As Celtic prepare for three matches against French opponents Scott Brown has made a telling comparison between Brendan Rodgers and Neil Lennon.
Asked about a recent French memory most Celtic fans will shudder and think back to a 7-1 hammering from Paris Saint Germain in 2017. With Neyman given licence to do as he pleased some fans were relieved that the scoreline didn’t reach double figures.
Brown has been back in France since that horror show in the Parc des Princes, last season Celtic enjoyed an uplifting 1-1 draw away to Rennes in the Europa League. Rennes don’t quite have the same calibre of player as PSG but in the season just ended they finished third in the table, 10 points above Lyon over 27 matches.
Lennon employs a far more pragmatic approach to the way he sets up his teams as Brown pointed out to The Sun as he looked back on Celtic’s last clash against PSG:
We scored early and I don’t think that sat too well with them. We were squeezing them up the park and forced them into a couple of mistakes early on.
Then they went up and scored seven. It wasn’t great for us, to be honest, but hopefully we learned our lesson for the next time.
We went back to France last season and it was a different story against Rennes. I thought we were fantastic in both games, home and away.
Ryan Christie scored the penalty to get us a point over there and we almost won it. In the home game we were terrific.
It showed the team had learned in Europe and we want to take that into this campaign. This is our first game but we want to do well and get a result.
Celtic face Nice tonight, last season Patrick Vieira’s side finished in fifth place in the French league, 10 points behind Rennes.