Chris Sutton’s tweet on Celtic’s Champions League knock out attracted 1,900 comments overnight.
The BT Sport pundit has long warned that the club had to reinvest of they were to remain relevant in European football after Brendan Rodgers shook everything up in the summer of 2016.
Successive Champions League Play Off failures under Ronny Deila saw the stands slowly empty, embarrassing exits at Hampden in both cup competitions and failure to win in any of six Europa League ties including back-to-back defeats from Molde.
Rather than build on the boost provided by Rodgers- which came at a cost in terms of managerial salary- it seems that the club went into retreat.
Fifteen months ago Rodgers could include Moussa Dembele, Patrick Roberts, Kieran Tierney, Mikael Lustig and Stuart Armstrong in his side. Last night the only replacement for that group of players was Hatem Abd Elhamed, starting his third game for the club.
A second successive failure at the third qualifying round of the Champions League is actually a step back since the Deila days, a play-off now has to be negotiated to reach the Europa League.
Supporters are unhappy, they feel neglected, taken for granted and let down. Their ambitions seem at odds with those making decisions in the boardroom.
Sutton won’t go away, he’ll be in the Record, on BT Sport at the weekend and on twitter. Big decisions will have to be made if the grave predictions of the former striker are to be proved wrong.
That’s the Tierney money gone tonight… the messing about in the last few windows has bitten Celtic on the backside… this day was always coming…
— Chris Sutton (@chris_sutton73) August 13, 2019
Tbh Slavia Prague would’ve pumped us 6-0 as you know anyways the way they’ve being playing so Cluj probably done us a favour tonight. But LB is needed as that wasn’t fair on McGregor look when BR played McGregor LB was a nightmare
— Kelly McGeachy (@kellybaby3) August 13, 2019
Shambles is an understatement! The board I’m afraid are completely to blame for what looks like an inept team with no direction.
— Field5s (@Field5sSport) August 13, 2019
It starts and ends with Lawell and the board.
Priorities all wrong Peter.
Time to go— Gazzarinho (@gazzarinho1) August 13, 2019
What about the person pulling the strings?
— H C Holden Caulflield (@HughFClark) August 14, 2019
I’ve been a season ticket holder for 11 years chris and decided I’m not renewing it the money we have got in the past 5 years to the investment in the team is ridiculous. I know we have to budget but balance sheets matter over team Development.
— Franky Macca’s BHOY (@Calshy38) August 13, 2019
This is down to the board and the manager. We buy 10million worth of defenders and then play McGregor in defence. This was a shambles from start to finish.
— Jamie McGowan (@MrBenn1963) August 13, 2019
Playing Calmac at LB, ridiculous, not replacing KT, (we all knew he was going) Lawell closing the wallet now, typical
— Rab, Est 1967 ????????????????????????????????Esq. (@scooterrab) August 13, 2019