Celtic Diary Thursday August 15: Something Has To Change

After Tuesdays debacle in Glasgow, where Celtic conspired to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory-not once, but three times, it’s clear that should the club wish to consider itself a champions League club, something has to change.

Only twice, in the last decade, have Celtic made the group stages of the elite competition..2-12 and 2016.

Failure in the qualifiers has become the norm, and not the exception.

Tuesday was avoidable, in fact one could argue that it was harder to lose that tie than it was to win it. A team which has won six out of seven games was broken up to accommodate Olivier Ntcham at the expense of Celtics most comsistent midfielder, who was shunted to left back.

We all know what happened, and we all know what the consequences were.

Lennon made an arse of it, and we have to ask why.

Brown and MacGregor are the midfield back line. It’s as simple as that. Each knows how the other plays, and they work together as a unit.

Moving MacGregor out of that partnership meant that Brown, who clearly had little faith in Ntcham, presumably because the player has said he’s too good for this team and too good for this league, then opted to try to do evrything himself. He popped up at left back, right back, central defence and even once, quite spectacularly, as goalkeeper.

The calming influence of Nir Biton was removed from the defence, to allow Jozo Simunovic …another with his eye on a move…to come back into the side. Simunovic is not noted for his calmness.

Even when ahead with fourteen minutes to go, Lennon somehow avoided introducing Biton to shore up the back line, which remains one of the more bizarre decisions of a truly bewildering evening.

Mikey Johnston, another who had missed a few games was brought back in, removing the ineffectual Lewis Morgan from the right side, though with Scott Sinclair not even on the bench, it meant the left flank was patrolled by a non left back and a lightweight novice winger.

Suddenly, the result doesn’t seem such a surprise.

Scott Bain picked up where he left off at Motherwell, possibly as a result of him playing behind yet another unfamiliar back four, but also possibly because he isn’t very good. There are calls for Craig Gordon to be recalled, but frankly, he isn’t very good either.

The problem we have is that the very real danger of no group stage European football this season is looking more likely than not, should Celtic and Lennon continue to arse about with the team.

Likely opponents AIK Stockholm are an established side, who will fancy their chances against A Celtic side that , over the last ten years or so, has consistently failed to perform in Europe.

And it doesn’t look like this year is going to be any different, In fact it might be worse.

So, what went wrong ? I mean why did it go wrong ? We’re all perfectly aware of what went wrong.

Except of course, the manager, who reckons that playing MacGregor at left back didn’t make any difference.

We hear talk, as yet unconfirmed, that there was a row in the dressing room pre match between manager and captain. If true, that would explain the performance of Brown. The captain apparently told Lennon that he was making a mistake, but the boss ignored him.

Olivier Ntcham was not Browns favoured partner, and putting him in the shop window to encourage a move is not, and should never be, how to plan for such an important game.

The disagreement may have, had it happened, been a reason for the poor all round performance, and the less than mature efforts of Brown.

Sure , the Romanians fouled ebryone that moved, and yeah, the referee wasn’t great.

But thats no excuse, and Celtic , again, have exited the top table of club football not to a better side, but entirely down to their own mistakes.

So, who gets the blame, and where does the change have to take place ?

An obvious candidate for the door is the manager. Ultimately, he must stand or fall by his own decisions, which in this case, were clearly wrong.

Playing players out of position for what seems the flimsiest of reasons is a schoolboy error. Can you imagine the surge of adrenalin that went through the Cluj players when they saw the disjointed line up pre match.

What if there was a row, and the Romanians heard it ?

Celtic Park, the once feared venue for foreign teams, is now on many bucket lists for footballers, as a nice night out.

Celtic lost four goals at home, for only the third time in their history, in a European game.

Four goals. In an arena where Oliver Khan once celebrated his Bayern Munich side getting a 0-0 draw….

Lennon is under pressure now, severe pressure. Further failure in Europe followed by defeat at Ibrox will throw the season into chaos even this early.

The board will, of course hide away until all this has blown over, and yet they are equally as culpable as the management.

Any board of any other business , including the Chief Executive who has seen the business lose millions and millions of pounds by not performing in its core market, would be dismissed.

At thirty or so million pounds per campaign, thats a serious loss of income, and shareholders should be asking questions if those charged with running the club are really fit for purpose.

It’s their job to see that the workforce is provided with the tools to do the job they are asked to, and that, over the last ten years or so, has clearly not happened.

And it doesn’t look like it will happen next year either, or the year after that.

The downsizing we heard about at the end of last season is well and truly underway.

The board cannot be accused of not spending, having invested in four new players to date, at a cost of over £10m .

But only one of them played on Tuesday, a right back signed for just over £1m, who looked every inch a £1m right back. Thats not a criticism of him, he at least put in the effort, but effort is no substitute for quality at this level.

Th other two may yet turn out to be okay, but what we have seen is the danger of planning for these qualifiers in the summer, and not in the previous winter, which would allow them time to settle.

For the moment, Lennon needs to pick his best eleven and stick with them. Places should be earned purely on merit, and consistency should be the key.

For the Cluj game, that seemed to have been thrown out of the window.

Stories of discord in the dressing room will probably emerge over the next few days, if indeed, that is the case.

Although just rumour at the moment, and people looking for an explanation of why it all went wrong may well have seized on them and constructed their own narrative around them to fit their own theory.

I may even be guilty of that, but one thing is certain.

Something is wrong, and it needs to be fixed.

And it needs to be fixed right now.

Caption competition from Tuesday…