For the second time in as many weeks, Neil Lennon is dominating the news cycle.
For the second time in as many weeks, he’s doing so attacking Celtic fans and some of the players and generally making a bunch of excuses for his own epic failure.
This is what we’re going to get from Lennon from now on.
He has decided to burn his bridges with the fans completely, and now blames us for forcing Lawwell out the door.
But the CEO did the one thing Lennon was unable and unwilling to do; he looked at his own performance in the last 12 months, knew it was unacceptable and understood that he had to go.
Lennon has taken not one iota of personal responsibility and as far as I’m concerned this absolves us of any remaining residue of loyalty that we might feel we have to him.
One of the things Lennon was complaining bitterly about were the way certain players too their eye off the ball and seemed demotivated and keen to leave after returning from the first lockdown.
He seems to think that lacked professionalism.
We’ve all been nice about this up until now, but let’s not beat about the bush; when you have a manager turning up for pre-season training looking like somebody who crawled off a three-week pub and kebab shop bender it will tend to grate on people if he’s lecturing them about professionalism and standards and keeping themselves in good shape.
Lennon gets off with this too much; his own lack of standards was readily apparent, notorious and an utter embarrassment. His current behaviour is another utter embarrassment, with his dredging up Dubai again and then, finally, turning on the fans.
This is to be his calling card from now on.
Lennon probably thinks he’s smart here, but he’s only sussed what many before him already knew; target our club or our supporters and you’ll get more headlines than you can handle, and what Lennon is fixed on right now, above all else, is promoting his own legend and trying to rebuild his own reputation.
He’s even telling Postecoglou to sort out the dressing room first thing in the door.
I rather suspect the Australian will have little difficulty there.
It is somewhat easier for a manager to motivate players who he hasn’t personally chucked under the bus or otherwise offended with his own behaviour.
Lennon lost his dressing room, either when he showed up for pre-season looking like he did and then proceeded to lecture people or that night against Ferencvaros where he played without a striker in a one-off Champions League game and then used the after-match presser to slaughter his own team.
He had no hope in Hell from that moment on and our season disintegrated accordingly.
His conduct during the latter part of the campaign damaged his career.
Lennon has chosen to rebuild it on our back with his second attack on the fans in as many weeks.
He can re-write history all he wants.
We know what he’s about now, and I’m afraid we’ll probably see a lot more of this nonsense.