You have to love the way the club has tried to reunite this week, in a way that is thoroughly unconvincing.
My favourite bit of it was when the players were dragooned into the case, with first the club and then the manager painting a picture of a happy family.
Few amongst the Celtic support really believe this, but then I have the strangest suspicion that we weren’t the intended audience anyway.
It’s the club’s way of forcing the players to get onboard with things, I think. When Lennon said yesterday that the board’s backing for him had acted as a calming influence on everyone I reckon he was telling the truth, but just not the whole truth.
I think Lennon’s backing from the board puts some of the players in a tight spot. If footballers aren’t playing for a manager, they can get him sacked and force a change … Celtic may well be sending them the message that it’s not going to be that way here.
The “review” of the manager’s position will come in January; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this will take us up to the opening of the transfer window; in addition to the manager having guarantees from those above him, the players have been told that offers will not be welcomed.
I’ll do a larger article on that later, as it’s an important point.
It seems apparent that some of the players aren’t giving 100%, and whether they think this will move the manager on or not, or get him to move them on, they now know that for the time being at least he has the full support of those at the top of the house. They also know that they aren’t going to get their own moves at the current time.
It all sends a pretty clear message.
And hopefully, they will respond positively to it.
I really don’t care whether this is a little psychological ploy or not. If it has some smoothing effect and the team plays better, few fans are going to care why or how it happened. We’re all desperate for anything right now, any sign of life or improvement.
Whatever gets the job done, the Celtic fans will be glad of it, whatever our thoughts on the manager or the board are.
We all want to see this team back to winning ways.
Please read our article on our new Facebook strategy, and bookmark the sites mentioned in it.