Neil Lennon has received what would normally be deemed the dreaded – but in Lennon’s case a likely most welcomed – vote of confidence from the Celtic board.
This is nothing official of course, coming as it has via two in the know and well-connected journalists and certainly not through official channels and backed this morning by Martin O’Neill’s timely intervention. It all however adds up to a clear the message from the CEO and a board who prefer to maintain radio silence when it comes to communicating with fans directly, unless it’s about opening hours for the Celtic shop.
This is also on the back of an ‘opinion’ piece from another journalist yesterday who appears to have an open communication line with the CEO, who ran a story, no doubt warning, that Gordon Strachan could be a stop gap appointment to the end of the season. A story probably designed to smooth the path to today’s leaked backing of their manager with a pre-cursor warning to the Celtic support of ‘be careful what you wish for’!
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If this vote of confidence is designed to get players and fans alike, to discard the early season form questions and embrace the future, it’s a big ask.
The fans have been divided on the issue for months, yet the vast majority now seem to be pulling in the one direction in a show of solidarity where previously the landscape had resembled an online civil war. And the Green Brigade made their position clear this morning with their banner stunt outside Celtic Park and the subsequent release of a statement on social media as reported on The Celtic Star…
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A large majority had moved slowly but surely as the season progressed into believing Celtic needed a change at managerial level. Some of course have felt that way since Lennon’s appointment in the shower, others after the Cluj Champion’s League debacle. A few more followed after the Derby defeat on 29 December, while many more jumped aboard after the home collapse to Copenhagen. If not, then perhaps it was Ferencvaros this season.
The stragglers joined after the worst Derby performance since Celtic surrendered the tile on our own patch against theRangers, and for me and a few more latecomers trying to flag this bus down, it came with a cringeworthy and pathetic performance against Sparta Prague and was simply cemented when the Hibs game at the weekend saw us so far off the urgency required for a must win game, that it simply looked like the manager was on borrowed time.
And that’s just the fans, what about the players? Callum McGregor has claimed in a post-match interview that the Celtic team were ‘disjointed’ in a defeat to Sparta Prague reserves in the Europa League. From a senior player that wasn’t exactly a tactical endorsement of the manager.
This Celtic team have now won two from eight games and sit eleven points off the top of the league, hanging by their fingernails to a Europa League group that will probably need three unlikely wins to progress from, and already dumped out the Champions League at the qualifying stage – again.
If they are looking to their manager, they might struggle for inspiration from a man who has gone from backing them blindly, to calling out some who didn’t want to be there publicly, then played them anyway.
Now in recent days Neil Lennon has taken to throwing his players under the bus, with comparable public announcements that just a few short months ago all and sundry were ridiculing Steven Gerrard for. Words like unprofessional, lackadaisical and lazy have all been used by the Celtic manager to describe his players. Using words like ‘they’ far too often when what we want to hear is ‘we’.
The players may well ask why the season started with a 4-2-3-1 formation, before the manager finished his summer transfer dealings with players purchased to play a 3-5-2, then immediately discarded that in favour of a 4-2-3-1 formation again. Confusing? Yes. Confusing? Certainly.
If that’s not confusing enough for the players, we’ve tried two goalkeepers, two left backs, more permutations at centre back than your granddad’s Ascot Lucky 15. We’ve also had a similar number of combinations tried at centre forward. All that while a supporting midfield, looking tired and jaded, has predominately been left to play through poor form, diminishing powers and fatigue. While young players champing at the bit have seen their match sharpness drift like sand through an egg-timer.
Then as a last throw of the dice a saviour appeared by way of desperation, to be the one ray of light and entertainment in the last few weeks, yet only a couple of months ago was so far out the picture he was getting punted to Qatar for £4million.
It pains to say, but this doesn’t seem like a manager who any longer has a semblance of control over the destiny of his team, and if the Board’s intention was to get the players and support behind the manager with a collective shoulder to the wheel, it seems as out of touch as they so often show themselves to be.
Much the support holds the opinion and actions of the board in such little regard to believe what they say in any case. Five-way agreements and Resolution 12 saw to that, banning the Green Brigade from the stadium and then how the sales of season tickets and access to virtual passes, excluding many in the support who don’t have that season pass, was another example of disdainful out of touch mismanagement at boardroom level.
Yesterday’s backing of Lennon may be designed to get everyone back on side, yet many will still believe the manager has lost his way and is in danger of damaging his legacy by remaining in post. Even if Neil Lennon makes it to January or to May even, there is little chance of him staying in post. So perhaps the concern should be more about the players than the support at this juncture. Will this stay of execution encourage an upturn in performances? Or will the players believe this is the beginning of the end? I guess we’ll know that by the final whistle 2 January at Ibrox.
There are lessons to be learned from a team who went for 10-in-a-row and were stopped on the final day by Henrik Larsson and Harold Brattbakk. The manager of our rivals had at that time announced he was leaving. In the years after many of those players said that had an impact on their performances.
Celtic fans have never not backed this team, many have kept ‘the faith’ but had understandable misgivings. There aren’t many fans who believe 10 in a row is gone, but many certainly believe Neil Lennon can’t deliver it. This boardroom vote of confidence by way of well-placed friendly media faces doesn’t change any of that.
What it does is kick the can down the road until January. It’s a leap of faith on this season’s evidence that Neil Lennon can put together that unbeaten run up to an including Ibrox and likely beyond. A new manager now would have a run of winnable games and a bounce factor to lead into that Glasgow Derby. If we get to that Derby and we taste defeat, then you wonder if the list of those who would consider the manager’s role may diminish. If they were appointed now, they could affect change, defeat at Ibrox would leave a mountain to climb and an inevitable stain on a managerial record.
But that decision it appears has now been made and the Celtic support and players will have to come together if we have any chance of turning this season around, and that is of course what we will do. The players however? Well, I have serious reservations.
One thing is certain, Neil Lennon has a tough job on his hands but he should not be the fall guy alone for this debacle of a season. If and when Neil Lennon goes change is needed elsewhere, perfomances this season are a symptom of long-standing strategical errors overseen in the main by one man. Indeed, if Celtic are looking for a galvanising effect on the support, then I can think of an announcement of one resignation that would result in an outpouring of positivity and it isn’t that of Neil Lennon.
Niall J
