WINNING MENTALITY
At the age of 48, he may be older, wiser, more seasoned and less prone to rash emotional outbursts than the manager of yore but Neil Lennon has never lost the passion that drives his...
SINCe the day the safety curtain came down on the game, the drip, drip of club-sanctioned interviews with Celtic players have adhered to a familiar script.
A desire to complete the 38 games by any means possible has been the core message. The motivation has been extending the 13-point lead over rangers in the Parkhead club’s eight remaining fixtures.
For all that talk in football isn’t so much as cheap as giveaway, any reasonable assessment of the top of the Premiership table as it stood two months ago would surely conclude that a more comprehensive winning margin for Celtic was far more likely than not.
Since losing the old Firm game at home on December 29, Neil Lennon’s side had taken 28 points from a possible 30.
rangers, in sharp contrast, had spilled 13 points over the corresponding period.
Across Glasgow, ahead of the third league meeting of the teams at Ibrox, there was a dual dynamic at play. With his side floundering on all fronts, Steven Gerrard began to feel the heat like never before.
Lennon, meanwhile, began to count the days until another coronation.
Such a scenario seemed almost unthinkable after the last game of 2019. As Gerrard’s side celebrated their first victory in a decade at Celtic Park, the smart money was on a photo finish for the title this very weekend.
By rights, a week-long training camp in Dubai should have invigorated both squads. But while Celtic returned rested and ready to fight for a coveted ninth crown, rangers gave the impression they’d yet to shake the Arabian sand out of their boots.
This curious dichotomy was manna from heaven for the conspiracy theorists but the real reasons were more prosaic.
Partly through tactical tweaks and partly through injecting his players with rock-solid belief, Lennon elevated his side to title winners in waiting.
Given his track record in Scotland in various guises over the past two decades, it is indeed surprising that some observers found this turn of events surprising.
As a manager, Lennon had already won four titles to go with the five he won as a player. He also experienced last-day agony on the field as well as the elation of winning one at the wire as a coach.
In terms of what it takes to get onto the podium, he’s probably forgotten more than most will ever know.
He also now has the benefit of experience and the greater wisdom that comes as one of the few compensations of middle age.
Although a resounding success in his first spell in charge at Parkhead, he’s since acknowledged that he was often hampered by a desire to take on the world.
His adventures at Bolton and Hibernian were varied but assuredly grist to the mill. He encountered different situations, people and expectations and will have been none the worse for any.
It’s not just with the benefit of hindsight that the lukewarm reception his appointment on a permanent basis received a year ago seemed curious.
A successful player, captain and manager, as well as a dyed-in-the-wool supporter, the man from Lurgan seemed the identikit of what the club required when Brendan rodgers abruptly left for Leicester — not another Hollywood appointment.
Within touching distance of the title and two games from completing the quadruple Treble when play was suspended, Lennon had long since silenced the last of his doubters.
‘For me, the thing that really makes Neil such a good manager is that he has real strength of character,’ said Martin o’Neill, the man who brought Lennon to the club in November 2000.
‘And there is an easy answer when people ask why Celtic have given him the job for a second time — he was the outstanding candidate for it.’ Speaking in a radio interview recently, Lennon remarked that he didn’t know where the time had gone as he’s probably not the only one. He’s 48 now, the same age as o’Neill was when he left Leicester for Celtic Park almost 20 years ago. In the same way that o’Neill’s experiences under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest shaped him, so Lennon learned much from the man he followed to Glasgow from the east Midlands. But he’s also his own man these days. Concerned at the relative inexperience of John Kennedy and Damien Duff, he contemplated drafting a more senior figure into his backroom staff last summer. Ultimately, he believed the chemistry behind the scenes was right and opted to go with what he had.
Perhaps Duff’s natural effervescence played a part in that thinking. In the past year Lennon has certainly tried to douse fewer fires. Few would dispute that he’s the better for it.
‘I now take a step back from things,’ he explained. ‘I have two young, dynamic coaches who can make the noises and shout their disapproval or whatever.
‘There are some things that irk you but, in the main, I am in a good place since I came in the door.’
Which is not to say that if he still feels there is something that needs saying that he’ll be fearful of saying it.
When Celtic won the penultimate old Firm game of last season to effectively clinch eight-in-a-row, Gerrard accused Celtic of ‘playing the victim card’ in their defence of Scott Brown.
Lennon pointedly replied that he hadn’t agreed with anything his rival had said since the final whistle other than Gerrard acknowledging that Celtic were the best team in the country.
There is more than one way of circling the wagons, of course.
When Celtic drew at Livingston in early March in what was to be their only post-Christmas domestic hiccup, the expectation was of a verbal rocket being launched in the direction of the dressing room. In Lennon’s first spell in charge, you’d have set your watch by it.
But Lennon’s words that night might well have been spoken by o’Neill or Gordon Strachan. A study in basic psychology, they said more about how he’d developed as a manager than the game itself.
‘I thought we were brilliant,’ he said after a display that was truthfully far from that.
‘They are a magnificent group of players and it’s a privilege for me to manage them.’
The record books now show that the five-goal thrashing of St Mirren three days later was to be the last time he’d do so in person before play was suspended.
Amid the story of the campaign that was curtailed due to a pandemic, Lennon’s emergence as a more seasoned football manager will not be lost.