Neil Lennon has explained the reasons for what appears to have been a sharp turnaround in his comments.
On Wednesday night the attitude of some of his players had been bugging him for a while, on Friday morning they were great lads.
Defeat from Ferencvaros followed by conflicting messages from the manager has created confusion and a feeding frenzy of speculation over which players the manager was referring to.
With five weeks to run of the transfer window the issue isn’t going to go away but after his ‘great lads’ quote to the broadcast media Lennon went into a little more detail with the daily newspapers.
The Daily Record reports:
Regret calling them out in public?
“Not really,” was the answer.
Then there was the explanation. He said: “I just want the players to settle down and focus. This is always an unsettling time of the year but I’ve been in that position as well as a player where you have a bit of interest and sometimes you can get distracted.
I want players to fully focus on what we have to do here. There was no evidence of that on Wednesday night. But sometimes it can agitate away at you in the background as a player.
So the message basically is – come on, let’s really focus. There is a big season lying ahead of us. We want you all with us. We’ve had a disappointing end to a year’s work. You work all year to get in the Champions League and to go out so early is bitterly disappointing.
We need to knuckle down now and make the most of what’s left of the European run. We are in the Europa League so we have to make the best of that and then defend all our trophies as vigorously and robustly as we can.
We have to be tuned in. There is no disparity or people breaking away or anything like that. It’s just the message, we have to be bang on it now from here on in.
Tomorrow’s team news for the match with Motherwell will be interesting with full points badly needed before the breather of the international break.
Some serious work is required to restore morale while agents are at work looking to find an escape route for their client/asset.
