Now nobody needs to be told that this season has been an absolute catastrophe for Celtic on and off the park. There has been multiple factors that have contributed to this absolutely awful season and this article will look at some of the reasons of where it went wrong for Celtic.
5. Recruitment
Celtic spent £17million in the summer and decided against selling key assets, from the outside looking in some of the recruitment looked like wonderful pieces of business such as the Shane Duffy deal and the Vasilis Barkas deal but ultimately we signed six players in the summer (Albian Ajeti, Vasilis Barkas, David Turnbull, Shane Duffy, Diego Laxalt and Mohamed Elyounoussi) and we would be glad to see the back of the three loans and the £10million spent between Barkas and Ajeti. Turnbull has been a really impressive signing but it took far too long to implement him into the side which has been to the detriment of Celtic as if he was added earlier into the side then we could’ve had more encouraging signs in our attacking play. The recruitment in the summer was woeful and someone has to take responsibility for that whether that’s Neil Lennon, the board, Nick Hammond or everyone in the recruitment department takes accountability but at the end of the day it has shown that whoever made the decisions last summer cannot be allowed to make the decisions this summer.
4. Celtic 1-2 Ferencvaros
When Celtic exited the Champions League qualifiers for the third season in a row and the earliest Champions League exit in 15 years it was a complete hammer blow so early on into the new season. Not only did we miss out on the lucrative £30million which in COVID-19 times is extremely critical, the manager also comes out after the game and drops the bombshell that some players in the dressing room don’t want to be there when he said, “get your mentality right, get your attitude right. If some of you don’t want to be there, leave.” It was the double whammy for the Celtic support as we learned that our team wouldn’t be in the Champions League for another season yet again and that some of our top players didn’t want to be in the dressing room. Throwing the players under the bus was a tactic I’m sure Lennon will have regretted and that in reality Celtic never really recovered from this horrendous European result. Sergei Rebrov’s side actually reached the Champions League group-stages but it was another embarrassing night for Celtic in Europe and it’s fair to say the Hungarian‘s were a bang average side, Celtic capitulated on the night and it was the first signs of all was not going to go to plan for Celtic this season.
3. Bolingoli gate, COVID and Dubai
Three things into one but all COVID related and all having significant effects on our season. The Bolingoli debacle went onto have a damaging effect on Celtic‘s season after his actions resulted in the postponement of two Celtic games against St Mirren and Aberdeen which meant playing catch-up for almost the rest of the season which ultimately has costed Bolingoli a career at Celtic. Celtic were desperately unlucky with COVID cases throughout the season with big players missing in big games, particularly against Rangers in the first Glasgow Derby of the season and players having to self-isolate as well which was through no fault of their own. What was Celtic‘s fault was to go to Dubai, the only team in Britain to travel overseas for a January break this season, 19 points behind and during a global pandemic Neil Lennon, the boardroom and the PR department thought it was a good idea to go to the middle-east which as we know ended up in shambolic fashion as on the way back from Dubai, Christopher Jullien (who was out for 4 months but travelled to Dubai anyway) tested positive and 13 players plus 3 coaching staff (including Neil Lennon) missed two games in the league (Celtic 1-1 Hibernian, Celtic 0-0 Livingston) which we dropped points in and added insult to injury to Celtic‘s season. The mismanagement of the team on and off the park this season was there for all to see and the decision-making at Celtic Park this season has been nothing short of an embarrassment and we have paid the price for that.
2. European Humiliation
Going into the Europa League group-stage campaign Celtic for the first time in their history were the top seed in the group but the caveat to that was Celtic were drawn against Italian giants AC Milan, French side Lille and bottom seed Sparta Prague. The expectation was that Celtic would battle for second spot with Lille as we had already forgiven that the Rossoneri were going to finish top of the group. However after no wins in the first two games but taking a respectable point in France despite being 2-0 ahead, the crucial double-header with Czech side Sparta Prague would be vital if Celtic were going to go through. What an absolute calamity of results, the first being a 4-1 defeat at Celtic Park where Sparta Prague had 7 first team players out and a third choice goalkeeper in net and the second being a 4-1 loss in Prague despite Lennon saying after the first 4-1 at Celtic Park, “this is definitely a turning point - it won’t happen again.” But it did. This is where the Celtic board should’ve acted, clearly things weren’t going to plan, the team weren’t responding to the manager and in that November period we were showing signs of real desperate and dismal performances. We ended the group bottom on 4 points conceding a whopping 19 goals having the worst joint record of conceded goals alongside Dundalk and Ludogorets and were only 4 conceded goals away from the Europa League record for most goals conceded in a group-stage campaign ever. It was European humiliation for Celtic and compounded our defensive woes for the rest of the season.
1. Complacency
As the Celtic fans said for years, “the only team that will stop Celtic from winning 10 in a row is Celtic“ and “don’t sleep at the wheel.” Well, where do we start with the boardroom this season, they chose to take a gamble in December and keep Lennon with a decent run of fixtures which would take us to Ibrox which if we won we’d be back in the title race. The gamble completely fell on its head. In reality (and this isn’t hindsight for many Celtic supporters) Lennon should’ve been gone after Ferencvaros OR Rangers (0-2) OR the two Sparta Prague games OR Ross County in the League Cup. The board took a calculated risk and displayed a real sign of narcissistic leadership, gross negligence and completely disregarded the fans .The fans were right. If Lawwell, Desmond, Bankier, Allison, Brown, MacKay, Wilson or Nicholson had listened to the supporters concerns we might have been in a different place or at least gave us a chance to try turn it around. The league was done on January 2nd and at a club like Celtic where we were going into one of the most important season’s in our clubs history to show the mismanagement and sentimentality off the park like we have done this season it is has been nothing short of baffling. They gave Neil his chance at a Treble and to be the first Celtic player and manager to win three domestic honours in a season rather than sacking him and getting a caretaker until the end of the season whether that have been O’Neill or Strachan or Kennedy it could’ve changed results. By the time Lennon “resigned“ Rangers won the title two weeks later which tells you all you need to know about how the decisions the board made in October, November and December and even more importantly 25th May 2019 escalated too. The Celtic board were complacent and ultimately it resulted in Celtic putting up a terrible challenge in trying to secure 10 consecutive league titles.
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