KEEP OUT OF IT
Lennon tells McInnes to focus on his own players
NEIL LENNON has told Derek McInnes to mind his own business after the Aberdeen boss accused Kristoffer Ajer of ‘laughing and winking’ at Sam Cosgrove as the Dons striker saw red on Saturday.
Cosgrove was sent packing for a lunge midway through the second half of Celtic’s 2-1 win and will miss his side’s games with Livingston today and Hearts on Sunday after the SFA rejected his appeal on Tuesday.
Although the Englishman clearly took the ball first, referee Euan Anderson adjudged him to be guilty of serious foul play due to using excessive force.
Adamant at the time that his player had made ‘a brilliant tackle’, McInnes was further irked by what he felt was unbecoming behaviour by Ajer.
But Lennon said: ‘I’m not convinced about that at all. Kris isn’t like that. At the end of the day, he’s on the receiving end of a very heavy tackle. Whether he’s winking or not is irrelevant and I have no evidence he did do that.
‘Derek should be concentrating on his
SAM FOLEY insists St Mirren can’t afford to treat a meeting with champions Celtic as a free hit. The Paisley side host Neil Lennon’s team with bookies Ladbrokes writing them off as 18/1 outsiders. Pointing to a narrow 2-0 defeat at Parkhead in October, however, veteran midfielder Foley has urged his team-mates to approach the match with a belief they can make an impact on the title race
and enhance their hopes of Premiership survival. ‘When you use that phrase “free hit”, it suggests that the result of this game doesn’t matter but in the long run it probably does,’ said the 33-year-old. ‘There are points available and anything we take from Celtic could be vital for us. You can say that there’s no pressure on us to win or even draw but that’s not the case. ‘We can take a lot from the way we played against them at their place. It was my first experience of that and I left the pitch feeling disappointed because, while we’d done well, we could’ve played a whole lot better. We weren’t massively outplayed by them and I know what we did well and what we need to do better this time.’ Celtic’s only league defeat of the season came in a 2-0 loss at Livingston and Saints manager Jim Goodwin wants his players to get in faces and follow the Livvy blueprint. Insisting he and his team-mates can’t allow themselves to be intimidated by reputations, Foley added: ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a bit more experienced now but a game is just a game and it doesn’t matter who you’re playing against. ‘Whenever you play Celtic or Rangers, it’s obviously a different game plan than it is for St Johnstone and so on but that’s not a bad thing. We’re on a decent run and we’ve been performing well, we’re unbeaten in three and looking forward to this one.’