I’ve already written about the Lennon story today and the subject is sufficiently tiresome, and he is sufficiently tiresome, that I really don’t want to parse every part of his interview, which I found to be self-absorbed nonsense and revisionist to a degree where I wouldn’t be surprised if he wound up with a writing gig at The Daily Record or some other repository of rewritten history.
The only part that I wanted to write about separate to what I’ve already done, is when he talks about the coaching team which was imposed on him.
In that segment I hear a warning to Postecoglou about bringing in his own people, and I think it’s a fear that every one of us shares, that he will end up stuck with the two raging mediocrities who played such a role in dragging down our campaign.
If he allows it then he’s a mug, because any manager who allows that is a mug and that’s one of the many, many reasons I am so completely unsympathetic to Lennon and why his appointment still infuriates me as an example of utter incompetence by our board.
No manager who valued his own judgement and who wasn’t desperate for a gig would have come to a football club which denied him the opportunity to pick his own people, and if Postecoglou settles for that it will be the first early warning sign for those who expect great things from him.
He needs to stand up and fight for his own people if that’s what it takes and if he thinks ex-Ibrox Kevin Muscat is one of them then so be it, and I hope he gets his man.
The Lennon appointment reeked of desperation and lack of imagination, and the proof of that is that they didn’t trust his judgement.
Yet it calls their competence into question as well; if they didn’t trust his judgement on so simple a matter as this, they had no business ever hiring him in the first place. If they deny Postecoglou his people, what does that say about how they trust his?
And that asks questions about how much – or little – we should trust theirs.
Lennon does himself no favours bringing this up in mitigation.
I know he has always believed he was hired on merit for his talents in the dugout, but to me the embargo on him picking his own people demonstrates that he was really hired because he would do as he was told and be a front-man for the Lawwell experiment.
And the Lawwell experiment seems, more and more to me, to have been about John Kennedy as much as it was anything else, which is why I don’t want to see Kennedy within miles of the new set-up.
If Postecoglou accepts Kennedy anywhere near his coaching team then we’ll all have good reasons to doubt his own judgement and, especially, his independence.
But if that guy wants to start winning people over – a difficult task, and I won’t even pretend otherwise from my own point of view – a clean demonstration that this is his vision and that this is his show to run would be welcome, and he could do it early by jettisoning the current coaching staff entirely.
He does that, and as far as I’m concerned he’s off to an excellent start.
Anything else, and our concerns will ratchet up a notch and his judgement will be called into question.
I want a clear sign that this guy realises he has to be in charge of his own destiny … because otherwise he’s leaving at least some of it in the hands of other people and only a fool would do that.
Lennon’s comments don’t reflect well on him, not any of them, but especially not these.
It draws attention to nothing more than his own weakness in dealing with his paymasters at the club.
Postecoglou must be stronger than that if he wants us to take him seriously.