I could not believe that Neil Lennon took that press conference today.
Even having written this board off as shockingly incompetent and weak, I thought he’d have been gone this morning. I thought that the weekend would pass and that Lawwell and McKay would be waiting for Lennon when he got to Lennoxtown.
I am astonished that he is still in place.
I blame the board for all of this. They understand only one thing and it’s the sound of the cash registers.
They will treat with contempt anyone who continues to fund them beyond this campaign.
I don’t hold it against fans who want to renew and have made that clear, but they’ve removed their only leverage.
Whilst I respect them, I can’t understand them.
This board, this club, is pissing on us all from a great height right now, but nobody more so than the man in the dugout, for too many of our fans still beyond reproach.
The only unsackable manager in the history of the club.
He hangs on although I know not how.
As the weeks have worn on, Lennon has become more and more wrapped up in himself, more and more unwilling to compromise, more and more determined to hang on in his job even as results get worse and the club goes to shit all around him.
Lennon’s selfishness and arrogance are incomprehensible.
How does he really think this ends? In glory?
Surely he cannot delude himself that there’s a happy ending here?
He has gone from being an unquestioned hero and icon to what now borders on a hate figure amongst tens of thousands of our fans.
The line between that border is slowing being erased.
I am not going to lie about this, or sugar coat it in any way; I can’t stand the sight of this guy right now.
I don’t want to see his face and I don’t want to hear his voice.
Time might heal the way I feel, but I can’t see it, I can’t imagine it, I can only hope for a day when I don’t feel this way towards him because for all people have accused me of it before, I never have and I don’t like it.
But Neil Lennon is a toxic presence at Celtic and I always loved Celtic far more than I ever did him and I always will.
I cannot wait until he’s gone.
The whole way I feel about my club right now is tainted by his presence in the dugout.
I have never felt this much seething anger and resentment towards a Celtic boss. Never.
And that makes me feel a seething anger and resentment towards the whole club.
I am so looking forward to no longer feeling like this.
His demeanour, his attitude, his dripping contempt for all those who offer him a word of criticism … I don’t want him in the building any longer, far less in his job.
We don’t owe this guy anything, and whatever debt we might have once thought needed to be paid has been as far as I’m concerned.
He’s a multi-millionaire, with two tries at a job much too big for him.
We have paid – and we continue to pay – a high price for the misguided loyalty some think he deserves.
Right now, he deserves only the same contempt he has for us.
It is surreal watching this unfold.
If it was happening at another club, I would be slack-jawed in disbelief and charting the melt-down amongst their fans.
Lennon is hiding in his bubble, as so many others at Celtic Park are at the moment.
He can talk about missing the supporters all he wants, but ten thousand of them would be outside the stadium right now clamouring for his dismissal if that were permitted by law.
The global health crisis has insulated him from the level of anger that exists.
He and others are in for their shock of their lives when they realise how widespread, and heavy, that anger is.
Lennon is going to get the biggest shock of them all.
If he thinks he’s going to come out on the other side of this with the backing of the Celtic support he better think again.
Every day he spends in this job now is poisonous to his relationship with the fan-base.
I don’t know a single Celtic fan who still wants him in the job, although some still feel the pull of whatever fan-boy cult effect he has on them.
The rest just want him gone, and gone now.
The only people in Glasgow who want this to drag on are the Celtic board, Lennon himself and the Ibrox illiterati.
To me, that sums his whole situation up.
He’s their hero now.
That’s how far he’s fallen from where he thinks he is.