Another Club Is Set To Turn Down Lennon Because He Still Won’t Admit His Celtic Mistakes.

There’s an interesting news story doing the rounds in England; Roy Keane has turned down Sunderland because he can’t agree personal terms. Just when you thought his route back to the club was all laid out in front of him, Keane has balked at the offer.

Under most circumstances, this would be of only limited interest to Celtic fans except for one of the other names who is linked with the job, and the fact that he chose the eve of the game against the Ibrox club to once again “set the record straight” on his time at the helm at Parkhead.

I was angry with Lennon for doing that, because everyone’s focus was on the match.

I was even angrier at the words he actually said, which once again betrayed not even the merest hint that he recognises his own failings and his own responsibility for last year’s disaster.

Much of it was stuff he had said before, but one fresh claim jumped off the page; players needed to leave and there wasn’t the money to replace them. It’s a new argument, alright, but one that will not exactly endear him to any future employer.

We are still stuck with some of the mess he made.

Two high profile signings, in particular, remain on the books who we couldn’t get shot of, although we were trying hard to. They cost us a combined total of £12 million … that’s around half what Ange has spent on the entire squad rebuild. What scares me most in light of that is what Lennon would have been able to spend had he grabbed the bull by the horns and moved Ajer, Edouard and Christie on.

God alone knows what state we’d be in right now, with nothing in the bank to fix it.

This is why the news from Sunderland today is so interesting.

Lennon advertised his availability for the post and made it clear that he’d be applying.

Yet, with Keane dropping out the shortlist is now said to be down to three, and he’s not one of the names. Grant McCann and Alex Neil appear to be out in front, with the local press saying it’s McCann’s to lose.

If Lennon doesn’t appeal to a club in League One, a club which has been at the heart of its own soap opera for years now, where is he ever going to find a chairman willing to give him a gig?

He has to realise that other clubs watch all this stuff, that they know he is still blaming everything but himself for what went wrong last season … and that’s not somebody anyone wants to hire, if we’re being honest.

He’s been out of the game for almost a year and he’s not been shy about telling clubs that he wants back into the business.

But he’s spent every day since his departure from Celtic casting about for someone else to blame.

The historic apology he owes us, as the fans, for letting everyone done has not been forthcoming. At some point he has to realise that it’s this attitude as much as anything which is making it difficult for anyone to give him another shot.