Neil Lennon has spoken out about the lessons learned in three years of club management.
The Celtic boss will collect the Football Writers Manager of the Year on Sunday with Celtic firmly installed as the dominant force in Scottish football.
Lennon is the longest serving manager in the SPL and has cast aside the ‘rookie boss’ tag as quickly as his players have turned around the ‘we buy any players’ jibe that was aimed at them as they were assembled in the east end of town.
The Irishman took in all the coaching qualifications that he could but it was the words of another former Celt about management that proved most valuable- especially after he took over from Tony Mowbray on a caretaker basis.
“I was speaking to Mark McGhee about management a long time ago, he said that you never know when you are ready,” Lennon told Celtic tv.
“I was tinkering with the idea, I wasn’t sure if I was ready, you never do. This has been a good opportunity and one that I’ve relished.
“I always wanted to be a manager, it’s the next best thing to playing. I felt that I had the personality for it but you don’t really know.
“You go in with ideas, I knew the Scottish game and the club well but the players that have been brought in have exceeded expectations and that’s something that’s more pleasing than anything else.”
Looking at the demands placed on him Lennon added: “It’s a results driven business, winning games is the hardest thing. Dealing with expectation, there’s huge expectations here, not just from our own supporters but from outside influences as well.
“It can be difficult with the media at times, you are under intense scrutiny, they hang onto every word and sometimes take it out of context but you play the game. I’ve learned to do that a lot better over the years as well.”
Hail Hail to OUR Chief!!
Alot of people forget what state TM left the club in, I don’t want to slate Tony, I would rather remember him as a fantastic player for the hoops and the man responsible for the inception of the glorious Huddle and leave it at that.
Neil built a team, and I mean a real team, with the help of an excellent scouting set-up (the descisions were ultimately Lennys), under extreme financial restraints when alot of folk from all sides didn’t give him a snowballs chance.
His first signing Mulgrew raised a few eye-brows, again from all sides, but his spledid free kick strike at the weekend, for me, mirrored just what an insightfull signing he has been.
Now throw in the likes of Hooper, Commons, Forster, Izzy, Kayal, Ledley, Stokes, Watt and the most talked about player in the UK for years, the magnificent Victor Wanyama and then we begin to realise just what a great job Neil is doing.
Lenny achieved this against the odds, with not only the smsm not only not rating him, but agressively bad mouthing him at every turn. He also had to try and do his work honestly whilst on the recieving end of ‘viable explosive devices’, bullets, death threats, cowardley street attacks, verbal sectarian attacks (while trying to have a quiet night out with his young family), physical attacks while trying to do his job, the only manager in British football history being victim to such an attack to my knowledge and his family home, including his good wife and young child, being regularly evacuated in the middle of the night by armed police officers, not to mention lying cheating match officials and an aggressive sfa agenda against him.
He was subject to this vile treatment, it’s worth remembering, for these reasons;
He’s Irish.
He’s Catholic.
And he manages Glasgow Celtic.
Many men would have, to use a couple of buzz-words, ‘walked away’ and no manager in the history of British football has had a better, for want of a better word, excuse to do so.
Not Neil Francis Lennon.
Whatever Neil decides to do in the future he will Always have my undying support and eternal gratitude.
God Bless You Neil, Celtic Legend personified.
HH
Almost shead a tear there mate. That was some beautiful stuff. I would love to see your speech at his funeral in the future haha
I love NL. The best thing to happen to celtic in years. And u know what, if it wasn’t for the zombies cheating and using all that free cash from tax dodging when they started buying maquee players. We wouldn’t have bought the likes of tompson, hartson, petrov, and our now cheif in command .. so in a way I’m happy the huns brought lennon to us in a sense. Now look at the times. Good to be a tim bhoys 😉