27 May 2025 22:01:01
Ed, firstly thank you for your work over the year. Keeping the site going. Unlike football players, I guess you won't have a close season especially when the window opens. Make sure you take a break from it.
What's your slant on BR going into the last year of his contract? The deeper we go into next season without knowing whether he's staying or not could affect the teams performances as speculation mounts. Not ideal ?.
{Ed007's Note - Thanks mate, I don't really take any time off as such as I can even keep the forums rolling on my phone if I'm out ??
Regardless of Rodgers contract situation the players need to step it up next season as far too many of them were simply going through the motions once Europe was out the way and didn't turn up in many of our "big" games. I can take losing games & even losing cups but in every single game the Celtic players should be coming off that pitch knowing they gave everything they had out there - not many can do that since January imo.
As far as Rodgers extending his deal or not I think a lot of that will come down to how well he is backed in this window, he needs to bring in players that will bring in a fresh impetus to the squad.
I know I'm like a broken record but this is another situation where we need a DOF overseeing things, the Lennon Miller rumours are a perfect example of it, should the decision on whether to try and sign one of the best young Scottish players in years be down to a manager with a year left on his deal?}
28 May 2025 13:37:05
Incredibly Celtic have lost the most games ( 7 ) from the start of January until the end of the season in 35 years.
( 1990 when we last lost to Aberdeen in the SC Final and that was our 8th defeat since January 1st 1990 )
During our horrendous years we played the league cup from August to about the November time and we didn’t always Qualify for European football.
When we did Qualify for European we didn’t get past Christmas.
Celtic were always the draw specialist in the early to mid 1990s.
Although we didn’t win loads of games we also didn’t lose the majority of our matches.
It’s more astonishing when you consider Celtic only lost 2 games in the whole of 2024 which was our best record in over 100 years.
Complacency definitely played a huge part in our worst losing record since 1990 from January until May.
28 May 2025 14:54:53
Cheers Ed ?.
28 May 2025 17:15:41
I thought our for dipped once kyogo left but had not realised it was that bad. ?.
28 May 2025 17:38:46
The absence of a Winter Break, might have been a factor in our less than impressive 2025? The team were in full flow through late Summer and Autumn even with three games a week during CL games. We were even performing better after European games where we'd struggled in the past. I also think we were fortunate with injuries within the nucleus of the squad with some being over-relied on and we ran out of steam.
28 May 2025 17:58:33
Complacency may have played a part in our Cup Final loss, however I have no doubt tiredness was also a factor. Complacency would put a very big question mark against BR's ability as manager. It would be very much the Manager’s responsibility to prevent his players becoming complacent.
I can’t remember any team consistently playing as fast and with such a high work- rate as our team played at from August to February. During that period apart from International weeks we were playing at weekend and midweek for that whole period. Becoming tired and not working as hard as our team does when on form would make it natural for team to not make the same runs, press as high and as often when games become meaningless.
The team probably couldn’t regain its previous speed, work - rate and high pressure after easing up in some games.
If the Board feels complacency caused us to lose matches including Cup final, then the Board need to study long and hard before they allow him free rein in transfer window and sign all the players he seeks, not only that but Board should debate at length whether they want to renew his contract.
If he cannot eradicate complacency amongst the team, we have a major problem as the better a team we have, the bigger a distance there will be between us and other teams leaving a large opening for complacency.