Every time Celtic wins these days I feel a stab of fear in my gut, and I make no apologies for admitting that to you.
Every time we get a good result I fear that it will be taken by some as proof that some corner has been turned and Lennon will get more time that his performances do not justify.
Last night was three points. We’re still miles behind Ibrox and with no hope of catching them.
This season is a failure. All that result did is paper over the cracks. Let’s not forget that we just beat a team without a manager. This wasn’t a miraculous turnaround.
The problem with papering over the cracks is that the cracks won’t go away.
They grow. They spread.
The walls get weaker and eventually they come tumbling down.
The dismissal of the manager remains as necessary today as it did yesterday and the day before. We cannot have our club appear, to the world, as if it tolerates abject failure and a complete collapse like this.
There remains no football reason for leaving Lennon in the job, and that should be the only criteria for making this decision.
It still looks, to me, as if our club is being run based on what is good for Neil Lennon rather than what’s good for Celtic. We cannot be sticking as we are in the vain hope that he can rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the fans.
That’s not an acceptable basis on which to operate.
Lennon’s presence in the dugout remains a gross insult to tens of thousands of our fans and what makes it worse is that he talks like someone who still thinks he’ll be hanging around. The more he talks like that the more uncertainty we create.
Season ticket sales will tank if this matter is unresolved when the forms go out. For the good of the club this needs to end. For its financial wellbeing, for its medium term stability, this has to end. It won’t be enough for the board to announce that Lennon will go when the season is done and then leave it all hanging until then … nobody’s going to buy that.
This is too big a decision to leave until the summer and too big a call on which to promise “jam tomorrow” and ask people for money.
Last night, Lennon said after the game that he got “the response he wanted.”
That was the thing with him. He didn’t work some magic on the training ground, or work out some innovation in his tactics.
He bollocked the players and he thinks that’s what made the difference; if he’s right, how confident are you that he can get results from that approach on a consistent basis?
I was pleased with the display and the win, but let me repeat; we beat a managerless team. I’ve seen Lennon tactically outclassed all season long. Even on his finest hour so far, the cup final against Hearts, I thought Robbie Neilson absolutely owned him.
There are going to be changed this coming summer, we know this.
But they cannot and will not all wait until summer.
It is imperative that the new manager have time to evaluate this team ahead of the summer window … which I’ll write about later today or tomorrow because we’ve finally got some good news on that front.
The January Review must be presented to the fans, and it needs to accept the complete failure of the Lennon experiment, and terminate it without further delay.
Yesterday changed nothing in that regard.