“Celtic paying price for making same old stupid mistakes,” Sutton
Chris Sutton has picked over the bones of Celtic’s latest Champions League calamity and reckons it comes down to more than the tactics, or the performances of the team in Linz. It’s a pattern of mismanagement at the club that needs to be addressed…
Writing in his newspaper column today the former Celtic striker reflects on what went wrong on Linz from a Celtic perspective and also covered the wider strategy failures at the club with a stubborn board refusing to own up to their errors and repeatedly making the same mistakes year on year while thinking that they are smarter than everyone else.
We’ll leave the post match critique to the side and concentrate on what Sutton has been saying about the underlining problems in the way Celtic is being run and it’s hard to disagree with anything he has had to say in his Daily Record column today.
“It comes back to the deep-rooted problems that are constantly plaguing the club at this level,” Chris Sutton noted.
Sutton believes that with Arne Engels being allowed to leave just before these Champions League playoff matches, Martin O’Neill would only have agreed to the move going ahead IF a suitable replacement had been lined up – yet it didn’t happen and Celtic were absolutely battered in the middle of the park allowing LASK to dominate the match and turn around a 4-0 deficit to win the tie 5-1 in the most embarrassing night of football since, well the same thing happened against minnows Kairat Almaty last year.
“He told them publicly he didn’t have a player with that profile for such a huge game against a very physical team. And then if he was overruled then there had to be a replacement lined up,” Sutton pointed out.
“He won’t say it but he has been let down. I’m not saying Engels would have ran the show against LASK – but Celtic would have had a better chance with him in the side. As it was they were left with a midfield that got brushed aside time and time again,” he added.
The quality just wasn’t there for Celtic and the players coming off the bench, with the exception of Liam Scales, could not really be considered as anything other than Scottish (UEFA quota) squad players who were never going to turn around a tie that was embarrassingly slipping away from Celtic.
“Celtic had Dane Murray coming on at right back at first, Liam Scales at left back, and then Anthony Ralston on for extra-time. Luke McCowan has been harshly made into a bit of a scapegoat by fans online but he should never have been in that situation, having to come on to rescue a Champions League campaign,” Sutton said.
He added: “The fact he was needed points back to the overriding fact that Celtic once again went into this match badly lacking in key areas.
“The board were lavished with praise for signing Hogh and Camilo Duran, and maybe rightly so. They look like good signings. But they were also the bare minimum. They were replacements for players who left.
“Baur could be another decent one in, as should Haissem Hassan. But those two landed barely a week before the LASK tie. Baur doesn’t have the profile to replace Engels and Hassan wasn’t fit enough to even get off the bench the other night.”
And Sutton referenced the last of excuses Michael Nicholson came out with last autumn after the failure to score against Kairat in 210 plus minutes of football and the failure to replace Kyogo and others in the transfer market but still flogging Nicolas Kuhn to Como scooping around £12m in profit.
“There’s no point blaming agents, selling clubs, transfer fees, or even the media for not getting deals done,” Sutton said, directing that at the Celtic CEO. “Yet again Celtic have been too slow in getting the players in they needed for such a significant test. I get quantity over quality – but they needed MORE quality.”
Sutton continued: “The proof was on the pitch the other night. Supporters don’t want to hear more excuses or apologies – they are sick to the back teeth with those. There’s bound to be a massive mood swing again with the feel good factor from the start to the domestic season up in smoke and we’ll need to see if there’s a return to the mass protests of last term.
“I’m not sure fans even have the stomach for all that again and at some stage the anger might turn to apathy at watching Celtic paying the price for making the same old stupid mistakes over and over again.”
Again, it’s hard to argue with a word of what Chris Sutton has been saying on the shambles at Celtic on and off the park.
