Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Celtic has had MONTHS to get ready for this qualifying round.
Instead, the manager was forced to invent new ways of stating in pressers that he needed additions to his squad as a matter of urgency.
When the referee signalled the end of regulation time, I was already fearing the worst.
The featured image is my post on X at that moment.
When the penalty shoot-out was concluded, my only thought was how the Balance Sheet Brigade would respond.
This most recent bit of Eurotrash can get added to the list.
This underlines the need for a strong unified voice among the Celtic support.
Those in power need to be held to account, and at the moment they’re not.
Consequently, my interview with Duncan Smillie is worth another read.
As I stated in my last piece, only Celtic can stop Celtic.
Once more, the Grey Brigade have handed the chaps in the Blue Room another lifeline.
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When something goes drastically wrong in a business, then you start at the top of the tree and work your way down the Managerial structure to determine where the fault / issue is.
The Board’s strategy should be to ensure the team / squad of players is the best that the club can put on the park within the confines of affordability.
This is where our first failure evidences itself as we have a much poorer team and squad of players.
This is the responsibility of the CoE and his senior management team, who not for the first time, have shown incompetence in ensuring that we are a better team / squad at the beginning of each season.
Brendan also has to accept responsibility as he still had a better group of players than Kairat, although in his defence our forward line was the weakest part of our team. This was our second failure as the defenders did their job.
I believe, our chief executive has been promoted way above his capabilities and skill set and he has to go.
Perhaps then we can begin to improve all aspects of our match day experience.
The board certainly needs to be held to account, but we can only meaningfully hold them to account if they are free to tell us exactly what’s been going on, and if it is deemed expedient for them to do so.
A year ago, the manager pushed heavily for the club to pay big for Idah, who’s a poor footballer and for whom there was no reasonable case for any club to spend a third of what we paid for him. He pushed for Trusty, who’s poor. He pushed for Engels, who’s not poor but who in no way matched the profile of the team – and Celtic should never be spending so much money on a player who would need time to adapt.
I presume that at least part of the current problem is that Rodgers wants the club to spend similar amounts of money on similarly underwhelming players?
Why would they be similarly underwhelming? For two reasons. Brendan Rodgers is a very talented football manager in many ways, but he is not good at hands-on recruitment matters. This is a career-long trend for him. Besides, unlike his predecessor at Celtic, he only has first hand knowledge of the English market and the feeders to it. Unlike in the minor markets which Ange knew so well and where a Celtic could throw its weight around quickly and decisively, in the elite markets, Celtic need to get in line, and wait (and wait). Those players and their agents will hedge their bets. All the more so if there is a qualifier to negotiate. Such players might be happy to sign for a club like Celtic IF it is in the CL, but they’ll be less interested in helping them get there.
And as it happened, we got a ludicrously generous draw in the play off. I’ve long since passed the mentality that a team is no good because I’ve never heard of them. That’s not the case. But that team that put us out was terrible. Bang average non-entities; Dundee-esque dross, who will doubtlessly finish bottom or thereabouts in the league stage of the CL. Celtic had every advantage over them. Their opponents’ body clocks were at 230am in the second half last week and beyond midnight come extra time on Tuesday. Celtic’s CURRENT squad and resources are in a different stratosphere from Kairat’s.
That any Celtic manager and team found themselves unable to prevail over two legs is pathetic: neither of those parties should be able to deflect from that.
‘Blame the board, that’s it’ might have washed had we drawn a decent team, but we didn’t. If that was a case of the board taking their chances, it worked. Failing to overcome that team over two legs is not excusable.
That the Celtic manager has been publicly undermining his squad on every occasion he’s had a microphone put in front of him for the last month has surely filtered down to the dressing room? Why wouldn’t it?
Celtic SHOULD, IMO, have secured the best players they COULD sign well ahead of the playoff tie. The club should, IMO, have made their peace with the notion that the class of player they could sign in that context would be less good than those they could sign after securing CL qualification. They should have played safe and lived with that reality.
But, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suspect that the main voice pushing to prioritise the higher-valued English/big league based players at all costs was the manager himself. A lot of the form would suggest that that is likely to be the case.
And so holding the club to account is only really worthwhile if everyone at the club can be put under scrutiny. Will they be able to tell us if the manager has played any part in the weak decision making that has led us to this grim outcome (besides his inalienable responsibility for the awful performance in the two games themselves)? Or is it only the chairman, the CEO and the board members to be placed in the firing line?
What about the ludicrously over-influential minority shareholder? Having such a person in such a position able to insist on getting their way so often is a crystal clear sign of a deeply unhealthy institution. Is he going to answer any difficult questions?
If we can’t ask these questions and expect them to get answered, then the whole enquiry is superfluous in any case.
We might get a, ‘blame Tisdale/Lawwell/Nicholson’ approach and a reminder of the hilarious scoreline in Brugge in a club tweet and that’ll be that.
Pointless.
Damian – your points are well made. It’s too easy to chant ‘Sack The Board’ because fans THINK the board refused to spend on available good players.
The minutes of board meetings are confidential, which is appropriate. Fergus went to great lengths to find and expel leakers.
Rodgers will be invited to join board meetings. Is what he says at pressers what he says or what he agrees to in board meetings? I suspect not.
Adam no-Ideah was bought to appease the fans. He had two things in his favour: he’s Irish and he toe-poked a late winner against Sevco. That’s never worth 9m.
All this rabble-rousing about boycotts and replacing Desmond is ‘be careful what you wish for’ territory. Pension funds [I believe] already hold significant shares. Does anyone think those anonymous, invisible, foreign account managers care more for our club than Desmond does? Really?
And if we did want to replace key executives, would we be looking for CVs from people who briefly were involved in running one lower league club? I think not.
I deal with agents in another sphere of business. They are snakes. They don’t care about their clients, they only care about their fees. It’s not difficult to imagine the tortuous conversations as some duplicitous agent stalls and prevaricates in the hope that the next phone call will be from a bigger and richer fish.
Celtic – without CL football – will be a hard sell. The SPFL is not going to be anyone’s first choice.
Rodgers – as you have said – had more than enough resources at hand to get us past the qualifying round. This is on him, not the board.
60000 Supporters (season ticket holders plus waiting list) x £2000.00? buy the shareholders out of the Club. Fan ownership a la Bayern Munich etc. Put plan in place to modernise South Stand up to 70000 capacity. Only way to push Celtic forward imho
Absolutely RANK!
The Celtic board have no vision or ambition other than to maintain the status-quo domestically as that is what businessmen like predictability with minimum
Risk .The only way we have to make the Celtic leadership take notice is for as many of the Celtic supporters to ignore and not take up the Europa league package ..Will it happen probably not and the board know that So soon it will be Europa conference league for us as other more ambitious clubs invest and grow .
Name a more ambitious club playing in the SPFL.
Yup. That’s right.
WHY would an ambitious and talented young player choose the SPFL ahead of any other league? We [SPFL] are no-one’s first choice. Maybe fans should boycott Scotland games until the blazers do something impactful to improve Scottish football as a whole.
THEN, and only then, will playing football professionally in Scotland become more marketable.
Fans should also boycott the merchandise, hit them where it hurts most, their pockets.
So naive. It’s not THEIR money. Like all shareholders, they get a dividend. I do.
The issue is so much more complicated.
But do the Grey Brigade want the Blue Room to seem like a distant speck in their rear view mirror, or do they want the Ibrox club right on their rear bumper? It has to be the latter as there is no evidence of anything to the contrary, e.g the 10IAR season.
This is squarely at the feet of Rodgers. He picks the team. We watched a 2nd string against Livi on Saturday that would’ve gave the proverbial left arm to play in this tie. You cannot convince me that his signings of Idah and Engles are better than Kenny or Bernardo. Cal mac was a disgrace, was he passed the night before? Yang was woeful, Forrest worse. Nygren didn’t have a clue beyond his own head down attitude.
Yes the board have been complacent but Rodgers has said all along he can only field what he has and he picked the wrong team and formated it to lose. He’s done this shit before to get his point across.
Nonsense, the team is clearly not good enough
Not good enough to beat Kairat? You’re smoking something.
Rodgers is at the heart of this and is clearly happy to duck and let the sht hit the board. He SAID OUT LOUD weeks ago, ‘everyone is working hard to bring in new players’.
“Everyone”.
That means HIM and The Board and The Executives.
He changed that subtly, and started to say ‘everyone knows we need new players’ with the sly implication that he was being ignored by ‘everyone’.
Nicely done Brendan.
And the tub-thumpers and keyboard warriors swallowed it. Now we’re all supposed to sing La-di-da, La-di-da, Sack the Board… zzzzzz…
If he can’t beat Kairat with the talent we have, then maybe we need a smarter, more adaptable manager.
Kasper Schmichael has no hand and eye co-ordination, and reflexes when trying to save penalties. The worst I have ever seen. He has to go.
Leaving Hatate and Maeda out of the criticism, !!!! You kidding me on? Ones worse than the other and the sad part is they are 2 of our best. Oh you meant work rate! Does that make up for incompetence?
Celtic taking penalties has been a nightmare for a long long time, the one thing I feared before this game started, was it going to penalty kicks.
Yes the board are responsible for not backing the manager, long before kyogo or khun were sold, celtic knew we had to play a 2 leg qualifying games, this was known before this season had even started.
Having all this time to prepare to play any team thar we had to play, but instead of preparing, instead of getting a squad of players ready to play any team, the board sold 2 of the biggest goal scorers and assists they laid on a plate, those 2 players were not replaced by players of the same quality and experience.
The board however are not responsible for how our manager sets up the team to play the exact same style and system, he seems incapable of changing his tactics to stop teams setting up their team to stop how our team plays a one system set up.
Over these 2 games and especially playing at home in front of 60000 fans, he played the same boring passing tge ball back and forth, and not knowing how to break through a team that was one of the worse teams we’ve faced in Europe, but they have not got the resources and so called best elite manager in their corner.
All they did throughout the 210 minutes of football, was lump the ball up into our half, but being the so called strong favourites tp win these 2 games, we played worse than they did.
I blame this shocking defeat squarely at the managers feet, he seems incapable of playing any other type of football thats been the same system since his arrival back at the club.
I used to think Lennon was our only manager that couldn’t change the shape of the team, change his tactics when things were not going to plan, when we struggled to break teams that set up with every player behind our forward attacking players, every man behind the ball.
Every team we play at home sets up their team like that, but Rodgers seems hopeless at changing his system of play, because he sets up his team in the exact same way, and when making changes bringing on fresh set of legs, its a like for like change, maybe bringing on say Idah and maeda then goes to his usual left wing attack.
Teams whi sit down and study our system that we play, will see that Rodgers plays the exact same system in every game, he never changes from his 433 system.
That’s why we got beat over 210 minutes, because his opposite number knew how to set up his side to face us, and all credit to them, they ran the socks off every single player, they man marked every one of our players, they worked so hard tp make sure they made it so hard for us, but the same could not be said for all our players, maybe with the exception of Maeda and Hatate.
Do we ever practice for penalty decides, because looking at how we took our penalties it didnt seem like we did, so casual as if it was just a wee kick about with their pals, as soon as Idah missed the writing was one the wall, then a wee glimmer of hope when they missed their first penalty, but we then miss no2, the only player that looked like he knew how important this penalty shootout was Engels.
The 2 best chances we had over both legs fell to maeda, at home late on near the end of 90 mins, he was clear through and only had the keeper to beat, and he shot straight at the replacement keeper.
Then last night he again was clear through, yes there was one of the opposition players closing him down, their keeper came out early to try and close the angles for maeda to shoot at, but he never composed himself, then he smashed a left foot shot well clear of the bar, he had time to lob the keeper because hd had come so far out, but he wasted ghat chance, being into the 80 minutes it would’ve won the game and sent us into the CL again.
This falls at the feet of the board and the manager, I’d say more so the manager, because that was one of the poorest teams we’ve faced, but it now gets added to all the other teams that we should’ve beat but they beat us.
Neil Lennon and Gordon Strachan are the only two Managers since O’Neill to actively alter team shape and approach in game and in Europe.
There is no way on this earth either would have travelled to Kazakhstan playing the same system and approach after the first game.
Not a chance.
I’ve been saying it for years Brendan Rodgers is a one trick pony when it comes to tactical nous no different from Ange Postecoglou or Ronny Deila for that matter ,three Managers so committed to a particular mindset they can’t and won’t alter anything the compromises their idea of how to win these games.
For me the emphasis given we have no strikers on fire atm or wingers capable of quality ball into the box should have been on dominating the Midfield and getting any width from either wingback both of whom are capable of quality delivery.
Now given Rodgers stuck solidly to a 4-2-3-1 previously at Celtic with a modicum of success then it begs the question why he doesn’t have a plan B when Plan A clearly isn’t producing the type of performance he craves?
That Kairat team were not a great side but are an effective side when it comes to frustrating and choking the attack of other sides.
A long ball side playing 4-4-2 a type of football that has long since been consigned to another era (thank God) and yet a Celtic side who pride themselves on an attacking brand of football can’t break it down over 300,000 minutes of turgid football?
He needs to take a look at himself and his own decisions in pre Season because most who know anything about the tactical side of the game know that one approach won’t get you anywhere in Europe unless your fielding a side of galacticos worth multiple times the value of players we have at our disposal.
Now perhaps we drop into a Competition that with a bit more flexibility in the thinking we might just be able to actually achieve something?
No holding my breath though irrespective of who comes in this week.
If a second rate pretendgers Rangers can gain headway in Europes second best Competition over the past few years then I don’t see why a successful Celtic can’t.
As he said before last nights game no more excuses?
Then subsequently stated the pitch was poor.
Paul, I agree 100%, thank you. J.
Well said. The board are to blame for the wider malaise that has seen us endure numerous embarrassments at this stage, as listed above, and again last night. That needs addressing pronto as we cannot keep going down the same, self-inflicted, Catch 22 transfer circus every summer. However, while I congratulate Kairat and wish them well in the next stage, even a disjointed, Martin-led Rangers have taken on better teams than Kairat in CL qualification this season and still come through with decent scorelines, if not performances (until Brugge, who are a significant step up). This was not Real, Bayern Munich or even a top team from Austria, Belgium, Norway, or another “smaller” league, similar to our own we were facing. They are probably amongst the lowest ranked of all the teams we’ve bombed against over the last decade or so – possibly even the lowest ranked. Our manager and the players he had available should have been able to cope with that in the same way we’d expect them to get through against say Livingston or even Ayr or Raith. So this is very much on them too.
Rogers changed to 3 at the back in the second half against Kairat and Lenny managed to beat Barcelona by playing a blocking 433. You are wrong to say that they can’t adapt.
Brendan Rodger’s about lack of the intensity that he preached all week| 0/10Yang because he’s useless, 0/10 for Forrest as he never played! Rodger’s choice of order of penalty takers achieved the suicide result ! Was it a calculated decision to beat the Board and new contract conditions But the end result of the the internal politics beats the club and us. Hope there bonuses chokes them forever more
Make no mistake, This is our worst result in Europe…by far.
Rodgers is just as much to blame as the board. He had the players at his disposal to beat a terrible football team with plenty to spare. Yet we never looked like scoring over the two legs.
Almaty will be taking Rangers place as, The worst team to ever play in the champions league. They are that bad.
Rodgers only knows one system. The writing has been on the wall since last year when Barry made him look like an idiot.
Please drop the pretence Rodgers is a world class manager. He’s not.
I have been saying it for weeks phil…. we knew how this one ends… bye bye Daizen Maeda. They will blame failing to qualify but all it needed was investment and we wouldn’t be in this mess. £40m was GUARENTEED through qualification. They sold Khun, sold Kiogo and spent sweet FA of the transfer money from their sale. All we keep hearing is why should Dermot write cheques after the signings last year. The fact is its NOT.dermots money…. the FANS buy the tickets, buy the merchandise. THEY generate this money by backing the team. The board don’t not give a toss about the fans. All they care about are their bonuses. Would 6hey have invested the champions league money in the team?…NO CHANCE. Unfortunately in the modern game we cannot get rid of them, those days have passed. Our fans will still sell out the Europa league games at home… NOTHING changes. Apart from the team gets weaker and the fans get shafted.
Technically they did
spend most of the Kyogo money on bringing back Jota. Not making excuses for them but people forget that they made relatively small profit on the Kyogo deal.
What about the HUGE profit they made on Jota??. Sold for £25M…. bought back for £8M. That’s a £17M profit. So sorry but your point makes no sense.
Of course it makes sense! The original post said they spent nothing of the Kyogo money but they brought back Jota with it. What happened before then wasn’t the point being addressed. I suggest you learn to read things properly before criticising others.
Owen pal, It wasnt meant as a criticism it was pointing out that regardless of any money spent on jota, the club were massively in profit on transfers anyway. How can a club sell their main striker in january and not replace him straight away, let alone 7 months later?. It’s an absolutely crazy way to run a club. The board sold players that contributed a combined 60 goals from the previous 12 months without replacing them. Sorry but that is a joke.
Owen Celtic made a profit of around £6.5m last Season from player trading.
Already this Season we have made profit from the sale of Kühn and the release of numerous players taking wages from the Club who hadent had an impact.
When you combine the fact we entered into this Financial year cash rich at the bank then perhaps the Board look at the Champions League windfall as a free hit this Season?
Win ,lose or draw Celtic would be taking in profit from a European run this Summer and hopefully into the early part of next year which then take us into the second part of the Financial year as well.
Whilst I’m in total agreement that this is quite a ridiculous approach in footballing term Financially it does make sense.
Had we qualified v Kairat I do believe a couple of major signings might have been made but when you look at how poor we were tactically agaisnt a very mediocre side then perhaps they might not be looking at Brendan in the same light as many of our support?
His record last Season aside in the Champions League isn’t quite as good as his supposed “Elite Manager” hype/tag might suggest.
They sanctioned big spending on Idah Engels and Trusty last Season and none of them started the game in Kazakhstan.
This is not Football Manager or X Box this is real money with very real consequences if you keep chucking money at it and your plans don’t quite work out the way you want them too.
Whilst I don’t think Maeda will be punted this week Imdo see him being sold in January then Brendan to follow him out the door in May.
Not ideal I know but that’s where we are at unfortunately.
Simply not good enough this campaign in the Champions League that much is obvious.
Perhaps the cycle under Ange and Brendan has come to an end and they are planning a new fresh go at it next Season under a new regime with money to Finance it properly?
Time will tell.
I’d love to see Knutsen from Bodo with a decent Transfer Budget and see where that take us.
He’s done really well in Europe with arguably way less cash to burn.
You talk like you believe the management just have to go down to the local footballer shop and buy a new player.
Kyogo WANTED away
Kühn WANTED away
That should tell you something. Replacing good players who don’t want to play for our team with like-for-like is not like replacing your car every two years. Agents answer the phone to Celtic after they answer the phone to just about any other team in the EPL or EFL.
How do you persuade talent to come to Scotland? If your answer is to throw money at them, then we will be broke in no time. And do you know what you’ll be singing when you discover we’re broke? SACK THE BOARD
As for having money and not spending it, have we learnt nothing from Fergus? As long as we have money in the bank, we remain safer [safer] from vulture capitalists. Look at the state of Newcastle.
There is nothing to offset, we took in the best part of £30 million for kyogo, Kuhn and others and failed to replace them. However I won’t be surprised if more leave.
Maeda will be sold in January to offset the loss of CL to EL as they won’t risk the backlash in this window.
Kairat we’re better coached, better managed and had better tactics simple as that. Any other scottish team wins that tie
Even allowing for the ineptitude of the board, Celtic should have had enough in the tank to qualify for the CL proper. Recent performances have been poor and the games against Almaty were shocking.
That is down to the manager and the players in my humble opinion. Yes, the board has messed up again, but the manager and the players haven’t covered themselves in glory either HH
Do you think the boards mis-management happens in a vacuum?, no effect on the players?. I predicted this result between these 2 teams before Kiarat had even played the previous leg, as this is what happens to a club run like Celtic, didn’t require any level of insight on my part.
Absolutely Spot on. Well Said.
I’m sorry I can’t let the manager or players take the blame. What’s the first and biggest moan about BR ? Easy he pays football the every game. Guess what ? It’s successful at Celtic hugely successful.
So my point is this
The board know this.
They know before he arrives in the building what style of play he’ll use and the type of player he will require.
That is a given. No questions we all know it and so do they.
This is sabotage plain and simple. If it’s not sabotage then their lack of ability to carry out their role of managing a football team and looking after their custom base is borderline criminal
The board couldn’t tell you half the names of the players in the annual squad photo.
All they know is how much money the club has in the bank and how much bonus they are due come June…down to the nearest penny.
Bean counters is all they are. If they weren’t counting beans at a football club they would be counting them at some other institution.
Every Celtic fan could see this calamity on the horizon except the Celtic board. The sale of Kuhn BEFORE THIS TIE WITHOUT A REPLACEMENT WAS SUICIDAL, he could have been sold after the tie was over. Celtic fans can show their disgust at this self inflicted 💩-show by refusing to buy Europa League briefs. As for Desmond… boasting about beating a bankrupt car crash new co no longer washes with the fans, he is a Dinosaur.This crony board has run its course.
This is exactly what I’ve been saying as well, the best way to send a message to this incompetent board is for the fans to withdraw enmasse from the Home Cup Ticket Scheme so the club can’t debit money from their accounts, then as you say, BOYCOTT the home Europa League games to send out a clear message to Desmond, Lawwell and Nicholson we aren’t going to be taken for mugs anymore and to also cause them maximum EMBARRASSMENT.
Suits gamble and lose yet again,they have no ambition and appear not to give one f**k about it. Rise…
I offer no defence of the board, but if Idah and McCowan were capable of taking less- shite penalties we could have seen a different outcome. I can’t understand how professional footballers are so incapable of taking a penalty kick.
Taking a penalty!, they couldn’t even play football for 210 minutes, as I say, the boards actions don’t happen in a vacuum.
Absolutely Correct.
Did they practice? Aberdeen hit all their penalties top left in the Cup Final. Unstoppable.
Spot on Robert, looked like badly prepared, nothing learned from Scottish cup debacle.