The Ex-Celtic Boss Knows Exactly What He’s Doing In Noising Up The Ibrox Club.

Neil Lennon has had one hell of a start to the week. You know, the more I listen to him doing the punditry bit the happier I am about it. I realise that he misses being a manager, and he would do anything to get back in the dugout. But I wonder if he realises that right now, he’s his best self. He looks good. He sounds good. He’s relaxed.

Punditry suits him, and although I think he’s lacking certain things as a coach he is a superb analyst and is completely unafraid to speak his mind. Those are priceless assets in a business full of people who are incapable of the first and who have mistaken trolling for the much harder job of telling truth to power and making some enemies along the way.

Lennon is brilliant at it, and after a weekend where his son was treated to vile and disgusting behaviour at the hands of the Ibrox fans, he could not help but poke them with a stick. I loved it. That’s Lennon at his best, at striking back, at not taking it lying down, at making sure they remember all the times he owned them in games both as a player and as a boss.

My old man and I were talking the other day after I finished my article on what his son had to endure, about that Ibrox match where O’Neill was so disgusted by what he had to tolerate that he walked him across to the Celtic fans and they showed him such support. My old man was at that game and he says he’s never walked out of there after a defeat feeling on such a high.

That was a magnificent moment. Lennon’s courage in that spell, and later on, were inspirational. I may have had issues with him as a manager, but Lennon, the man, is a hero of mine.

So, when he’s on the ball, as he is right now, it is great to see.

Speaking to the outlet PLZ, he was scathing about the Ibrox club. “They still haven’t got that mentality yet of squashing that hold that Celtic have over them and they need to break that if they’re going to win the league,” he said. “And to do that they need to bring in either players of better quality or better mentality.”

This achieves two things. It puts pressure on the players currently at Ibrox by putting the issue of their mentality front and centre and it puts pressure on their board to deliver for the manager in a way they certainly are not able to do at this time.

There is a crazy genius in Lennon’s comments, and I am pretty sure he knew what he was doing when he was dishing that out. The current Ibrox squad is full of losers and it never hurts to hammer that point home.

The media today is trying to suggest that they are about to spend £4 million on the midfielder from Denmark; that is such a ridiculous story that I am astounded that anyone can possibly believe it. They have spent the last few weeks trying to sell players because that’s the only way they can spend any significant sum.

The truth is, the media as a whole isn’t going to put them under the spotlight in this way and this is why Lennon is doing it. Raising the twin issues of their mentality and the needs of the squad is smart stuff, because it’s an appeal over the heads of the club to the very same fans who taunted his boy and wished him dead; even in hating him, they know he’s got this right … and that will mess with their heads more than anything.

Because he’s saying nothing they haven’t been saying themselves, and that will hurt and that will resonate and when this window shuts, if they’ve not done more business, their fans will look at that squad and conclude that it is still too weak … and that will see them turn inward and direct their unending hatred at their club once more.

He still knows how to get inside their heads. It’s great to see.