The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Scottish football would suffer should Lennon quit Hibs, says Jim Spence
Lennon’s quit threat no laughing matter
Ionce interviewed Neil Lennon and Billy Connolly together at Pittodrie.
A hawk, which kept the stadium’s marauding seagulls in check, was perched next to us on the arm of its falconer, and promptly did its business as we chatted on live national radio.
Cue an outburst of raucous laughter from the Big Yin, and the Celtic boss. Lennon was in convivial and relaxed mode. There was no laughter from him after this midweek’s defeat at Hearts, though.
He stunned the post-match media conference by announcing that he’d consider his position, and that a fourth place finish was unacceptable to him.
Lennon has transformed the mentality of a club, which had a soft centre on the pitch, but faced with the possibility of losing four or more of his top players, and the difficulties of replacing them, it sounds to me that he is issuing a clear invitation to other clubs impressed by his work.
Of course he may have been playing mind games with his players to prove that their performance against Hearts was an aberration, or putting pressure on his board to increase his playing budget.
Lennon is a smart operator though. He knows how rapid the descent from hero to zero in football is.
Scottish football is livelier and more competitive than it has been for years. Lennon has played a big part in that. If he leaves, both Hibernian and our game would be the poorer for it.
No more fairytales
Aberdeen won the European Cup Winners’ Cup 35 years ago yesterday, but Arsene Wenger has sounded the death knell for such fairytale endings in future.
The Frenchman said that a new European league, featuring only the top clubs, is on the way. He claimed these games would be at the weekends, with a smaller English domestic league, playing matches in midweek.
Money has always driven professional football, but in a global environment, the top clubs haven’t even started to tap the riches on offer yet.
There are huge potential markets for merchandise, and viewers, throughout the world for top class football.
That, though, doesn’t include fixtures like Liverpool v Huddersfield or Manchester United v Brighton.
The giants of the English game have been demanding the lion’s share of television income for some time, and are set to be joined by the behemoths from Germany, Spain, and Italy.
Football at the top level long ago ceased to be about community and location.
It’s a huge international business, and the big clubs want a bigger slice of the cake. In fact they want all of it.
I’ve been on many jaunts to Europe with Scottish clubs, but the halcyon days of the Scottish game at a European level are long gone.
We’re an irrelevance in top European competition.
The brave new world won’t feature us. It also won’t feature many other clubs once regarded as having some pedigree, from countries like Belgium, or Holland.
Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and Juventus were always huge clubs, but in the future, along with a handful of top English clubs, they will be the new masters of a global game.