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Tommy Burns, as manager.
Topic Started: 7 Jun 2018, 04:58 PM (5,740 Views)
geobhoy66
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if not for the cheating across the city, Tommy would have won plenty
He had huge respect from both players and staff at the club and the fans loved him.
if only fergus had known of the goings on across the city :angry:
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CHR15
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He was always well liked, but legendary status in that team probably only belonged to Paul McStay. His managerial stock rose when he had Killie playing quite well, relatively, and he was seen as someone who could get Celtic playing the Celtic way. There was always doubts about his pragmatism, especially when the huns' strength was considered (Burns' teams weren't so great defensively and he didn't always appear to place as much emphasis on shutting the door as he could've done). We were a hell of an attacking force under him though, it was just a shame they couldn't get past that pair of fat carrots Goram as often as needed.
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Belgrano
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Tactically very naive and couldn't pick a defender if his life depended on it. Had a great eye for an attacker though and had us playing some great football at times. The huns used to coast it against us though - and Smith totally had Burns' mark every time we played them. They'd generally let us do all the attacking until the inevitable tiring or tactical change opened us up - and they'd run up the park and sucker punch us. But there was always a feeling that if they really needed to step up another gear against us - they could do that too. It was a pity as we'd usually go into games against them on a good run of form and get our hopes up - only to be inevitably done by them. A lot of people will blame this on cheating (which happened), dirty tactics by Rangers (which happened) or referee bias (which happened) - but our biggest enemies in those games were ourselves.

If anything, Burns' emotional attachment to the club was his downfall. He couldn't separate the heart from the head when it came to managing the club. He also seemed to let the press get to him a lot, and let them undermine his team selections or dropping of certain players (usually based on a well-timed 'exclusive' story by the red tops the day before a big game). Impossible to feel anything but affection for him though, and he brought us some great times (some effing awful times too such as Raith Rovers or the Falkirk semi-final). But it was the right decision to move him on when we did if we'd any hope of stopping the huns winning 10.
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mikebhoy
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Belgrano
7 Jun 2018, 05:18 PM
Tactically very naive and couldn't pick a defender if his life depended on it. Had a great eye for an attacker though and had us playing some great football at times. The huns used to coast it against us though - and Smith totally had Burns' mark every time we played them. They'd generally let us do all the attacking until the inevitable tiring or tactical change opened us up - and they'd run up the park and sucker punch us. But there was always a feeling that if they really needed to step up another gear against us - they could do that too. It was a pity as we'd usually go into games against them on a good run of form and get our hopes up - only to be inevitably done by them. A lot of people will blame this on cheating (which happened), dirty tactics by Rangers (which happened) or referee bias (which happened) - but our biggest enemies in those games were ourselves.

If anything, Burns' emotional attachment to the club was his downfall. He couldn't separate the heart from the head when it came to managing the club. He also seemed to let the press get to him a lot, and let them undermine his team selections or dropping of certain players (usually based on a well-timed 'exclusive' story by the red tops the day before a big game). Impossible to feel anything but affection for him though, and he brought us some great times (some effing awful times too such as Raith Rovers or the Falkirk semi-final). But it was the right decision to move him on when we did if we'd any hope of stopping the huns winning 10.
Can’t disagree with that, but worth adding that for me and my mates at the time we thought he really was the chosen one at the time...tied in with the McCann takeover, the redevelopment of CP, plus I was a daft lad of 20 it was a sense of optimism I had never really experienced before.

My dad (correctly) called it that we wouldn’t overhaul the Huns with him in charge for many of the reasons Belgrano lists but I couldn’t see past blind faith and we argued relentlessly about it.

He managed the relationship with McCann and the Board poorly as well - let a lot of his frustrations show in public - and ultimately he was too young and too emotionally wrapped up in the club to see the big picture.

Was a real “farewell to youthful optimism” moment for me when his reign came to that horrible, soaking wet, miserable night at Ibrox in the Cup semi final replay.
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pablo5
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An under-rated manager in some senses. I don't think it was fully understood at the time what we were up against in that Rangers side.

That Burns managed to win our first trophy in ages with the 95 Scottish Cup should not be sniffed at.

Wait and see how ballistic the Sevco support goes when they inevitably fluke a League Cup.

I always thought it was a real shame Tommy never got a stint as the Scotland manager. Celtic was maybe a bit too early, the wrong time and too close to him to properly judge him as a manager. I reckon it took him a long time to get over how it ended.
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Butters
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Rangers were throwing money (not their own) about like it was going out of fashion but they didn't spend it very well, particularly from 93 onwards. Smith was given good players & other than Laudrip I can't think of many that produced what they should have for them. Gascoigne was nowhere near what he should have been, Mykhaylychenko was played out of position, Duncuan Ferguson a nightmare of a centre forward bought for 4 million and shoved on the wing, Salenko, Boli was a top class French Champions League winning central defender who ended looking a bombscare. Teams built on a fraction of Rangers budget were humiliating them every year in the Champions League, that wasn't an all conquering Huns team, they were there for the taking and we couldn't do it. For what it's worth I think Advocaat side at the end of the 90s were a much better team than their 9 IAR side

Much is made of only losing 1 league game all season & not winning the league, that game was lost to Rangers who we played 6 times in all competitions and won none of them. That Celtic team was mentally fragile & couldn't be trusted as deep down you knew they would let you down the minute they were put under any pressure, it was a shocking mentality that lingered through the club until MON arrived.


Edited by Butters, 7 Jun 2018, 05:50 PM.
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pablo5
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Whatever it is, there's not enough of it
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Butters
7 Jun 2018, 05:43 PM
Rangers were throwing money (not their own) about like it was going out of fashion but they didn't spend it very well, particularly from 93 onwards. Smith was given good players & other than Laudrip I can't think of many that produced what they should have for them. Gascoigne was nowhere near what he should have been, Mykhaylychenko was played out of position, Duncuan Ferguson a nightmare of a centre forward bought for 4 million and shoved on the wing, Salenko, Boli was a top class French Champions League winning central defender who ended looking a bombscare. Teams built on a fraction of Rangers budget were humiliating them every year in the Champions League, that wasn't an all conquering Huns team, they were there for the taken and we couldn't do it. For what it's worth I think Advocaat side at the end of the 90s were a much better team.than their 9 IAR side

Much is made of only losing 1 league game all season & not winning the league, that game was lost to Rangers who we played 6 times in all competitions and won none of them. That Celtic team was mentally fragile & couldn't be trusted as deep down you knew they would let you down the minute they were put under any pressure, it was a shocking mentality that lingered through the club until MON arrived.


It was an understandable mentality though when you consider where we had been. It takes a very long time to build that psychology into a club and the 95 Cup win was a big part of the recovery.

I'm still convinced that the Judas saga knocked something out of the club that never really came back until Lambert scored in the 6-2.
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IainG
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Ah but I was so much older then,I'm younger than that now
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pablo5
7 Jun 2018, 05:52 PM
Butters
7 Jun 2018, 05:43 PM
Rangers were throwing money (not their own) about like it was going out of fashion but they didn't spend it very well, particularly from 93 onwards. Smith was given good players & other than Laudrip I can't think of many that produced what they should have for them. Gascoigne was nowhere near what he should have been, Mykhaylychenko was played out of position, Duncuan Ferguson a nightmare of a centre forward bought for 4 million and shoved on the wing, Salenko, Boli was a top class French Champions League winning central defender who ended looking a bombscare. Teams built on a fraction of Rangers budget were humiliating them every year in the Champions League, that wasn't an all conquering Huns team, they were there for the taken and we couldn't do it. For what it's worth I think Advocaat side at the end of the 90s were a much better team.than their 9 IAR side

Much is made of only losing 1 league game all season & not winning the league, that game was lost to Rangers who we played 6 times in all competitions and won none of them. That Celtic team was mentally fragile & couldn't be trusted as deep down you knew they would let you down the minute they were put under any pressure, it was a shocking mentality that lingered through the club until MON arrived.


It was an understandable mentality though when you consider where we had been. It takes a very long time to build that psychology into a club and the 95 Cup win was a big part of the recovery.

I'm still convinced that the Judas saga knocked something out of the club that never really came back until Lambert scored in the 6-2.
The Judas saga was a hammer blow which as you say took a long time to recover from.

Tommy was a decent manager but not more than that. It was difficult times for him though.
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Belgrano
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pablo5
7 Jun 2018, 05:40 PM
I always thought it was a real shame Tommy never got a stint as the Scotland manager. Celtic was maybe a bit too early, the wrong time and too close to him to properly judge him as a manager. I reckon it took him a long time to get over how it ended.
Burns was Berti Vogt's assistant manager but remarkably takes very little of the blame for the absolute shambles that that was. Vogts would have leaned heavily on Burns' knowledge of the league and players as he had no previous knowledge of Scottish football - yet Scotland capped some absolute abomination of players during that era for which Burns never seems to get the blame. I'd say the return to Celtic as a coach was his true destiny. He seems to have had a positive impact on everyone who ever encountered him at Celtic in those days.
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remy mcswain
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Very poor. A failure. Couldn’t win a game that mattered. Too emotional.
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Gonga
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remy mcswain
7 Jun 2018, 06:19 PM
Very poor. A failure. Couldn’t win a game that mattered. Too emotional.
If you are judging solely on him failing to better a superior Rangers side that had a similar winning mentality to what we have now then fire away.

I think Tommy’s era as manager was actually quite a bright spell in amongst an inglorious decade.

We were finally bringing in some exciting names and even though the three amigos went a bit bandit on us, he had us playing some exceptional football. And it was at a time that the club was modernising under Fergus.

As we have shown this last few years, once you have a strong winning mentality at a club it’s very hard to shift.

MoN managed to do it, but was given finances unlike any Celtic manager in our history.

Tommy had us playing the kind of stuff that took out us out of the early 90’s hellhole and gave us something to look forward to again.

To say he was a failure and too emotional given who he was, his links to the club and the Hun dominated era in which he managed is a joke.
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Stephane_Mahe
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Gonga
7 Jun 2018, 06:34 PM
remy mcswain
7 Jun 2018, 06:19 PM
Very poor. A failure. Couldn’t win a game that mattered. Too emotional.
If you are judging solely on him failing to better a superior Rangers side that had a similar winning mentality to what we have now then fire away.

I think Tommy’s era as manager was actually quite a bright spell in amongst an inglorious decade.

We were finally bringing in some exciting names and even though the three amigos went a bit bandit on us, he had us playing some exceptional football. And it was at a time that the club was modernising under Fergus.

As we have shown this last few years, once you have a strong winning mentality at a club it’s very hard to shift.

MoN managed to do it, but was given finances unlike any Celtic manager in our history.

Tommy had us playing the kind of stuff that took out us out of the early 90’s hellhole and gave us something to look forward to again.

To say he was a failure and too emotional given who he was, his links to the club and the Hun dominated era in which he managed is a joke.
Quote:
 
early 90’s hellhole


And there it is.

I’m actually surprised it took so long.


See the season we lost all 4 league games vs the huns but only finished 5 points or behind them, would we have won the league if we’d won 2 of they games? Obviously mathematically we would have, but would it have worked out like that or were the huns always comfortable/we’d have shat it?
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tinsoldier
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Exciting times - new stadium being built, quality signings, and of course our first trophy since '89 with that cup win over Airdrie (which I celebrated like we'd won the European Cup again).

Unfortunately the games he did manage to beat Rangers in ultimately didn't matter. Too many draws and a poor defence did for him too.

I will remember his time fondly though for the sometimes brilliant attacking football we played.
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idyllwild


Gonga
7 Jun 2018, 06:34 PM
remy mcswain
7 Jun 2018, 06:19 PM
Very poor. A failure. Couldn’t win a game that mattered. Too emotional.
If you are judging solely on him failing to better a superior Rangers side that had a similar winning mentality to what we have now then fire away.

I think Tommy’s era as manager was actually quite a bright spell in amongst an inglorious decade.

We were finally bringing in some exciting names and even though the three amigos went a bit bandit on us, he had us playing some exceptional football. And it was at a time that the club was modernising under Fergus.

As we have shown this last few years, once you have a strong winning mentality at a club it’s very hard to shift.

MoN managed to do it, but was given finances unlike any Celtic manager in our history.

Tommy had us playing the kind of stuff that took out us out of the early 90’s hellhole and gave us something to look forward to again.

To say he was a failure and too emotional given who he was, his links to the club and the Hun dominated era in which he managed is a joke.
As a manager he was far too emotional though, particularly in his handling of Di Canio. Maybe the huns had a better team, maybe they had another gear to go to, but TB was never pragmatic enough to give us a chance going into these games. He gave the huns every advantage they could have asked for, on and off the field.

Comparing it to now is a nonsense, we were far far closer to them (and with hindsight we arguably had better players) than they are to us now. Walter Smith was an average manager.

If we’d have won one SC game, one league game and one LC game against the huns we’d have won the treble. We shat the bed against them continually under TB.
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CELTBHOY1988
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Gonga
7 Jun 2018, 06:34 PM
remy mcswain
7 Jun 2018, 06:19 PM
Very poor. A failure. Couldn’t win a game that mattered. Too emotional.
If you are judging solely on him failing to better a superior Rangers side that had a similar winning mentality to what we have now then fire away.

I think Tommy’s era as manager was actually quite a bright spell in amongst an inglorious decade.

We were finally bringing in some exciting names and even though the three amigos went a bit bandit on us, he had us playing some exceptional football. And it was at a time that the club was modernising under Fergus.

As we have shown this last few years, once you have a strong winning mentality at a club it’s very hard to shift.

MoN managed to do it, but was given finances unlike any Celtic manager in our history.

Tommy had us playing the kind of stuff that took out us out of the early 90’s hellhole and gave us something to look forward to again.

To say he was a failure and too emotional given who he was, his links to the club and the Hun dominated era in which he managed is a joke.
Yes, we played great stuff under Tommy, but it was still glorious failure. Tommy was a brilliant coach, not so much of manager.
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fatboab
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It’s all been said already, but he wasn’t a great manager. Far from it. Great man, great player, great Celt though.
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Gonga
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It still needed a huge whack of cash and a great manager to really turn things around, which we didn’t have at that time.

It felt like we were on an upward trajectory for the first time in a long time. And I believe that had an impact on us over the next few years up until we stopped the 10. Then again, I’ve always had a tendency to look at how different managers leave footprints after they have gone.

I was at an age where I hadn’t really seen an exciting Celtic team, the last trophy I remember us winning was the SC with Joe Millers goal and then it was just brutal all the way through high school until Tommy turned up and made it things exciting again.

Van Hooidonk, Thom, Cadete, Di Canio.. yeah so what we didn’t knock the Huns off, but all things considered and the titles they eventually won by cheating, Tommy’s time will be remembered by me as our first step out of the dark and my first experience of having an exciting Celtic team.

I guess a lot of opinions on this kind of thing are also affected by age.
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Butters
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Stephane_Mahe
7 Jun 2018, 06:43 PM
Gonga
7 Jun 2018, 06:34 PM
remy mcswain
7 Jun 2018, 06:19 PM
Very poor. A failure. Couldn’t win a game that mattered. Too emotional.
If you are judging solely on him failing to better a superior Rangers side that had a similar winning mentality to what we have now then fire away.

I think Tommy’s era as manager was actually quite a bright spell in amongst an inglorious decade.

We were finally bringing in some exciting names and even though the three amigos went a bit bandit on us, he had us playing some exceptional football. And it was at a time that the club was modernising under Fergus.

As we have shown this last few years, once you have a strong winning mentality at a club it’s very hard to shift.

MoN managed to do it, but was given finances unlike any Celtic manager in our history.

Tommy had us playing the kind of stuff that took out us out of the early 90’s hellhole and gave us something to look forward to again.

To say he was a failure and too emotional given who he was, his links to the club and the Hun dominated era in which he managed is a joke.
Quote:
 
early 90’s hellhole


And there it is.

I’m actually surprised it took so long.


See the season we lost all 4 league games vs the huns but only finished 5 points or behind them, would we have won the league if we’d won 2 of they games? Obviously mathematically we would have, but would it have worked out like that or were the huns always comfortable/we’d have shat it?
They won it with 2 games to go, they beat Aberdeen in their last home game at Ibrox.

10th April the Huns lose at Hearts and in typical Celtic fashion unable to win when it mattered we couldn't beat Kilmarnock at home, it effectively sealed the title for them.

It put them 4 points ahead of us (effectively 5 with goal difference) & we both had 4 games each to go.
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TheBeerMonkey
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I don’t think the players were scared of failing him in the way the huns were scared of failing the cardigan. Hence the final game when the players abdicated all responsibility and spent 90 minutes hoofing the ball into an empty penalty box or passing it to di Canio- TB said there was no leaders but it was his team.

His teams couldn’t dish it out when needed. A joy to watch his teams going forward but needed a Rieper and a goalie.
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jbj712
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fatboab
7 Jun 2018, 06:56 PM
It’s all been said already, but he wasn’t a great manager. Far from it. Great man, great player, great Celt though.
Succinctly put my good man :thumbsup:
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