Neil Lennon has gone into depth about his anger with the way his confrontation with Jim Duffy has been portrayed.
The phrase ‘square go’ has been used widely in relation to the incident and was jumped upon by Jim Duffy as he put a statement on the Morton website.
Uncharacteristically Duffy has taken a back seat as the incident has been debated with his Nice Guy image under threat.
Lennon may have stepped onto the pitch as he watched Jordan Forster suffer from a horrendous ‘challenge’ from Kudus Oyenuga but most managers will be involved in something similar. When an incident like that happens right in front of the technical area very very few would shrug their shoulders.
Following the match Lennon highlighted how he expected to be portrayed as the aggressor in the incident, yesterday as he met the media again he wasn’t ready to move on.
Publishing the full transcript of yesterday’s conference the Daily Record reported: “One of the first questions I was asked was ‘what did Jim say to you?’ What was my answer. You were there. What was my answer? I’ll tell you. I said: ‘It was too noisy, I didn’t hear what Jim said.’
“But you have quoted me saying: ‘he asked me for a square go’ when you knew it was a euphemism for the way he was behaving. And you used that as a headline when I had qualified it.”
SO YOU DON’T WANT US TO QUOTE YOU ON FACE VALUE?
“Why didn’t you print that I didn’t hear what Jim said because it was too noisy? Why didn’t you print it? Why didn’t you print it?
“It was one of the first questions and one of the first answers. Why didn’t you print it? Why? (silence) Exactly!”
Later Lennon added: “What reaction, and I will ask you again, what reaction? Standing on the touch line remonstrating with a player and the referee. None of you have gone to him or dug out the player.
“He has been an absolute disgrace the player and that has got lost in this Neil Lennon is at it again! You are not doing your f****** job.
“This is what is wrong with the game in this country, you want to make stories about things that are not important. The real important issue is a player who is badly injured by the way, which you don’t really care about cos it is not a story and doesn’t sell papers, and the same player feigning a injury to get my captain sent off.
“No, let’s make the headline about me. And now we have Chic Charnley in a paper today (The Sun) saying my pal would sort Lenny out. Brilliant, brilliant journalism. Brilliant. That’s what is wrong with the country.”
