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Tom English: ‘Neil Lennon flourishing away from the Old Firm bearpit’
By TOM ENGLISH
Published on Thursday 4 October 2012 02:11
wHAT strides Neil Lennon has made as a manager in just 12 months. Historic strides. Strides that took him all the way to Moscow and back again with three points in his pocket and a burgeoning reputation as a young football manager of substance.
Unbeaten in six European ties this season. Not just surviving, but thriving in the elite competition. An away win in the Champions League at last, hewn not from a frenzied “mad dog in a meat house” defiance but clever strategy and smart execution by a team of his own making that has now won four points from a possible six in a group they were generally expected to finish bottom of.
They might yet fall away, but they have earned the right to dream of the second phase. Even a single point in back-to-back ties with Barcelona will keep that hope alive. Even without a point from those two games they would remain alive. These are heady days indeed for Lennon and his team.
Consider what has happened in Lennon’s story in just a year. October 2011 was his worst month in management, a month that saw his team lose 2-0 at Hearts, lose three goals in one half against Kilmarnock before rounding things off with an utterly lifeless 0-0 draw at home to Hibs, a result that saw the team booed off and then filleted by Lennon in the aftermath. In terms of thermonuclear rants, the one after that insipid draw at Celtic Park was right up there with his gold-standard eruption after the loss to Ross County in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup the season before. It was Lennon on the edge. At that point, he looked a seriously troubled manager.
And now? We are witnessing a different animal. The Lennon of a year ago was given to emotional outbursts against officials at the veritable dropping of a hat. That doesn’t happen much anymore, if at all. He had a chance to have a blast a few weeks ago when Kris Commons was denied a legitimate penalty in Perth but he chose not to take it. It looked like an instructive moment. Celtic had lost the game and had suffered an injustice, but he made nothing of it. It was an example of how he has matured, how he now doesn’t let himself get side-tracked by fighting unwinnable wars against officials.
We’re not saying he won’t rail against a referee making a bad decision in the future – he will; they all do – but there was a time when Lennon seemed to rail against every bad decision and it got him precisely nowhere. In fact, it was counter-productive.
The theory here is that the person who was being damaged more than any other by some of Lennon’s emotional overloads of the past was Lennon himself. He has looked more focused in recent times than he ever has done as a manager. There’s an argument to be made that the demise of Rangers has helped this process in a very considerable way. Instead of missing the heat of battle with his old foe, Lennon seems to have been liberated by the end – for now – of that kind of intensity, so much of it negative and exhausting and poisonous.
Nutting heads with Rangers might have felt like the be-all and end-all of his managerial life at the time but a new world has opened up to him since he got his team into the Champions League and it’s a world where he’s being asked to plot a result against some seriously hot teams, none hotter than the Barcelona of Messi and Xavi and Iniesta. This time twelve months ago, all Lennon could see on the road up ahead was an away match against Kilmarnock, the infamous 3-3 draw. Instead of getting sucked into the vortex of Old Firm bull****, he has this continental dimension to his professional life now and it suits him. You wouldn’t think it by looking at their banners about zombies and hearing their songs about Sevco, but Celtic really have left Rangers behind in their rear-view mirror thanks to their qualification for the Champions League.
Lennon is no longer a slugger whose management was defined by how he did in the bearpit against Rangers. He has moved on from that. There’s a lot to admire about his new direction.
Neil Lennon interview in The Times with English based journo Oliver Kay.
22 Oct 2012
The Times
Looking back, Neil Lennon admits to having wondered “where it was all going to end”. He shakes his head as he recalls the death threats, the bullets in the post, being assaulted in the street (twice), the need for round-the-clock protection, the court case, the loss of a close friend and the concern that, as the Old Firm rivalry grew more and more toxic, he might have to turn his back on the job he cherished.
Back then, it seemed unimaginable that there could be a sense of calm in the goldfish bowl that Lennon inhabits as the manager of Celtic. Where was it all going to end? Not, he suspected, with a situation where Rangers disappeared from Celtic’s horizon, which this week is dominated instead by Barcelona.
Tomorrow’s Champions League encounter with Barcelona at the Nou Camp is a challenge that excites the 41-year-old more than any he has faced in his young managerial career. He talks with enthusiasm, rather than apprehension, about the way Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta, Lionel Messi and their team-mates “mesmerise you with their possession and their movement” and says it will take a perfect combination of bravery, concentration and athleticism to stop them. “But you know what?” he says. “I don’t normally look forward to games. This one I’ve really been looking forward to.”
There have been times in Lennon’s life when he has barely been able to contemplate the next match, let alone look forward to it. There were the well-documented bouts of depression during his playing career. And there was that period, from the discovery of explosive devices in parcels addressed to him at Celtic’s training ground early last year to the court case that concluded last March, when it seemed as though Scottish football was going into meltdown, with him at its core.
“It was very distressing, very traumatic,” Lennon says. “I was very well briefed and very well looked after by the police. There was a spell when we were having 24-hour protection. I was spending more time with the police than with my players. I found it bewildering. I had been assaulted in the street before and now all of this. I’m just a football manager. I didn’t ask for any of that.”
There were those who argued the opposite, accusing him of whipping up the Old Firm hatred and bringing the aggravation upon himself as a Northern Irish Catholic who lived up to the modern Celtic ideal of their manager as a feisty figurehead. “That seems to be the party line for a lot of people who wanted to excuse what went on,” he says. “There were times when I crossed the line. I did make some mistakes, but it was no different to a lot of other managers on the touchline . You can’t excuse what went on. I think people recognise that now. People realised it had gone too far.
“From a human point of view, the most difficult time was when the case was in court. There had been myself and two other people who had been pinpointed. One of them was Trish Godman [the Celtic-supporting former MSP] and the other was a high-profile barrister, Paul McBride, who was a good friend of mine. Paul had been very, very upset by what happened. Then he went on a business trip to Pakistan and, sadly, while he was there he got ill and he passed away. That was devastating. He was a brilliant, intelligent, ebullient guy. I never got to say goodbye to him.
“I ended up going to Paul’s funeral and then going straight from there into court to give evidence. A few days later we had the Scottish League Cup final against Kilmarnock, which we lost. And then to cap it all, Liam Kelly, one of the Kilmarnock players, his father died in the crowd straight after the final whistle, which was so sad. Everything that was happening was extremely traumatic. It was just one of those periods in your life where you wondered where it was all going to end.
“There were times when I thought about leaving the job. It was difficult enough without all of this. But I’ve worked really hard all my life. A job like this is a privilege. I didn’t want to give it up for non-football reasons. I had already lost my international career for non-football reasons. I found that once I came to the training ground and we closed the gates, I could focus on and enjoy the job. It’s a great job.”
That job feels different this season – more relaxed, in some ways for better, in some ways for worse. The dynamics of Scottish football – and in particular Glasgow football – have changed dramatically with Rangers’ liquidation and relegation to the Irn-Bru third division. As someone whose life was made almost intolerable by the worst excesses of the Old Firm rivalry, Lennon has more reason than most to welcome Rangers’ exile, but he does not see it that way. “Don’t get me wrong, it makes my life easier,” he says. “There’s definitely an edge that’s not there in the same way now. That edge can be venomous and the games can be fraught. With Rangers not around, the stress levels have diminished a little bit. But for the whole of Scottish football – for the glamour, the energy, the exposure – it would be better if it hadn’t happened.
“I’ve watched a few of Rangers’ games and it has reminded me of when I left Celtic and went to Nottingham Forest. At that time I found it difficult to adjust to a different environment and to playing at a lower level . I think in time Rangers will get to a level of consistency, but I can understand why they’ve found it harder than people might have expected.
“For us, it has felt a bit surreal. I think it took a bit of time at the start of the season for us to adjust to the fact that Rangers aren’t here. We’ve lost a lot of money from Rangers not being here, which made it even more imperative that we got into the Champions League. That has been a great distraction and something we’ve really enjoyed.”
The European campaign has been a slow-burner, but, having got through the qualifying rounds by beating both HJK Helsinki and Helsingborg, they started the group stage with a 0-0 draw at home to Benfica and then a thrilling 3-2 victory away to Spartak Moscow, which has been hailed as one of the most astute performances by a British team in the Champions League in recent years. Suddenly, perhaps for the first time in his managerial career, people are focusing on the sharp mind behind Lennon’s pugnacious exterior.
“The performance in Moscow was probably even beyond my expectations,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of young players and they played very well that night. Tactically, and in terms of the bravery and spirit they showed, they were excellent and that has given us a platform to go to Barcelona. I don’t think we’ve got the mentality or the players just to sit in and defend, like Chelsea did against Barcelona. We have to try to create chances, like we did in Moscow. It won’t be easy – it’s the ultimate challenge for the players and for me, too – but we’re going to enjoy it.”
So, what kind of manager is Lennon? “Good question,” he says. “I like my team to play football, but we can’t all aspire to be Barcelona. You can have a template, but you have to be pragmatic, too. I would describe myself as very pro-player. I’m not long out of the game; I understand how players are feeling and when confidence is low. I feel like I can help use my own experiences to help them.”
With Lennon, that goes far beyond the culture of “show us your medals” (and there are a lot of them). Perhaps the most valuable lessons he has passed on at Celtic concerned sharing his experience with depression. “I first suffered it when I was 29,” he says. “I had everything I could ever want. I had just won the League Cup with Leicester City, money wasn’t an issue, I was very happy and all of a sudden one day I hit this brick wall.
“It took me a long time to work out what it was. I got help. It’s not a good place to be. I would get it sporadically over a two, three, four-week period. I feel like I am in control of it now. I’ve not had a bout for a few years. But it’s an illness, not a state of mind. The more that people are willing to talk about it, the more it will help people. A couple of our young players have suffered with it and I’ve been able to talk to them about it. I actually think it has helped me rather than hindered me a manager.”
Certainly, management – and specifically managing such a giant club as Celtic, where the job is all-consuming – has occupied his mind. “It’s very fulfilling and it’s a constant challenge of your thought processes,” he says. “Sometimes when players hang up their boots, they worry that there’s a void in their life. For me, there could no better way of filling that void than managing Celtic.”
As for that other void, he expects Rangers to come back sooner rather than later. In a strange kind of way, he misses them. But not this week. Not when he has Barcelona on his mind.
Lennon backs Hooper’s England credentials
It was an endorsement of Neil Lennon’s judgment and of Celtic’s recruitment strategy, as well as the player concerned, when Fraser Forster was included in the England squad for the first time last week. Lennon expects Gary Hooper to follow Forster in forcing his way into Roy Hodgson’s plans and has backed him to underline his credentials against Barcelona tomorrow evening.
“Fraser deserved his selection, because he’s been an outstanding goalkeeper for us, and that has given Gary a real motivation to believe that he can be called up by England, too,” Lennon, the Celtic manager, said.
“I think Gary is good enough, certainly. He’s a brilliant goalscorer, a consistent goalscorer.
“He won’t be fazed by playing against Barcelona. He has done it at all levels and in all types of game — big games against Rangers, Europa League, Champions League, you name it. He has a great intelligence and appreciation as a footballer. People ask if he would still be scoring goals if he was playing in England. I’ve no doubt he would, just as I had no doubt he would score goals here when he came from Scunthorpe. He’s a quality player, like [Nikica] Jelavic, who went from Rangers to Everton.”
Hooper, 24, has been linked with a move to Liverpool in the January transfer window, but Lennon has no intention of selling. “There were bids from Southampton last January, but we’re looking to keep players like Gary,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of excellent young players, so there’s a lot of speculation surrounding them, but we want to build this team.
Neil Lennon enjoys peace in history after outwitting Barcelona
Celtic's victory over Champions League favourites is just reward for a club who backed their young manager during dark times
Kevin McKenna The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/nov/10/neil-lennon-history-celtic-barcelona
11 Nov 2012
For a man whose name alone in Scotland is enough to inflame passion, be it furious or joyous, Neil Lennon chooses serenity when the heat of battle has subsided. This is how it was around 10pm last Wednesday, in Glasgow, when the assembled Scottish and Spanish media corps pressed in on him, eager to hear his thoughts on what had just unfolded before them all. Lennon's Celtic team, with an average age of 24 and a collective price tag of £6.5m, had inflicted defeat on Barcelona, the best team in the world and assembled at a cost of £125m. The Catalans' squad is studded with World Cup and Champions League winners, yet they were undone on the night by a Lanarkshire 18 year old who had been playing for Airdrie against teams such as East Fife and Stenhousemuir barely two years previously, before Celtic paid £50,000 for him.
Lennon was entitled to be ecstatic, triumphant even, at having steered his young charges to arguably the greatest victory witnessed at Celtic Park. Instead, the journalists encountered a reflective man, proportionate in his admiration for the way his team had played and measured in his thoughts about what the future may hold for them.
"My players are all heroes to me and I can't speak too highly of their performance," he said. "You can talk about tactics until you are blue in the face, but football is about the players. They covered themselves in glory tonight. We can give instructions to them, but it's down to the players to go and do it."
Lennon is entitled to some peace and tranquillity after 12 years of sheer tumult and brimstone. In 2002 the garlanded Ayrshire-born classical music composer, James MacMillan, penned a solo piano piece in tribute to him, called For Neil. The musician's dedication hints at the tempest that has swirled around Lennon. "I felt moved to write this little gift piece for him because of the pressures that have been put upon him, as a Celtic player, from Northern Ireland, and to remind him that he is greatly revered by many, in spite of the sectarian abuse he receives from other quarters. It is reflective and intimate, with the lilt and accent of an Irish folk song."
"The pressures that have been put upon him" began almost as soon as Lennon joined Celtic from Leicester City in 2000. From the outset, his debut at Dens Park in Dundee, he was routinely singled out for abuse at almost every ground he visited with Celtic, and most especially at Ibrox and Tynecastle, the homes of Rangers and Hearts. Part of this was due to his belligerence as Celtic's midfield enforcer in the team that Martin O'Neill, his old Filbert Street mentor, guided to the Uefa Cup final three years later. But for many, the sight and sound of a stocky, mouthy, red-haired Catholic Ulsterman playing for Celtic was simply too much to bear and enkindled some of the sectarian fires that glow just beneath the surface of civic and cultural life in the west of Scotland.
He was forced to quit international football after threats that were manifest in graffiti painted on the street where he lived in Glasgow and in his home town of Lurgan. "I had played nearly 40 times for Northern Ireland before I came to Glasgow and had no problems," he said in 2010. "But that all changed after I joined Celtic."
He has been physically attacked and abused in the street, and a handful of Rangers fans have been imprisoned as a result. This year, two men were jailed for attempting to send an explosive device to Lennon through the post.
Until recently, though, he has been regularly caricatured in the Scottish press as an immature hothead and a loose cannon who was somehow partly responsible for the vicissitudes he has encountered. One former Scotland international, writing in a Sunday newspaper, even suggested Lennon had brought the death threats upon himself because of his edgy demeanour.
As they flock to praise him now they adopt a supercilious tone in the manner of a headmaster handing over the best-pupil prize to a classroom miscreant who has changed his ways. The patronising tone has not gone unnoticed by Celtic's chief executive, Peter Lawwell, and it irks him. "What people are seeing now is the real Neil Lennon, a man who is highly intelligent, articulate and gifted. We have always known this, though, ever since he started working with us as a player, then captain and now manager.
"Yes, he has changed in the three years he has been manager, but only in the way most people change, including me, three years into any job. There were a few occasions when Neil reacted in a way that he later regretted, but Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and José Mourinho have all reacted similarly in the heat of battle."
When Lawwell speaks about his manager there is barely concealed pride and affection for him. Much of this stems from his achievements as a player and now manager, but also from the way Lennon conducted himself in the face of "events that no other manager in world football has ever had to endure".
Nor will it have escaped the chief executive's notice that his young manager is building a solid reputation beyond Britain. He is now in his third full season as manager of Celtic and club insiders believe he is capable of taking them to heights unimagined since Jock Stein's Lisbon Lions reached two European Cup finals and two semi-finals in the 1960s and 70s.
In Lennon's first season as a Champions League manager Celtic stand poised to qualify for the last 16. Their titanic tactical struggles in the Barcelona double-header have captivated a new audience. Barcelona granted Celtic little more than 20% of possession over their two games, yet this was no frantic anywhere-will-do, rearguard action. Gary Neville, the former Manchester United defender, was impressed. "It wasn't desperate defending; it wasn't legs on the floor, flailing around and diving in. They were controlled, they stayed on their feet. They all did their jobs in a disciplined manner."
They played a bit, too. What also characterised both games against Barcelona was that Celtic had several players who could hurt their lauded opponents. That they did this so effectively was also due to the way Lennon deployed them. He played with two strikers, knowing that his team would have the chance to break and thus secure some dead-ball opportunities. He made them keep a relentlessly narrow shape in the knowledge that Barcelona are uncomfortable playing crosses from wide and that Celtic now have a some intelligent defenders playing together at the same time.
Those who think that Lennon's imminent departure to the Premier League is inevitable may be unable to grasp the strength of the relationships Lennon has forged at Celtic. Last Tuesday, the eve of the Barcelona fixture, 1,000 worshippers crowded into St Mary's church in Glasgow's east end for a mass and celebration to mark the 125th anniversary of Celtic. The club's board and management were joined by seven Barcelona directors who were surprised to learn their slogan, Més que un club, had been coined by a Celtic chairman years earlier in a documentary made to mark their annus mirabilis of 1967, when they became the first British team to win the European Cup.
Earlier that day, as if to underline their commitment to social responsibility, Celtic had announced a gift of £120,000 to four schools to enable pupils to play musical instruments after local authority cuts in musical provision. In the past two years, the club has established initiatives in India and Mexico, where poor communities will receive coaching, football kit and regular visits to Glasgow. The locations were chosen in the knowledge that there will be no commercial spin-off.
Those close to Lennon speak of his appreciation of Celtic's commitment to social justice and the way in which Lawwell and Dermot Desmond, the club's largest shareholder, stood shoulder to shoulder with him when it seemed one strand of Scottish society had unilaterally declared war on him.
He has had to deal with clinical depression and speaks regularly at events to help fellow sufferers. Lennon is also venerated by the Celtic supporters. Barcelona's players lined up to say that the Celtic fans' fervour was unlike anything they had previously encountered, and Lennon's bond with them is the strongest of any of the club's 17 managers.
Some also believe that there would be an incongruity in Lennon managing an English club that is the mere plaything of foreign plutocrats; where success can be bought rather than earned and where the desire for instant gratification has rendered the values of sacrifice and industry utterly redundant.
Lennon's entire career has been lived in the shadow of adversity; it is as if he is destined always to scale his heights by the north face in winter while others are granted a gentler route. He may be at Celtic for some time yet.
Spiers on Lennon
THURSDAY 6 DECEMBER 2012 TEXT SIZE Spiers on Sport: Neil Lennon has confounded everyone
Spiers on Sport
Graham Spiers
There was a point not much more than 12 months ago when Neil Lennon was lamenting his fate as Celtic manager.
“I don’t think I’m going to get the chance to build the type of team I want to see here,” he said.
Lennon felt that time was running out on him. At that point, back in the early winter of 2011, Rangers looked like they were streaking ahead in the title race, while Lennon’s Celtic were toiling.
And, as much as the Celtic fans loved him, the catcalls were beginning to ring in his ears around Celtic Park.
It is instructive to think back to some of the chatter among fans and the media in those months. Lennon, it was felt, wasn’t working out. Ally McCoist, himself an untried manager at Rangers, appeared to be getting the better of him. It looked like Lennon would be binned – he felt it himself.
Now look where we are. Lennon has performed a minor miracle – Celtic have actually beaten the modern, dazzling Barcelona – and his team are in the last 16 of the Champions League. The fact that some are even tipping Lennon and Celtic to reach the last eight is a remarkable state of affairs.
Lennon has confounded just about everyone – including me. He was deemed too young, too raw, too impetuous for the Celtic job. It was said he created unwanted tabloid headlines.
I remember one seasoned Scottish football observer saying: “Celtic have made a grave mistake in handing the manager’s job to Neil Lennon – he is too callow and he lacks discipline.”
Lennon is a bloke I like a lot, but I created a minor tension between us by writing a column which cast doubt on the wisdom of the club giving him the job back in May 2010.
I thought Celtic was too big a club for him – or for anyone – going into his first managerial job. In fact, the logic of that argument still doesn’t seem so flawed.
But Lennon is succeeding at Celtic where older, more experienced coaches might have failed. He has done so by an ability to learn lessons as he goes along, by an intelligent understanding of football, but also through a strength of character.
The last point probably cannot be overestimated. I’m not talking about any of the off-field lunacy he has had to deal with. Rather, one of Lennon’s strengths as a player was his ability not to be fazed or overawed by anything.
For instance, when Lennon and Celtic went away to play teams as prestigious as Juventus and Bayern Munichunder Martin O’Neill in the Champions League, it scarcely entered Lennon’s head that he might look inferior on the pitch.
On the contrary, he believed he could square up to anybody.
It will be lost on no-one that, in five years in Glasgow, O’Neill never once took Celtic to the Champions League’s last 16 in three attempts, while Lennon has done it after his first taste of the group stage.
Gordon Strachan managed it twice after O’Neill left, and now Lennon has added to these feats. The fact is, as vulnerable and headstrong as we all believed Lennon to be, he now stands comfortably beside these two figures in Celtic’s recent history, while still only being 41.
It is by no means a scene of flawless progress. Celtic have stumbled in the SPL and, thus far, Lennon has failed to find an answer to that.
There have also been recurring, key moments when a Celtic team has faltered under him: against Ross County and Kilmarnock at Hampden; fatally against Inverness Caledonian Thistle in April 2011; and even against Arbroath last week.
On all of these occasions against inferior opponents, Lennon has looked nonplussed, unable to explain where it went wrong.
But today, having guided Celtic astutely through this Champions League group stage, Lennon looks a figure of substance. He has talked convincingly about his plans throughout this European campaign so far. He also has a deep “feel” for Celtic and what the club requires, which is no handicap.
Neil Lennon is some way off from entering the pantheon – and he might never make it. Right now, though, his stock is rising.
Hibernian v Celtic: Past year has left Neil Lennon craving further success
Hugh Macdonald
Chief Sports Writer
THE message was simple and straightforward.
Neil Lennon looks back on 2012 with pride, but only briefly. He is consumed by 2013 and beyond. A year that gave him his first championship, a sensational victory over Barcelona and qualification for the knockout stages of the Champions League is savoured before the manager immediately says: "You reflect on it for a few days and then you go on."
This philosophy was marked yesterday by Lennon twice insisting that he did not want to be a "one-season wonder" and setting a points tally for his players in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League that will be unfulfilled if the side drops more than five points by the end of the season.
The Northern Irishman also looked forward to a League Managers' Association (LMA) meeting next month with Sir Alex Ferguson and others at the FA's centre of excellence at St George's in Staffordshire. January will also include a few days in Spain with the team in the mid-season break before Lennon heads to England to watch transfer targets. And then the Champions League resumes in February.
He is aware of the stress. "I keep myself healthy even if it does not look like it," he said. "I train two or three times a week – not heavily, but I keep myself ticking over."
But he admitted "private time" was almost non-existent. He added of next month: "I'm hoping to get a week away with the family but, even then, I might have to go and watch games while I'm away, so it is virtually 12 months in the year. Even when you're on holiday, the chief executive rings every day – 'What about this player? What about that player? Can we get this contract signed?"'
He will seek advice from Ferguson and others on how to manage time more effectively.
He is keen to emphasise, however, that the Celtic job is not a burden. "I love it," he said succinctly, though he added with a smile: "There's pressure on me to win the title, trophies and the European Cup . . ."
The drive, though, comes from within. "I've got to be very mindful that we're not a one-season wonder. Everything is great at the minute and we're getting a lot of pats on the back," he said of the invitation to the LMA conference.
Then, in answer to another question about the Celtic model of recruitment being looked at favourably in England, he said: "I don't want to be a one-season wonder. I'd like it to be a consistent run in the Champions League and that's going to be very difficult."
He is constitutionally unable to accept the possibility of an era of Celtic dominance in the wake of the travails of Rangers. "Everyone says we are going to win six or seven in a row. That does not really float my boat. Each season has its own challenges and its own merits. I just think about making a steady progression and turning this team, and club, into the way it was under Martin O'Neill and Gordon Strachan," he said. "That takes time and patience and development. Not just from the players, but from myself. Every season is another challenge. Every competition is another challenge. Everyone has us winning the treble but it has only been done three times in the history of the club."
The players have been told of the expectations for the domestic season. "We have 40 points at the moment after 19 games. If you use that as a guide to the second half of the season, you will end up with 80. And for me, that's nowhere near good enough," said Lennon. "Our previous two totals have been 92 and 93. So with 19 games left, that is 57 points to play for. If they won every game that would take it to 97, so the motivation is not to drop five points and try to end up on the same total as the last two seasons.
"That is what I am looking at. The reason we have dropped points in the first half, is that we were very inconsistent at time because of the Champions League. They do not have that to worry about. They can kick on."
There is a moment to look back on what has been achieved. "Pride – a huge amount of pride," said Lennon of his dominant feeling about 2012. "You don't have time to reflect in this job. You sit on it for a day or two and then you go again. It's one of those years where you don't want it to end, really, and it'll be quite poignant when it does end, in terms of what we've achieved, winning the championship and then obviously the titanic games in the Champions League."
However, he added: "I've really, really enjoyed it but you always worry about what's ahead of you. You can't forget qualifying for the Champions League. What's the next step? We might get to the last eight. That's the next challenge for me. Can we maintain this run in the league? Can we play the football that brings the punters in through the door? If we could get [James] Forrest fit for a week it would help."
There is a smile in this observation but there is a seriousness, too, and it chimes with the mood of a manager whose first taste of success has set up an unquenchable craving.
Tom English: Neil Lennon deserves the prize
The Scotsman
By TOM ENGLISH
Published on 12/05/2013 00:00
Deadlines have passed and votes have been cast in the end-of-season awards merry-go-round with the humble scribblers soon to dish out their gongs after the players did so last weekend.
While Danny McGrain ever-so-slightly overstated Neil Lennon’s case for manager of the year the other day – the great man said that Lennon should be knighted for beating Barcelona – it would have been something of a travesty if the Celtic manager hadn’t got the nod for the football writers’ prize, having already missed out to Allan Johnston in the PFA Scotland ceremony.
There were several candidates but Lennon stood out above all others. A huge claim could be made for Stuart McCall and the constant improvement on a pretty meagre budget that he has brought to Fir Park. Derek Adams deserves a shout. So, too, Terry Butcher and, of course, Johnston, who has won two trophies after inheriting a relegated and demoralised crew at Queen of the South.
If Lennon’s candidacy had been based purely on the domestic game then, frankly, he wouldn’t have got near the award. Sure, this has been a championship-winning season for Celtic with the trophy being handed over yesterday. It looked like an achievement of great significance. It sure as hell sounded like it. If an alien had suddenly fetched up at Celtic Park and saw what was going on they’d have thought that it was a seismic event.
Celtic’s league campaign has been nothing to write home about. Certainly nothing to make you hand out awards. In the league (and in the wounding League Cup semi-final loss to St Mirren) Celtic have been ponderous too often, their manager regularly reaching for the angry button in trying to wake them up from their domestic slumber. They have won the championship with a record low points total, losing and drawing too many games for this league title to stand alongside any of the others they have won. They have dropped points in 14 of their 36 matches.
No. Given the monstrous advantage they have over their rivals in budgetary terms, Lennon would struggle to get in the top four of the managers’ award if it was based purely on what happened in the SPL, championship or no championship.
What elevated him was Europe. Consider what the season would have been like had Celtic not taken us all on an adventure that lasted into March.
What would we have lived through? The funereal drumbeat of league reconstruction, the politics and power struggle at Rangers, the implosion of Dunfermline, the trauma at Hearts. There’s been some great stuff in other places but the landscape without those European games would have been bleak, as grey as November. An endless winter.
For too long Scotland has been crying out for relevance on the international stage and rarely does it come. Mostly, the only occasion in recent times when the outside world has deigned to look Scotland’s way is when the Old Firm have served up some toxic brew or when an institution is on the brink of collapse. The Sky Sports News cameras have rarely come here on the back of a good news story. They haven’t tended to “cross to Scotland” with a cheery air.
Nearly always, with the occasional exception, they do so in order to broadcast the poison, the dark side of football. Sectarianism, bombs in the post, reaction on the riots in Manchester, spats over banners and songs. Without this stuff over the last number of years Scottish football would have been of little interest to Sky. They pay for the football, yes. But mostly they want to tap into the madness.
That has lessened hugely since Celtic and Rangers were separated. Personally, their rivalry is not missed, but many do miss it and a good portion of them are Celtic fans, even if they never care to admit it openly. Celtic have missed what Rangers provide at their best. Rangers could have kept Celtic on their toes rather than freewheeling. It’s fair to say that Lennon’s team’s domestic slip-ups probably wouldn’t have happened – not in such large numbers at any rate – if Rangers had been setting the pace or breathing down their neck. It wasn’t a lack of ability that made them drop so many points, it was the lack of fear factor, the absence of a rival laying claim to the title.
Celtic are a better team than their SPL performances have shown. We can say that because we’ve seen them in Europe. Everybody has seen them in Europe. For a while, they changed how others saw Scottish football. They brought international respect on account of their football rather than international fascination on account of the kind of unsavoury things that the Scottish game usually hits the headlines for.
On the night that Celtic beat Barcelona, the European game stopped looking at the game in this country in the manner of a scientist looking at a rat.
Celtic played a dozen games in Europe, won seven of them and drew another. The ones that they lost were to the team that are about to win La Liga, the team that have just won Serie A and the team that are in pole position to win the Portuguese league, having also made their way into this week’s final of the Europa League, where they will play Chelsea. They also drew with Benfica at home and only lost to Barcelona away because of a late, late winner. They beat HJK Helsinki home and away, beat Helsingborgs (currently top of the Swedish league) home and away, they beat Spartak Moscow home and away.
Of course, they had the benefit of good fortune along the way, but no side gets that lucky that often if the only thing they have going for them is a kindly bounce of the ball.
Fraser Forster was arguably the goalkeeper of the group stage. Victor Wanyama, in the games against Barcelona, was as good as any central midfielder in the competition. There were remarkable performances from many players in that campaign and all of them were brought in by Lennon, a manager who has developed considerably while away from the distraction and the intensity of Old Firm football.
I’m not sure if Lennon misses the white heat of battle against a competitive Rangers but his management has improved without it, no question.
He is now being talked of as a contender for the Everton job. It may prove too early for him. Lennon has a huge ambition but has little experience and could do with another year in Glasgow, another shot at the Champions League, another season to mature. It would be no great hardship. He’s at a club that he loves, he’s winning trophies and he’s got a European challenge to come. That is where he excelled this season. For that alone, he deserves the prize.