Neil Lennon has strongly defended the team he picked for the midweek Champions League qualifier against Ferencvaros as the fallout from the 2-1 defeat continues, the Glasgow Times reports.
Lennon made the bold decision to start Ryan Christie as a striker, with neither Albian Ajeti nor Patryk Klimala starting the game.
Christie scored, but that wasn’t enough to stop the Hoops exiting the competition, and Lennon has been criticised for his curveball team selection as a result.
However, the Hoops boss has maintained that he picked the right team for the game and also explained why Klimala didn’t feature.
“There’s no rethought”
“There’s no rethought on the team, we thought long and hard about it. I think the team was right” Lennon said, as quoted by the Glasgow Times.
“Ryan played centre forward, and he scored and also was very good throughout the game. (Klimala has) not played a 90 minutes since he’s been here. He’s a young player that we have hopes for going forward. But he wasn’t ready to start a game of that magnitude” he concluded.
It will be intriguing to see what other Celtic fans make of the manager’s comments. He seems adamant that it wasn’t a mistake playing Christie as a striker.
To be fair, Christie did score. However, he did miss some very good chances that a natural striker could have found the back of the net with.
Strange that player didn’t feature at all
As for Klimala, it does seem strange that he didn’t even come off the bench, when he has featured regularly so far this season.
One wonders if the situations occurs again if the manager would once again play Christie up-front if given the chance. You would hope not, however Lennon does not seem to regret the decision.
Now is the time for Celtic to move on from the loss, starting against Motherwell on Sunday. Hopefully that game will see the Hoops start a striker up-front.
In other news, new Celtic signing David Turnbull was always confident he’d overcome his injury issues.
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