Neil Lennon agreed that the chance his Celtic players have a once in a lifetime opportunity in winning the Scottish Cup to complete a remarkable, unrepeatable quadruple treble.
BBC Scotland yesterday suggested that Celtic shouldn’t be that bothered about winning their fourth treble in a row while former Rangers striker Kris Boyd questioned why the Scottish Cup games are even been played. It took Chris Sutton to point out that his stance is simply because theRangers aren’t involved – having been knocked out by Hearts.
Neil Lennon though gave his view and he’s entirely focused on winning the semi-final tomorrow against Aberdeen to give his players the chance to achieve something quite remarkable.
“I totally agree,” Lennon said, as reported by Glasgow Times. “These players should be given that respect. We’ll never see it again, I don’t think. It’s another semi-final. The players are really looking forward to it and we’ve had a good look at Aberdeen. There’s a familiarity there. We know what we’ll come up against and semi-finals are always tense occasions.
“I think this one will be the first one at Hampden without a crowd (after today’s Edinburgh Derby where Hibs have just equalised to make it 1-1) so it will be different, but the premise is the game. We’d dearly love to win the game.
“Aberdeen have won a lot of games this season, they gave us a real challenge last weekend and we expect the game to be pretty similar to the one there,” the Celtic manager said.
On Celtic’s recent run of wins at Hampden since losing THAT penalty shoot-out in April 2016; “It’s been wonderful. Semi-finals and finals. The players have been outstanding and the occasion going there and winning is very special with the supporters there to see it,” Lennon noted.
“It’ll be different on Sunday, but the focus will all be on trying to extend this run of cup wins and Cup Finals. We know we’re in for a real stiff examination,” he added.
The Celtic manager pointed out that the delay in playing the latter stages of the 2020 Scottish Cup was due to the hope or even expectation that supporters would have been allowed in by now. Sadly that is not the case and still seems far away.
“I think they were hoping that by this stage we’d have crowds in,” Lennon stated. “I think that was the whole reasoning behind pushing the games down the line. That hasn’t been the case, so what do you do? You have to try and complete it and then move onto the next one.
“I think the four teams left in the competition would have all wanted it to be finished having earned the right to be there. It’s now up for grabs.
“We all have the chance of winning a bit of silverware which would be brilliant. It would be brilliant for the other clubs but ultimately fantastic for us.”
