When Virgil Van Dijk completed his first training session for Celtic, then manager Neil Lennon jokingly said to him not to unpack. Now Lennon is being given similar advice from former teammate Steven Pressley, but for very different reasons.
Whilst Lennon immediately recognised Van Dijk’s abilities would result in a short-stop off in Scottish football, it’s not Lennon’s managerial credentials Pressley is worried about. Instead, the ruthless managerial merry-go-round of unreasonable expectations and trigger-happy boardrooms is the reason for Pressley’s advice to Lenny being…“Me and my staff had a continuous joke: Don’t unpack your suitcase.”
Speaking to Scottish Daily Express, Pressley has a few examples of the ‘volatile’ nature of Cypriot football that Neil Lennon may wish to take heed of.
“For Neil, it’s an exciting challenge. He’ll enjoy going to work in a foreign country and an environment where the weather is particularly good. But he will have to accept there is not a lot of stability in the job.
“I managed out there for 10 months and that’s actually a decent stint. I staved off relegation with many points to spare, which was my challenge. Then I got four league games of the following season before I was gone. In the season I left, eight managers lost their jobs after 12 fixtures.
“I was contacted last season, prior to joining Brentford, by a Cypriot club asking me to go over and save them from relegation. I would’ve been their fifth manager that season – after 26 games!
When it comes to working and living in volatile conditions it’s fair to say Neil Lennon requires little advice from Steven Pressley. After all, in that respect, on and off the field, Lennon faced horrific Anti-Irish racism, credible threats to his life, Has been knocked unconscious on the street after being attacked from behind, and on top of that the incessant demands of playing and managing a club where a loss and a draw in quick succession constituted a crisis.
As such the pressures of Cypriot football will simply be a case of as you were for Neil Lennon, and although Pressley points out a few other pressures surrounding delay in player’s wages and a lack of boardroom support Lennon does have experience in similar circumstances too.
“There aren’t just the challenges of winning games. There’s lots more distractions, uncontrollable aspects you have to manage as coach. I had players who hadn’t been paid for three, four months. That was regular occurrence.
“I know Neil’s Omonia are a big club but it’s just a common situation, the Cypriot players grow to accept it. We come from an environment where you’re paid on a regular basis so foreign players find that aspect hard to accept. The one thing you want as a manager is to have a ‘no excuse’ culture. But that’s difficult in Cyprus.
“I don’t think there’s a word for ‘support’ in the Cypriot boardroom dictionary. I didn’t have my new players in for pre-season, they joined me in the weeks leading up to the season. But there’s no consideration for that, not a great deal of strategy. It’s ‘results now’ with no true understanding of problems and challenges that a coach faces. They would try to pressurise you into certain things.”
Lennon was certainly used to a lack of strategical planning at boardroom level when it came to signings being in place prior to important Champions League qualifiers when with Celtic, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that Lennon also has experience from his time with Bolton Wanderers as to the difficulties in motivating players in the midst of a financial crisis, where players were demotivated through wages going unpaid, yet the expectation to supply a winning team on the pitch was barely diluted by fans and the boardroom alike.
Neil Lennon may be moving to a new football environment as he heads to fallen champions Omonia Nicosia, however when it comes to transferable skills, you’d assume Lennon has enough experienced banked to risk unpacking his suitcase on arrival.
Niall J
