There are those of us, a very many of us, who have serious reservations about this managerial appointment.
There are those of us who think it’s a shocker and that this guy will need a lot of propping up if he’s to make a go of it.
There is a truism about managerial appointments like this which often goes unrecognised.
Whenever a club which think of itself as a big one brings in a boss “on the cheap” the plan falls apart quickly because fans refuse to support it and the scale of the error rapidly becomes apparent once the games actually get underway.
When that happens, clubs usually end up spending far money to prop up the manager than they would ever have spent just by hiring the right guy in the first place.
It was apparent at the start of last season when Lennon was given money to spend far above and beyond what a more experienced manager would have required to get us to ten in a row and especially with the existing squad of players.
Every time a club has made a decision like this it has cost them to keep the experiment going.
I think the odds are stacked against this guy and I don’t believe this has a happy ending.
But that’s only an opinion, although it’s based on an objective look at his record and the size of this job, one that might very well have bamboozled a far more experienced manager.
Every one of us will “support” this guy, whatever the Hell that’s supposed to mean.
What it doesn’t mean is slavishly portraying him as a messiah.
That’s ludicrous and dangerous.
In the end thought, our support means the sum total of nil.
It’s the board who has to support him.
It’s the board who will decide what kind of shape this team is in to start the next campaign.
It’s their responsibility – not ours – to provide him with the tools he needs to do this job, and because he lacks experience at this level and because the job is so vast, it’s going to take even more money than it otherwise would have, not only to convince people but to give this guy any sort of fighting chance.
So to those people who want to moan their wee faces off that some of us aren’t singing this guy’s praises loudly enough, or stringing out the green and white bunting for him, I say only this; direct your exhortations to support this guy towards the people who are best placed to help him succeed.
Not us, not the bloggers, not your fellow fans, but the board, the people who have plucked this guy out of Asia above every available manager in Europe. Whatever benefit of the doubt he’s going to get, they’ve already shot theirs, they don’t get any.
Which is why it’s our job to keep the pressure on them, to make sure that the manager is fully backed.
They have to give him a backroom team that he can work with, and which is comprised of people who actually know what they are doing – which rules out everyone who worked on the first team squad last season.
They have to give him transfer funds which reflect the size of the job at hand and the club this board still claims Celtic to be, in spite of their decisions to the contrary.
Demand that they give him the support he requires and which he is due, because unless they do his chances of success are virtually nil and we will be right back here, in the same kind of mess, this time next year trying to get excited over Jack Ross.