Hooray – it’s the return of Alastair Moncrieff and his ‘controversial’ articles! This time, he’s tackling the subject of our beloved manager. Also read the new Kindle football magazine ‘All or Nothing’ he’s put together. It features Celtic and there are more details at the end of the article. Now over to Ally…
Okay ladies and gentlemen of the internet, we need to talk, it’s pretty urgent and it’s about Neil Francis Lennon.
With the league campaign drawing to a close and only a Scottish Cup tie with Dundee United to break the monotony, now seems as good a time as any to take a look at the man who’s led our club over the last few years.
Now I have a confession to make, I may have been a tad disingenuous with my title. I have no intention of weighing up the pros and cons of his reign; plenty of others have done and will continue to do that. Nope, my mind is already made up, and I’m here to tell you that it would be better for Celtic, and better for Lennon personally, if he walked away in the summer.
Timing is everything in this life and if he has an ounce of sense, if he has a modicum of ambition then our manager will surely realise that he’s done all he can in Glasgow and it’s time to bid farewell.
I know that uttering any words regarding Lennon that are not 100% positive risks awakening the nuttier element of our support (I’ll see you in the comments), so I suppose I should explain myself. I’ll start with why it’d be better for Lennon personally and then move on to why it’d be better for the club as a whole.
At this moment in time the stock of Neil Lennon could not be higher, rest assured his achievements, especially in Europe’s premier competition, have been noted, there can be no doubt that his name will have been discussed in boardrooms all over England. He’s forged a reputation as a talented young manager with the ability to pluck a diamond from the rough and make it shiny enough to attract wealthy suitors.
You could make a fairly persuasive argument that Lennon has achieved all he can at Celtic, he’s added some more silverware to the collection, and under his stewardship the club have acquitted themselves superbly on the European stage, hell he even managed to better his more illustrious predecessors and break the Euro away day hoodoo. Yes he could stay and try to match the trebles of Stein and O’Neil but looking at his record at Hampden that might just take a lifetime.
Timing is everything; it’s always best to go out on a high.
Now onto why it’d be better for Celtic if Lennon said goodbye come the end of the season, this might be a bit more controversial to be honest.
It’d be better for Celtic for one simple reason, Lennon is a busted flush.
A league campaign that should have been won at a canter has been nothing short of a depressing slog. A plethora of points have been quite simply tossed away and of course there was that St Mirren thing. This would be, whilst not acceptable, certainly understandable if we were fielding a team of kids but we’re not. Some people appear to have forgotten the gap in quality between Celtic and the rest, it is gargantuan, to have dropped as many points as we have is nothing short of embarrassing and it’s Lennon’s fault.
The job of a manager is to extract the highest yield from the resources at his disposal and Lennon is demonstrably failing to do this. He seems incapable of sending his players out in the required mental state, for a team that has no on-field competition to drive them on it is essential that the manager is able to provide that drive himself. Every time a listless Celtic side drop points we are fed some excuse along the lines of the players attitude not being right, well Neil, that’s pretty much your job.
When a manager is no-longer able to manage his players effectively it is time for him to go, Lennon is in the incredibly rare position of being in that precise situation but having the opportunity to walk away of his own accord, with reputation intact and a place in history assured. Remember Neil, timing is everything; take that opportunity, for your own good and that of the club.
I’m not going to go any further because while writing this piece something happened that made me consider making this my last article on Celtic. I will continue to be a Celtic supporter on the terraces and in the pub but I’m not sure I want to be a Celtic fan on-line anymore. There is a poisonous element to the Celtic support on the internet; it is not a few isolated trolls but a large and organised movement. They are as ruthless at striking down dissenters as any communist secret police. One of the editors of this site, a good guy and a dedicated tim, was a victim of their zealousness and has at the time of writing, after a torrent of abuse, been removed from twitter, all because he dared express a view that didn’t toe the party line.
Some of you (and you know who you are) need to take a good look at yourselves, it’s a fucking game, it’s meant to be fun.
On that note I bid you farewell and ask that you take a look at my new magazine chronicling the highs and lows of supporting a football club, it’s only 99p and there are some brilliant writers involved. http://t.co/N0FDFP7G08 if you fancy saying hello on twitter then head on over to https://twitter.com/AllorNothingMag
Shocking!
i feel sick to my stomach that this is an article by a fan of the club
Wrong on so many levels. What Neil Lennon has managed to achieve for Celtic is incredible. how can anyone criticize him he deservedly deserves more than next season we should stick with him for a long time – he was a legend as a player and has shown he is a legend as the manager as well
A terrible hack job on the manager of our club and the fans
The celtic fans are the best in the country on the internet in the street or in the pub – We are widely known as the greatest fans in the world
We do not resort to the levels of Sevco fans!your magazine is crap I have never heard of it pal!!
i feel appalled and sick at this article – surely a admin will remove it – repulsive
gary
What has his status as player got to do with it?
I’m not going to get into the whole ‘greatest fans in the world’ debate ’cause it’s utterly irrelevant.
If you feel physically sick then I think you may have overreacted just a tad, it’s only an article designed to spark a bit of debate.
You’ve never heard of my magazine but it’s “crap”? That doesn’t make any sense.
Cheers for reading anyway.
We’re not widely known as the greatest fans in the world, a few made up quotes from Xavi won’t cut it in 2013, Ally is spot on. There are absolute cunts that are seen as ‘good people’ on the internet and they are nothing but cunts. You slag the guys magazine and you’ve never even read it. And then you go and mention Sevco? Why? Cause ye need to thats why.
His article doesn’t tickle your fancy, but there others who will agree with him. The article stays. Don’t be a fascist, we’re all allowed our opinion
Xavi’s quotes aren’t made up. I dont know if we are THE very best fans in the world but we’re certainly given that tag and praised to the hilt when we play in Europe by the media and opposition players..
If you feel sick to your stomach, Andrew’s Liver Salts works wonders. How dare another Celtic supporter hold a different opinion than yourself! Shocking!
Free speech – it’s a terrible thing.
Not so much tin hat at the ready as heavy-duty titanium helmet at the ready…
It’s ready don’t worry.
How’s being 15 points clear NOT winning at a canter? I live in England and thebestthing right now is the fact that Celtic and ManUtd are both 15 points clear. In England it’s a procession, in Scotland its a sign we should sack our manager…
There’s no question (in my mind) that we exceeded our Champs League expectations and that we have dropped points around those games, but the point is we have achieved what we set out to do to this point….
Because we should be a helluva lot more than 15 points clear, the gap in quality between ourselves and the rest has never been greater. I didn’t say we should sack him.
I agree re. exceeding our Champ League expectations but I don’t see how anyone can be happy with our league performances.
Having said all that, it’s just an opinion. Might be wrong.
There’s no doubt some performances have been unacceptable this season but generally under Lennon’s stewardship we have been a good team. I think we should cash in on some of the players who seem disinterested now, namely hooper. Wanyama can go to for the right price. Time for a change indeed, squad not manager though. Overall your article is pish though. The attack on our supporters is unfair, ofcourse there are supporters who say the wrong thing and as a club Celtic aren’t immune from that kind of faction of supporters, we are the best supporters the world knows and your comments were unwarranted to say the least.
I agree we should cash in on some of the “disinterested” players.
Overall your comment is pish though.
I’m not sure you are aware of the group of supporters I was talking about, if you were you wouldn’t call my “attack” unfair. They are bullies (again not all Celtic fans, just a certain powerful faction)
That’s fair enough, your comment came across to me more that you were tarring all of us with the same brush. Yes we are all Celtic supporters but of course there are individuals with moronic tendencies within our support, this cannot be helped as we’re not exclusive to any particular individual. Re Lennon being a busted flush is a bit harsh too. This is his first managerial job and he is still developing as a manager, he’s far from the finished article but I would be far happier if our board backed him by providing funds to rebuild which is most likely going to have to happen than letting him go. If we were to be given the choice of keeping him or seeking a new manager I would keep Lennon personally, who would you suggest would be a better choice to take our club forward?
Ah see that’s where I have a problem because it depends entirely on what direction the club is going to take in the coming years, if there is a real chance of moving to a more lucrative league then I’d like to see a big name experienced manager or director of football appointed, if we’re stuck in the SPL then fuck knows!
Where did the writer say NL should be sacked? He said he should maybe leave, for his careers sake.
Most of what is written is true, especially about the poisonous internet element, I agree with a lot of what was written, and some of the support HAVE forgotten, it is supposed to be a ‘fucking game’.
Cheers mate, nice of someone to actually read the piece properly before commenting!
It is a game, we’re meant to enjoy it.
Totally unbalanced piece. I have no truck with abuse to anybody and enjoy a good bit of banter and was brought up with the moral if you dish it out then be prepared to take it. You have put forward your point of view then totally dissed a large number of fellow Celtic supporters views. Either grow a pair or if you only want to take part in all singing from the same hymn sheet debates the maybe you’d be better off not taking part as you said.
I think Neil is as good for Celtic as Celtic is for him.
You don’t. Hail hail
I think you’ve misunderstood me, I am only to happy to engage in debate, what I have a problem with is when that debate turns into organised bullying. As was the case in the incident I was referring to.
Hey you think Lennon’s good for the club, I’m not so sure, doesn’t make either of us bad people or bad Celtic fans.
Peace
I think I understood you perfectly Ally. You started off by giving your honest assessment and opinion of Neil’s tenureship so far which I totally respect but then nosedived into a rant about some supporters who have been abusive. My advice would be to take them on or totally ignore them. Their will always be “fanatics” in fact I am a child of the “jungle” and wasn’t very complimentary to the main stand punters at times the same could be said for the old Celtic end against punters who stood in the old Rangers end. At the end of the day we are all Celtic supporters. Hail hail
Maybe the ‘rant’ was ill advised maybe it wasn’t but what I saw was really quite nasty and not for the first time, rest assured I do take them on! And you’re right we are all Celtic supporters.
why are the writers on this blog so anti-Lennon? He has his faults as do all managers and domestically we’ve been poor to watch this season but he’s led us to the last 16 of the CL with a record points total for a Scottish club! O’Neill, Advocaat, Sir Cardigan, McLeish and Strachan couldn’t get 10pts in the group stages and they spent a helluva lot more than Lennon!
He’s not exempt from criticism by any means and he deserves his fair share of it but this article is awful, anti-Lennon dirge.
Maybe this site is “anti-Lennon” because almost every other site is so vehemently behind him? (only speaking for myself by the way the other writers have their reasons) Debate is important and healthy, not denying his Euro record but feel our domestic campaign needs discussing. That’s all.
I agree with much of what you say, but to many (mainly the fanatical) any attempts at reasonable evaluation or even vague objectivity is translated as heresy. The fanatics that take the game way too serious never have a sense of humour, and certainly don’t see the game as ‘fun’. Some Celtic fans cannot accept criticism of other Celtic fans no matter the circumstances- what happens when we have moments when fans are genuinely out of order- do we just turn a blind eye because their Celtic fans? The Truth, morality and Justice are more important to me than anything else and just because someone’s a Celtic fan doesn’t change that. There are a lot of decent enough Sevconians out there as well, but to some Celtic fans, that is a statement you can’t make either. There is far too much poison circulating in Scotland right now.
There is a lot of paranoia, coercion and peer-group censorship going on out there and the refusal to criticise Lenny or the team is a manifestation of that. I’m all for us sticking together- particularly now when you consider the treatment and persecution meted out to the GB- but we also have to be mature enough as a fanbase to debate openly without recourse to childish slanging matches or guys calling what you say is ‘Pish’. Its embarrassing.
As for Lenny, I think he should stay and win everything he can, do well in Europe and only move if it is a really big club- not a Reading or a Norwich etc. As someone else said Celtic are good for Lenny and Lenny is good foe Celtic. Yes we should be doing better this season in the league- Lenny must take some of that responsibility as he is the one who has to motivate them- and at times we haven’t played that well but we are definitely heading in the right direction. What he has achieved after the Mowbray debacle is VERY IMPRESSIVE indeed. He has saved Celtic a lot of money and generated huge funds for the club and I believe he deserves at least £10m next year to spend. Lenny deserves to be backed by the board. They need to prove the believe in him by giving him the type of funds other Celtic or Rangers fans have had.
Cheers wonky, your comment is a breath of fresh air. Just because we’re Celtic fans doesn’t mean we all have to think the same. It’s perfectly okay to disagree every now and again, we all want what’s best for the club at the end if the day.
Hey maybe I’m wrong about Lennon, in fact I hope I am. (and by the way I do think he’s done a very good job overall)
ahhhhhhh so you’re just trying to be a hipster then? 😉
Disagreeing is fine and debate over the club is healthy but in all honesty it seems you have an agenda against the man for some reason…
No agenda, just a concern abut what’s best for the club.
Oh and I could never be a hipster, my quadriceps are far too well developed to fit in those skinny jeans!
read a couple of things like this recently and I must say I completely disagree with the view that Lennon is a busted flush. He’s certainly not perfect but his record has been pretty excellent so far imo. People talk about getting to the last 16 of the champions league, which was fantastic, but even getting in was a big deal. If you take in to account the entire European campaign this year he has excelled.
As for his domestic record, yes we’ve lost a few big games but we always get to the big games, he’s lost the league on the last day and now won it twice, been to the final or semi final of every cup he’s entered.
I think it’s a case of people being a bit bored without a serious challenger in the league, which is another debate, and taking it out on the manager. Could be a case of you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone mate….
Maybe you’re right and boredom is certainly a factor. I accept I might be wrong but I just wanted to get my point across. And yes what he’s done in Europe overall is very impressive.
‘fans’ was meant to be managers…long day.
The problem I have with the manager is that, Saturday aside, he seems incapable of changinga game while it is ongoing. He has to get them in at the break to change things.
Charlie Mulgrew was the player of the year last year playing at centre half and yet he has played there probably only six or seven times there this season. To accomodate Mulgrew the midfield is disrupted.
Izaguire needs a rocket and reminded that he is a defender first and foremost. He is slow getting back thats when he bothers.
Now that I’ve had my moan I’ll start backing the manager or at least the system that the club now has.
Lennon is a young manager still learning his trade and while that is often repeated it does not make it any less true. Being a good player does not make you a good manager; John Barnes anyone. You must also remember the unique set of circumstances which Lennon endured during his first season. To come so close to the title after that was very impressive.
John Park has been given more scope to assess players and has delivered some quality signings.
I guess ultimately you must decide where you want Celtic to be in the grand scheme of things. I personally think we have reached our glass ceiling with regards to the CL. I is highly unlikely that we will ever get to the last eight or beyond as things currently stand.
The best we can hope for is our current model where we can spot emerging tallent before anyone else, nurture it, and sell it on for a profit.
While I understand your article in some ways it seems a call for change simply for changes sake.
We were always told that you can only beat what is in front of you well if we win our next two league games we will be Champions again.
Now when you consider that in the last year it has become abundantly clear who the choosen team in Scotland is to win anything is a huge achievement. Remember Lennon has not had a mentor at all during the early days that he could turn to when things went wrong.
Our club needs stability as much as any other and I believe that if we nurture our manager, support him (and by that I mean the board) then he may become a major figure in our clubs history.
Maybe you’re right, maybe I am calling for change just for changes sake, it’s just there’s been a fair few performances this year that are wholly unacceptable and it’s happened too often for my liking.
I agree that this season is probably a glass ceiling Champions League wise.
There’s no way this euro campaign was a glass ceiling. We were only a couple of players away from a quality euro team. Capable of as much as most of the rest in the last 16. With That in mind. And A slightly easier draw out the hat. We could have reached quarter or even semi finals. It wouldn’t have been beyond that. And as for the manager. Simply put he has too stay. We need stability more than ever. We need a strong leadership in all departments right now. Something I believe we have for the first time in a long time. And so to the author of this heinous blog. How bloody dare you express an opinion on your own club. Who do you think you are. My god it’s like you’ve just gone and written down whatever ungodly thoughts entered your head. Stop it now. The Internet is not the sort of place to be expressing yourself. As for your unfortunate colleague. He who lives by the sword …… HAIL HAIL
Pye how the hell are u??? What’s happend to the Glasgow bhoys?? Think John t has taken it Down. Hail hail
It’s Jimbo102 btw. Hail hail
Lol I’ve deleted it jimbo there was no point mate. This is a much grander affair in here. Looking foreward to the banter all over again. Keep posting jimbo. HAIL HAIL. Ps. And keep disagreeing with me mate. God bless.
If we’re a two or three players away from a quality Euro side just now then come the summer we’ll be five or six away, once the EPL big spenders have had their pick. Will be tough to replace them.
Aye opinions, they’re a dangerous thing, you should need a permit to have them.
Lol ally. Keep up the pressure on our bhrothers. We’ve all become way too complacent. HAIL HAIL
I feel so physically sick that I’m actually quite dizzy. Off with this mans head.
Not only do I feel physically sick, this diabolical heresy has given me a migraine.
Celtic were within a result of topping their Champions Lge group and as a previous poster said with a couple of more quality signings could have gone beyond the last 16.
regarding some poor performances in domestic competition,when a team goes 18 points clear in the title race motivation must become a problem now that the Championship can be rapped in early April and we can still win the Scottish Cup. It would be the height of folly to shunt Neil Lennon and Dermot Desmond has no intention of doing this.
Neil may be the man to take Celtic into the new Quatar Super League which seems very likely to happen in the near future.
Hi Ally
I agree with your summary of Neil Lennons position. He has nothing to gain in staying at Celtic. I believe he has reached the peak of his success and to continue, would be to his detriment. On the other hand I hope his undoubted love for the club and the commitment he has shown to Celtic will be rewarded with a budget for this season as we are going to lose 3 top players who will be very difficult to replace. The replacements might be of a good standard but will probably lack the European experience we need to continue in the right vein. We wont be able to buy players at X millions as we are a selling club and need to be in order to exist.
Our fans are some of the best but we should direct our efforts in supporting the players, manager and the club rather than opposing them.