Lennon: I don’t want medals just recognition
No one at Celtic suffered more for paying Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs than the Irishman as he battled for glory with opponents whose earnings were topped up by massive EBT payments.
In midweek justice finally arrived when HMRC were declared the victors in The Big Tax Case with Lennon and every player, manager and supporter involved in the game suffering between 1999 and 2010.
There is no clamour for Alex McLeish, Alex Rae, Barry Ferguson, Neil McCann, Stevie Thompson and Billy Dodds to hand back the medals they won at great cost to Her Majesty. As they celebrated their victories and spent their bonuses schools, soldiers and hospitals went without badly needed equipment.
Those that benefited can hold onto their medals, a knock at the door from Hector is more likely that Neil Doncaster sending out a batch of jiffy bags.
Lennon gave everything on the pitch and in the dug out to be successful with 40% plus of his earnings going straight to Her Majesty. To stop him from winning David Murray recruited players he couldn’t afford with the promise of millions put into trusts. Ferguson, McLeish, Stefan Klos and Murray all had millions deposited out of reach from HMRC, other minor figures like McCann and Rae ‘only’ had £500,000 loans.
Without those shameful loans Murray would have been fielding a team of journeymen similar to the stars recruited by Mark Warburton during the summer, cast offs from Wigan, Swindon and Hearts up against Henrik Larsson, Paul Lambert, Bobo Balde, Shunsuke Nakamura.
Lennon the player then had to work within a limited budget as a manager. Tax and national insurance was paid on the salaries to Victor Wanyama, Gary Hooper and Fraser Forster.
Speaking about the SPL commission looking into the side letters issued to Rangers employees, in July 2012 the former Celtic boss said: “I will see what the commission finds and, if they are found to have broken the rules, then they should be stripped of their titles.
“It will not change what has gone on in the past but I suppose there will be a sort of moral victory in that respect.
“It is not going to change my life now, by any stretch of the imagination, but it would be good to be changed for historical reference.
“I can’t get that title or feeling back and it won’t make a huge dent on my life from here on in. It would be a lot better on my CV, though. I wouldn’t want the medals, just the recognition. That would be enough.”
Asked about the consequences of more than a decade of Ibrox cheating he suggested: “It might have cost players contracts, bonuses, managers their jobs and might have relegated teams.
“There are so many ripple effects to it. Again, you go back to the integrity of the game, was it there? If not, then it should be investigated. That is all we ask for. We are in the game for the glory and then the money comes with it.
“The more successful you are, the more money you get but when you are a kid growing up all you want to do is to play football for a big club and to win things. That never changes.”
As well as Celtic Ayr United, Queen of the South, Falkirk, Motherwell, Dundee United and Aberdeen lost cup finals to Rangers (IL) while they were cheating HMRC although every club that played a cup tie did so on an uneven playing field.