Scottish football myths debunked

LENNON’S return has been characterised by a malaise – if Celtic persist with Lennon next season they put nine and 10 in a row at risk.

Those quotes are taken from a Record Sport article published on April 27, which saw the columnist suggesting Neil Lennon’s second spell at Celtic was uninspiring and should not be made permanent.

Exactly one month later Football Scotland ran a piece by the same columnist with the headline “Celtic’s Neil Lennon offer is unambitious, ill-timed and extremely underwhelming”.

It went on to say that “any semblance of attacking, aesthetically pleasing football has been swiftly nullified by Lennon,” and “Celtic should have more ambition than (appointing) a man who left Hibs under a cloud while they sat seventh in the table”. Just over five months on and those words look foolish, premature and naive. Who’s the idiot responsible for those quotes? Who’s the handsome fool who failed to foresee the swashbuckling style with which Lennon’s Celtic have routinely put opponents to the sword so far this season? Mea culpa. In my defence I was far from the only one.

I stand by my suggestion at the time that it was far from an exciting appointment and the (potentially now deleted en masse) tweets of many Celtic fans will tell you this was a view shared by large swathes of the club’s fanbase.

Celtic won the league comfortably last season but Brendan Rodgers had left with the club already coasting to the title and subsequent performances were frequently unimpressive. A total of 12 goals in this season’s first two league games briefly gave fans a more positive outlook.

But that was followed by the embarrassing capitulation to Cluj in the Champions League qualifier.

At that point I and many others felt vindicated in our assessment of Lennon.

Since then he’s made us all look a bit stupid. At the time of writing Celtic sit top of the Premiership and a Europa League group in which many predicted they would struggle. And they’ve played some scintillating attacking football along the way.

The turning point came at Ibrox in September. Rangers had deservedly beaten Lennon’s side 2-0 in May and understandably believed they could do likewise in the new season’s first derby.

Instead, Celtic played them off the park.

Since then they’ve stuck six past Ross County and four past Aberdeen. But their most impressive result came in the Europa League when they came from behind to beat Lazio 2-1.

It was a European display that combined guts, attacking flair and defensive canniness. In other words it wouldn’t have happened under Rodgers.

I’m not egocentric enough to believe Lennon has been successful purely to spite me but on the off chance I now have that kind of influence over managers I’m going to put it to good use.

NEXT WEEK: Why Steve Clarke definitely won’t lead Scotland to Nations League play-off glory.