We will look back on this as a desperately dark day for the club

FOR the second time in the space of just three days, Neil Lennon is facing pivotal talks over his position as the manager of Celtic. It is expected that Lennon will speak this morning with the club’s major shareholder Dermot Desmond and chief executive Peter Lawwell. After the latest Europa League humiliation against Sparta Prague last Thursday, Lennon was adamant that he retained the support of the two Parkhead powerbrokers. With every fibre of his being, Lennon will not quit. He’s a proud man and he will be convinced that he can still fight this battle and turn it around. But yesterday’s defeat to Ross County changed the narrative completely. Lennon will know that this result now takes the matter out of his own hands. In the same way that a home defeat to Inverness in the Scottish Cup signalled the end for John Barnes. And in the same way Tony Mowbray was binned on the back of a 4-0 thrashing at St Mirren. In any line of work, having to explain catastrophic results to your bosses doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in your job prospects. Particularly when it’s happening twice a week. Lennon has poured his heart and soul into Celtic from the minute he first walked through the door as a player 20 years ago. This current run of form, now two wins in their last ten games, will be eating him up. It’ll break his heart to see his chance of leading the club to ten in a row slipping away. One horrific result is now being compounded by another. Celtic are a club in total freefall and, when that happens, it is inevitably the manager who pays the price. But the players also have to take a long, hard look at themselves. Lennon is a club legend, but a lot of the players in this squad have mugged him off and sold him up the river. Their performances have lurched from one embarrassment to another. There were quite a few who actually just looked like they’d chucked it yesterday. Plain and simple. Lennon deserves far more respect from them — and the same applies to the so-called supporters who gathered outside Celtic Park last night. ‘Lennon, Lennon get to f***’. That was the chant from people who call themselves ‘the best fans in the world’. The same people who would tell Lennon that he’d ‘never walk alone’ when he was going through some of his darkest days on a personal level amid sectarian abuse. Frankly, the fans involved in those protests last night should be ashamed of themselves. In the fullness of time, this will be viewed as a desperately dark day for the club.

YEAH, if they want a change of manager, then fair enough. But there’s a way to express your opinion — and that certainly wasn’t it. These would doubtless have been the same people who spray-painted graffiti all over Kieran Tierney’s house on the back of his move to Arsenal. It is moronic behaviour — and all the more so when they’ve clearly broken every rule in the book in the middle of a global pandemic. The sense of entitlement that has developed among the fanbase in recent years has been staggering. Particularly in the younger ‘Ultras’, the obsession with ten in a row has become dangerously unhealthy. Yet, there is an uncomfortable truth staring Celtic square in the face after yesterday’s defeat dumped them out of the Betfred Cup. With Rangers sitting well clear at the top of the league, and now odds-on to win one of the domestic cups, there’s a chance the Ibrox side won’t just stop ten in a row. There’s now a definite chance of them stopping it by winning a Treble of their own. In a season where history beckoned, that would be the ultimate kick in the teeth for Celtic. Rangers could drive a coach and horses through the full thing, emptying a salt mine into the wounds of their rivals. Even if the board decide to make a change, it won’t automatically fix things overnight. Celtic is a massive club, but the job would be a hard sell right now. No Champions League football, a squad which needs open heart surgery, and you could be at the helm in the season where the club misses out on ten in a row. For any new manager, that’s a situation which holds precious little appeal. But it’s hard to overstate just how awful yesterday’s result was. Prior to facing Celtic, the only teams Ross County had beaten over the past two months were the part-timers of Stirling Albion, Elgin City and Arbroath. Last weekend, they lost 3-1 to a Kilmarnock side who played over 80 minutes of the match with ten men. County haven’t won a league game since the middle of September. Yet, they were too good for Celtic on the day. Just like a bang-average Sparta Prague side were far too good last week. Sparta where thrashed 4-1 at home against Lille and lost 3-0 against AC Milan in their opening two games in the Europa League. They then lost back-to-back domestic games — 3-1 against Viktoria Plzen and 4-2 at home against Ceske Budejovice. Their form was awful. Yet, damningly, they ran riot against Celtic and won 8-2 on aggregate across both games. From beating Lazio in the Stadio Olimpico last season, Celtic have become a pick-meup. A punchbag for even the most modest of opposition. But it’s Lennon who will be left to absorb the blows. That’s the reality of modern football — and it’s County who may well have delivered the knockout punch.