NEIL’S CUP OF CHEER HAS TURNED COLD...
NORTH and south of the border, the League Cup was a familiar friend to Neil Lennon the player. Twice he helped Leicester City defy the odds to lift the trophy under Martin O’Neill and, after moving to Celtic, he achieved significant medal milestones in the Scottish equivalent.
How strange, then, the competition should prove so troublesome to his managerial career.
Lennon twice made the final as Celtic manager, but lost to Rangers in 2011 and Kilmarnock a year later. A record that got progressively worse saw his team beaten by St Mirren in the 2013 semi-final and then knocked out by Championship side Morton at the following season’s first hurdle.
‘It’s the only competition I haven’t won as a manager,’ he muses. ‘It was the first competition I won as a Celtic player and also as captain.
‘I won two in England as well which is pretty good, pretty special for a club like Leicester at the time. So it was good to me as a player.
‘I made two finals as manager and the Killie one was disappointing because we were the dominant team and missed lots of chances.’
Lennon fared no better in his first crack at the competition as Hibs boss, losing to Queen of the South in the second round, but admits his team’s priorities lay in gaining promotion to the Premiership last term and not with the cup.
Now back in the top tier, that has changed. Hibs blitzed their way through the group stage of the Betfred Cup and continued in a similar vein to thump Ayr 5-0 in the last round. Now they face Livingston in this Tuesday’s quarter-final and Lennon wants his players to believe they can go all the way.
‘Look, we’re not going to win the league,’ he states, with disarming bluntness. ‘Let’s be realistic about things, but we have an opportunity to do well in the cups.
‘From the day the draw was made we’ve looked at it. First, could we negotiate the group? Then we took it into the knockout stage.
‘Compared to a lot of other clubs we’ve had a decent draw. We’re at home which is good and we’re up against lower-league opposition. That can bring its own dangers so our whole focus now is on Livingston.
‘We are playing a team who got promoted last year. David Hopkin has done very well and they are doing okay in the Championship, which is not an easy thing to do.
‘It’s a game fraught with danger. However the incentive is there to make another semi-final.
‘Hopefully we can overcome it and really have something to get our teeth into.’
If Lennon’s managerial efforts in the League Cup have been laced with disappointment he is comforted by the knack his players have shown for knockout football.
Last year he inherited a squad that had not only won the Scottish Cup a few weeks earlier but also made it to the final of the League Cup.
Eight of the cup-winning team — including two-goal Anthony Stokes who left for Blackburn Rovers and has now returned — remain on the books at Easter Road and that convinces Lennon that they can go all the way again.
He adds: ‘I think a club like this should be looking at the cups so, right, let’s give this a go. Even with promotion last season we got to the semi-final of the Scottish Cup, although we could have done better that day against Aberdeen.
‘The players have had a taste of it. They were in two finals the season previously, so their cup pedigree is good. They know how to play these one-off games pretty well.’
Last year’s competition revamp gave way to not only the groupstage format but also a calendar change that saw the finals and final moved forward from their established spring date.
Now the winners can expect to hold aloft the cup at Hampden in late November, a development which Lennon has welcomed.
‘This one comes early. It’s something to look forward to and the good thing is you are not left waiting,’ he said.
‘Previously you would play the quarter-final in the early part of the season and then the semi a few months later. It’s good that there is a flow to it.
‘It’s very much at the forefront of my mind. We will go strong on Tuesday. I want to put a strong team out, although obviously we will look at how the squad is after the weekend game.’