisation of the song ‘Roll of Honour’ which is a lament commemorating ten Irish martyrs who died on hunger strike in Long Kesh in 1981. These men died primarily fighting the criminalisation of themselves and their struggle in a bid to be recognised as political prisoners. Now, in Scotland, it is deemed illegal to remember and honour their sacrifice. The number of fans being charged for doing so continually rises as Police Scotland continues to film and harass our support at every turn.

On Saturday 23rd November we highlighted the sheer hypocrisy of the legislation with a simple banner display. On the 10th minute and 81st minute a banner of the letter H was unveiled while ‘Roll of Honour’ was sung. Alongside this banner appeared two further banners containing the following lyric from the Scottish national anthem: ‘they fought and died for; their wee bit hill and glen’.
Similarly, on Tuesday 26th November we unveiled another banner display to further our point and emphasise the Scottish Government’s hypocrisy. At this match two banners depicting a Scottish and an Irish freedom fighter were shown along with the slogan: ‘the terrorist or the dreamer; the savage of the brave? Depends whose vote you’re trying to catch or whose face you’re trying to save’. The statement being made was that it is both hypocritical and discriminatory to celebrate the Scottish nationalist struggle while criminalising the Irish nationalist struggle. Ultimately, due to the subjective nature of what anyone may deem ‘offensive’, it is both dangerous and absurd to create a law based upon offensiveness.

The Green Brigade are disappointed by the statement made by Celtic Football Club in regards to this incident. The Club’s statement claims that we assured them that our display would be purely football related but that in fact it had nothing to do with football. In reality however what was assured to them was that our plans were completely relative to Celtic and indeed football. Given that it is Celtic fans who are filling up prison cells and court rooms because of the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, and the manner in which it criminalises legitimate expression of political opinion, this display could not have been more relevant in the current context. The fans are the lifeblood of any football club and to deem fan issues as irrelevant is frankly disgraceful.

While we understand and sympathise fully with fans who may disagree with the timing of last night’s display we are honest enough to admit that the timing was of no coincidence. This act has been in place for over 18 months yet the club have offered next to no support to the fans on this matter. As a group we were told that Celtic Football Club would publicly support the fans on this issue. Regrettably, this has not transpired in spite of the fact that public pressure could have had a telling impact on the Justice Committee as they discussed the possibility of an early review of the act.

It is our opinion that the level of apathy from Celtic PLC towards the criminalisation of their supporters is unforgivable. We find their accusation of the Green Brigade disrespecting the club to be completely ironic and totally laughable when we consider the level of disrespect they have repeatedly shown to their supporters for far too long - never mind the desecrating of our Club's proud history and values with the firm objection to implementing the 'living wage'.

Whilst the Club may wish to wash their hands of pressing fan issues we will not falter in our attempts to challenge the injustice of this legislation nor how Police Scotland implements it. As the number of Celtic fans banned from games continues to grow and the court cases and all additional baggage piles up we will stand by them, we will stand with the Celtic support and as always we will defend our right to cultural and political expression.


A post taken from a Celtic forum that makes perfect sense to me and quite a few people on the forum it was taken from -

 

Well after our capitulation in the Champions League against Milan we have started playing some wonderful football. Passing and bringing the ball out from the back. Maintaining possession whilst offering plenty of attacking threat. Wonderful to watch over the last two games (0-7 Hearts; 0-5 Motherwell). The movement, pace and interplay has been breathtaking at times.

No more long punts out from the back for Sammi to try and flick on. Now we have our two ball playing centre backs bringing the ball out from the back, ably supported by our deep lying midfielder (Mulgrew) who also fills in when one of the CB's rampages forward. Plenty of interchange whilst attacking means its hard to pin down a formation as such but it loosely resembles a narrow 4-4-2 diamond. Playing narrow allows our two full backs (Izzaguire & Lustig) loads of freedom out wide and they suit this style to a tee. Biton was outstanding in the Hearts game but illness scuppered his chances of playing at Fir Park. Hope to see more of him though.

This new style of football is great to watch and I only hope that when we do stumble with it, we persist with it and not return to the god awful kick and rush style we had been adopting for the vast majority of the season so far.

 

Looks like both Georgios Samaras and Joe Ledley will be leaving in January as both are available for free in the summer.

Neil Lennon's recent comments on Hiroki Yamada (currently on trial):

 

Two 1-0 away wins over the festive period. Not much to shout about although I thought we generally played ok at St.Johnstone and VVD's goal was a peach.

Mind you, we seemed to have slumped back into our early season form which is hard on the eyes.

Oh well, who cares. When's Ibrahimovic signing???

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spfl/zlatan-ibrahimovic-hints-at-celtic-move-1-3249687

 

If Atletico sign Samaras (which I still think unlikely) with the purpose of playing him through the middle (even as a back-up to Costa) then they're dumber than I thought.

Sammi is not a CF. He's not a target man. He wanders far too much to play that central position. The times he has played it for us, in recent memory, he ends up out on the wing and we end up with no target in the box.

 

Stefan Johansen has signed for around the £2mill mark.

A young, creative central mid. What's not to like?

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spfl/stefan-johansen-signs-for-celtic-1-3268643

 

So Aberdeen did us again last night. This time in the league, which means we've blown the chance of going unbeaten for the whole season.

A lot of blame being put on the performance from the MIB in the middle but from checking the highlights it looked as if Efe was as much to blame as anyone else.

Aberdeen's first goal was an excellent hit. Unsaveable. Poor marking from Ambrose on the 2nd as he let his man run off him for a free header at the near post. Nice finish from James Forrest for our consolation goal.