One Year On From Lennon, The Question Remains: How Could Celtic Have Been So Reckless?

Twelve months ago, Neil Lennon was issued his final marching orders from Celtic Park. A mere few months before he was unveiled as our boss on a “temporary” deal I wrote a piece saying that those linking him with a return would certainly never see it happen.

I was completely confident in that prediction, based on, amongst other things, a grounded knowledge of how his first tenure was viewed by people inside Celtic Park.

To me, it was inconceivable that after the disasters at Bolton and Hibs that they would ever head down that path again. And then they did it.

It shocks me now every bit as much as it did at the time.

I thought the decision to give Lennon the job the first time was scandalous and reeked of a board that was out of ideas.

To have offered him it a second time, when they knew every single one of his weaknesses, was reckless beyond belief, a decision so appalling that it spoiled what was, for me, one of the greatest days in my time supporting this club.

I know I am not alone in having felt my stomach drop as well as my jaw that day.

The crass way in which it was done, and the cynical and manipulative way that it was announced, confirmed that many of on our board were, and remain, utter charlatans. Lawwell’s blithe and arrogant dismissal of all the other candidates would, I’m certain, have haunted us when we looking for Lennon’s eventual replacement.

I cannot remember ever being so disgusted at Celtic.

Neil Lennon is not a good football manager.

He colossally underachieved in his first spell at the club and whilst he points to his record in the second as proof that he knows his business the real truth is that Lennon inherited a Ferrari of a football club. For a while it continued to run splendidly, but from the moment he took over all forward momentum was lost.

We were going backwards from the day and hour he took charge on a full-time basis. Out went the focus on sports science, which he disdains. Out went the sensible procurement of players; his transfer record was so dire in his second tenure – without the likes of John Park and others to steer him right – that up until this morning, and the departure of Bolingoli on loan, we still had £15 million of his waste right there on our books.

Thinking of the job Ange has done with just over £20 million, I shudder at the thought that this board might have given Lennon more. In the January window of last year, he got not one penny of the club’s money to spend on players and for the first time in my living memory there was not a single Celtic fan who expressed anger at the club’s lack of activity.

The regression of key players was obvious, and awful, to witness. The only footballer who came on during his tenure was Stephen Welsh, a raw youth from the reserves, promoted because Lennon was all out of options. Options that included playing Nir Bitton in a positon he has never looked at all comfortable. Note the transformation as Ange puts him back where he belongs, in midfield, where he played the better part of his career.

Lennon has made much of the professionalism of the players when they returned to the club for pre-season training last year. He said that there were some who obviously didn’t want to be here any longer. I have always thought that such a high number of unhappy players at a given time speaks to issues within the club itself, and not simply with individual players.

He slammed several of them for turning up out of shape; he himself turned up a massively overweight unshaven shambles. To think that he criticised players and their physical condition whilst in that state … well, is it any wonder that some of them just zoned out?

The same issues followed him at Bolton and Hibs. It was not even a mild surprise when he started to lash the players at every single press conference; there were obviously serious issues within the club. He had lost the dressing room before the campaign even started, a situation made far worse when he brushed aside his own tactical ineptitude to put the onus on them after the disastrous Champions League exit at the hands of Ferencvaros.

If there really were unhappy players who had stopped wanting to be at the club, he had a responsibility to move them on. Why didn’t he? Was he over-ruled? By who? If he was that speaks to weakness. If he decided not to then he’s a fool, because after so publicly calling them out how did he ever expect to get them to trust him and play for him?

His tactics were one dimensional and often baffling. His penchant for playing players out of position was ludicrous. Some of the results – the home and away reversals to Prague the worst amongst them, along with the League Cup exit – were almost enough, on their own, to justify his dismissal. Taken as a collective, he really has no case for the defence.

Still he continues to mount one. His assertion that plenty of other multiple title winning teams lost their crowns last season is his way of saying that he was beaten by an historical trend, not by any failures he had anything to do with, and it’s as ridiculous and arrogant as any of the many, many arguments he has offered up in his own mitigation.

We had a humiliating campaign. We surrendered not just the league but the two domestic trophies. Europe was a catastrophe I wish I could erase from my memory. Every press conference he gave ended with me shouting at the telly.

He says that many of those who protested and called for his head probably regret it. I don’t know who he talks to or what he reads, but the only thing many of us regret is that our board dithered and delayed the inevitable for two inexplicable months as the gap at the top grew and as any hope for redemption went by the boards.

His egotistical, unhinged rant after the disastrous Dubai trip didn’t only insult the majority of people in the country – his argument that it was a “training and conditioning trip” sounds so like Johnson’s “I thought it was a work event” that it makes me furious – but it actually undercut the public apology which the CEO had offered on behalf of Celtic just days before.

Lennon’s standing amongst much of the support has taken a pummelling from which it will not easily recover. I write that, in fact, and I do know of one way that he can start to make it alright; he can, instead of offering excuses, offer the apology that this support and our club deserves for the mess he made of it and left it in.

In doing so, he can also start to build back towards a career in management again.

And that’s my final word to those who accuse me of never having a good word to say about Lennon, who think that I’m casually dismissing his success at Celtic, that I am wrong to say that he is not a good coach and I’m wrong to say he never deserved the gig.

One year on, despite months of advertising his availability to every club needing a new boss, Lennon remains without a job in football.

Are we all wrong, or is there perhaps something chairmen and owners see which gives them major cause for concern?

If Lennon’s record is all we’re talking about, then surely one of the many, many clubs would have taken a chance?

Why haven’t they?

Because Lennon’s record is about more than just points on the board and trophies and titles … he may have added to the trophy haul but he left our club shattered and bereft and facing a summer of turmoil.

And he has never accepted one iota of responsibility for that.

Neither have some of those who made the inexplicable, and indefensible, decision to give him the manager’s job a second time when he departed after his first tenure with some of those same people sighing with relief at the parting of the ways.

They knew what they were getting; the evidence of it was there in his departure from Easter Road, so they cannot claim to have been in ignorance.

They knew his habits and inclinations from his first spell, after which Ronny Deila inherited a squad so unfit that he was stunned.

The last line from his defenders is to say that he answered the call when the club was in greatest need after Rodgers’ midnight flit; it’s manifestly untrue as well.

We rescued Lennon from a dole queue.

This wasn’t the return of the Prodigal Son; this was an act of charity he did not deserve.

His departure at Hibs came amidst career-ending circumstances; we gave him a shot at rehabilitation and last season was the calamitous result of that.

His second tenure at our club would have put £1 million in his pockets, at a minimum.

What did they believe they were getting for that money?

Where did they think the path led?

After embracing modern methods under Deila and then under Rodgers the board took the baffling decision to appoint a manager who would reverse all of that, and take us back to a management style which does not fit the game any longer.

Their rationale has never been fully explained, but it’s hinted at in a lot of tedious drivel about him “being one of our own” and how much he “understands Celtic.”

But I would stipulate that we’re really not that complicated and it’s a dreadful basis on which to give someone the gig. A good and decent man came from the other side of the world, with no connection to us at all, and made clear by his actions and ideals that he understands this club, without needing to be brought up immersed in it.

For some, Lennon will forever be a hero. They garnish him with terms like “legend” and “icon” and that’s fair enough. He’s won the treble as a player and as a manager; that gets him a place in the history books, and no-one would grudge him it. His successes were our successes after all, and that’s the simple fact of it.

But to many others, myself included, he departed our club a vastly diminished figure, lucky ever to have had the job in the first place. His conduct since has made a schism into a chasm, and as long as he persists in blaming everyone else I see no easy way that he can heal the wounds his second tenure caused.

A year on I am just glad that his shadow no longer haunts us, and when I write it this time I can do so in the complete assurance that there is nobody out there thinking different; Neil Lennon’s days at the centre of Celtic are over with, for good.

There will be no third spell, no shock which ends in his standing in the home dugout once again … that’s done.

Indeed, Lennon will be lucky to sit in any dugout anywhere in football again.

He is our Ally McCoist, a guy over-promoted (twice) and incomprehensibly handed a job that was miles out of his league.

Just as no club ever trusted McCoist with that opportunity I cannot see a route back to football unless some chairman somewhere is willing to take the same unpardonable risk that ours incredibly decided to gamble ten in a row on.

I know why those other chairmen won’t.

I still, to this day, cannot fathom why ours did.