Postecoglou inherited the scorched earth he himself left, Lennon’s lack of decorum

It was an interesting decision from Neil Lennon to choose to accept an offer from BT Sport to run a critical and tactical eye over Celtic’s performance against Bayer Leverkusen on Thursday night. Aside from the fact it resembled a jilted boyfriend critiquing the performance of the new fella’s bedroom prowess having been dumped for being a far from satisfactory lover himself, it was also simply a show of poor manners.

Now I don’t know Neil Lennon’s financial position of course but I’m certain he’s not so short of a bob or two that he particularly needed the pieces of silver on offer from Thursday night’s broadcast hosts. Certainly the recent Celtic Plc results indicate that he received a very large six figure sum when he left the club in March. Nor do I believe there weren’t other media opportunities elsewhere that wouldn’t have involved having to criticise a Celtic manager under pressure when he himself knew just how it feels. And I’m fairly sure he wasn’t there to offer some sort of moral support to the Celtic’s new boss otherwise a mobile telephone number left at reception with the message ‘call me if you need to talk’ may have sufficed.

Now we all have to make a living, we all have bills to pay, but for Neil Lennon the timing of his appearance, less than three months into Postecoglou’s attempts to clean up the inherited shambles and shattered confidence of the scorched earth he himself left behind, smacks of a lack of decorum and it also smacks of someone who was willing to put a minor amount of personal gain ahead of the recovery of a club who he like to portray as close to his heart.

If you do then you give the new man room to breathe, you don’t pop into his workplace and accuse him of naivety and his players of kamikaze defending while he’s shovelling your…well let’s go with Chris Sutton’s manure analogy, this is a family publication after all!

I possibly wouldn’t mind so much, but it was clear throughout Lennon was willing to criticise but not acknowledge the part he played in the decline of standards at Celtic – same as it ever was. I also wouldn’t mind so much if Lennon hadn’t ignored the fact he’d lost four goals to Sparta Prague reserves – twice – some twelve months ago when tactically analysing a home defeat to the team lying second in the Bundesliga.

Nor would I mind if he wasn’t simply doing this gig to put himself in the shop window and try and sell himself as a more pragmatic manager than the one in the Celtic dugout, particularly when in truth he’s now attempting to polish a turd and I’m not sure the Crewe Alexandra or Burton Albion chairman would be tuning in to watch Celtic in Europe in any case, and that’s very much the size and challenge Neil Lennon will be hoping to attract at best after the colossal mess he made of his previous job.

In short this was a no-one wins decision from Neil Lennon on Thursday night, and as much as a man like Lennon has more than enough credit as a legendary Celtic player and once successful Celtic manager, I’d expect him to have a bit more about him than to add his voice to those criticising Ange Postecoglou so early into the job that he’s had no chance to make his own mark and is still having to clear up after the guy handing out the advice.

Do us a favour Lenny, just keep a low profile for now because all your doing is harming us and there is very little you are going to get out of it in any case. As the saying goes, ‘Good manners opens the closed doors, bad manners close the open doors.’ And we’d all prefer the door at Celtic was open for you, it’s just a good idea to be cleverer as to the timing of the invite you accept.

Niall J

READ THIS…Celtic are now so far behind the curve but that isn’t on Ange

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