EMBARRASSING
Celtic boss Lennon hits back at Breen over claims Duffy will pick up ‘bad habits’ in SPFL
GARY BREEN is hardly the first ex-pro in England to audition for a gig on talkSPORT by running down Scottish football. It’s doubtful he’ll be the last.
The former Republic of Ireland defender piped up this week with a warning for Celtic loan signing Shane Duffy. Moving to Scotland, he claimed, could be detrimental to the Brighton defender’s international career.
Claiming there isn’t a single centre-forward in the SPFL who could hold down a place in the English Premier League, Duffy, he insisted, will acquire bad habits.
Resisting the temptation to point out that Breen’s knowledge of Scottish football could be written in block capitals on the back of a postage stamp — twice — an exasperated Neil Lennon has heard all this before. None of which makes it any less irksome or tedious.
‘He’s just the latest in a long list of people who’ve made comments about the game up here which have been totally wrong,’ said the Celtic boss. ‘I don’t want to dwell too long on his comments but I obviously disagree with them.’
Ireland boss Stephen Kenny learned just how hard Scottish football can be during an ill-fated spell as manager of Dunfermline, a small detail overlooked by Breen during the kind of outburst usually reserved for the driver’s seat of a London cab.
‘I think this is a great move for Shane,’ added Lennon. ‘It’ll be good for his profile, good for his international status and he has an international manager who worked in Scotland and who knows the pressures which come with playing for Celtic.
‘Gary needs to educate himself better before he starts coming out with these sweeping generalisations about the Scottish game. There are a lot of big players in the Premier League down south who came from this division.
‘Kieran Tierney and Virgil van Dijk have done all right for themselves and we still have some good players up here — look at Kristoffer Ajer, Christopher Jullien, Greg Taylor and Hatem Elhamed. They’re all top players at a great stage in their career with a huge club. So I think Gary has it totally wrong, he’s completely misread the situation and it’s a bit embarrassing for him, really.’
Albian Ajeti is prepared to testify to the benefits of a move to the Scottish Premiership. After leaving Basle for £8million last summer, the Swiss international never really had a chance at West Ham United.
At Celtic, the opportunities have come thick and fast and the £5m striker seems hellbent on taking every one of them.
Three goals in three SPFL games are unlikely to alter the thinking of Scottish football’s detractors. Most will say it merely proves their point.
Yet the notion of a non-scoring West Ham striker with low morale being more valuable to his national team than he might be after a strong, confident start to his Parkhead career defies logic.
‘You can see that I am very happy,’ said the 23-year-old. ‘I am smiling every day. I was smiling every day at West Ham as well, but it’s not the same when you are not playing. Now I’m playing and I could not have imagined a better move than to Celtic.’
Celtic’s recent history of signing strikers has been a patchy, hit-and-miss affair. While the likes of Vakoun Bayo and Nadir Ciftci came, saw and left again, the success stories lend weight to the view that you get what you pay for.
Paired together in a new 3-5-2 formation, Ajeti and Odsonne Edouard are the most expensive forward line in Celtic history. Given time to develop an understanding, the Swiss believes the pair will justify the outlay.
Both on the scoresheet in the 5-0 win over Ross County, Ajeti claimed: ‘The first game we were together was very good. We played very well, we both scored, we kept a clean sheet, which was also important. Offensively we did a great job, even if it was our first game. But there is still a lot to come.’
A colleague of Ajeti’s at Basle, Mohamed Elyounoussi was asked to put in a telephone call to his former team-mate to persuade him of the value of a move to Glasgow. The Norwegian believes Ajeti can be the top scorer in the SPFL this season and the early evidence suggests he might not be wrong.
Ajeti himself plays that goal down, adding: ‘That is not my main target, no. There is still a long way to go, but I will try to help the team with scoring goals and I just hope I can score as many as possible.
‘The main target for me was to get back playing and to get all of my confidence back.
‘I’m trying to improve and get better year on year.’
Declaring himself ‘absolutely delighted’ with the transfer business Celtic have done so far, Lennon can see a pattern beginning to take shape. While coronavirus restrictions make the settling-in process more complex than usual, he believes his new signings are coping well with unusual circumstances.
‘I suppose they will all have plenty to do in terms of new homes and maybe schooling for the kids,’ Lennon observed. ‘Making sure their partners are settled and so on.
‘Albian’s wife came in last midweek and that gave him a much-needed boost at the time. You have to take the human element into the equation.
‘You can’t just say: “Get on with it, you’ve being paid well”.
‘We have to make sure they can adapt to the new environment and restrictions and protocols which are around the environment.’