Neil Lennon is adapting to the longest, slowest pre-season that he has known as Celtic manager.
In previous years he’s had two or three weeks off, a return to training, 10 days abroad in a training camp then back into action barely six weeks after the previous season ended.
When Celtic start their defence of the SPFL it will be almost five months after their last match- with European qualifiers still a few weeks away.
To a large extent reaching the group stage of the Champions League defines Celtic’s season but rather than go straight in at the deep end Lennon will have a couple of domestic matches before trying to navigate the club towards a £40m pay-day.
The Celtic boss told the Daily Record:
It’s a longer pre-season period so we are not rushing like we are in previous years. In some summer’s they only get a couple of weeks off but this time we can take a common sense approach to it and get quality work into them.
Hopefully it will benefit us in terms of Europe. The domestic season will hopefully have started and hopefully we’ll have a game or two under our belts by the time the qualifiers start.
We’ll need to plan it a week or so in advance and start looking at getting some matches at some stage. We want them to get used to playing behind closed doors so we might use the stadium for training a few times as well.
The preparations will be so important and we might look at going abroad to get games. It might be difficult playing down in England as we’d have to wait until their season is finished before we can even think about arranging games with them.
Lennon has still to add to his squad for the new season. Jonny Hayes and Jozo Simunovic have been released with Celtic in talks with Southampton over new deals for Moi Elyounoussi and Fraser Forster.