Lennon outlasts all of his SPL peers
As the Celtic boss prepares to celebrate the third anniversary of his first game in charge- a 3-1 win over Kilmarnock on 27 March 2010- Lennon has outlasted all of his peers at the time.
Jimmy Calderwood was in the opposite dug-out that day with the Kilmarnock job being occupied by Mixu Paatelainen and Kenny Shiels since then.
Managers have come and gone at an incredible rate with Peter Houston’s decision to leave Dundee United leaving Lennon as the longest serving boss in the SPL although Craig Brown did jump ship to join Aberdeen from Motherwell while Terry Butcher was in the First Division with Inverness Caley Thistle when Lennon took over from Tony Mowbray.
In three years at Celtc Lennon has taken the club from struggling with Dundee United for second place to the last 16 in the Champions League as the management business becomes even more precarious.
Down south the casualty rate among managers is even higher with 33 sackings since the season started.
The Premiership is relatively stable but with record moneies available from the top flight there has been 17 sackings alone in the Championship with Blackburn responsible for three of those decisions.
Commenting on the sackings Richard Bevan, chief executive of the League Managers Assovciation said: “I’m not sure where the arrogance of football comes from that we don’t have to behave as any other industry.
“It’s embarrassing for the game that all of those sackings are unfair dismissals. The volatility is undermining the profession.
“We need to work as a group – the Premier League, the Football League, the Professional Footballers’ Association, the LMA – to ensure that we have better training not only for managers, but also an understanding of how you run a football club.”
Asked about the Blackburn situation, where Michael Appleton followed Stevie Kean and Henning Berg out the door Bevan added: “Everything in business is about communication.
“Michael told me he had no conversation at all during his tenure since January with the Indian representative running the club.
“He’s got 20 players on the injury bench. What he needed was support, not a letter of sacking. To have five managers this season is nonsense.
“Blackburn need to look very hard into stability, they need to look at communication with the fans and they need to look very hard into how they can invest in personnel, look medium term. That’s the only way they’re going to climb up the table.”
CLICK HERE one week to save Dunfermline
Follow Video Celts on Twitter and Facebook