Neil Lennon watched Celtic find top gear in the closing stages against St Mirren and asked ‘Where has it been all season?’
Eleven days earlier a similar group of players had apparently delivered his lowest point in two years after losing at home to Jim Goodwin’s side. Lower than losing Champions League qualifiers to Cluj and Ferencvaros, lower than failing to get a shot on target during a Derby defeat, lower than a four year cup winning run being ended by Ross County about to empty their manager.
Lennon had the longest ever pre-season to prepare his squad, a net spend of £13m last summer and was able to bring in loan signings from England and Italy.
The stats have been horrific, after three wins on the bounce Celtic have trimmed the gap at the top of the SPFL table down to ‘just 18’ points.
Every day at training Lennon watches his squad, analyses them but for some reason when it comes to matchday they have dropped 23 points from 27 matches, last season they dropped 10 points from 30 games before the title was declared.
Despite his day-to-day experience with the players the former Bolton boss has no idea why their performances have been all over the place with the title virtually out of reach by the end of January.
Picking up on his post match Sky Sports interview where he was why his side’s form is so contrasting, the Daily Record reports Lennon saying:
I don’t know. We just keep going. That was far more like us tonight – you’re scratching your head and thinking, ‘where has it been all season?’ We’ve got more or less a clean bill of health at the minute, the players are playing a lot better. We look really strong.
That second half is the best we’ve played for quite a while, in terms of control and penetration, and having a real desire to score goals. It’s a great win, probably the best we’ve played here for a long time.
I thought we could have won the game by more, wasn’t particularly pleased with our first half and I thought we gave the ball away under no pressure. I had a few words with them at half-time and second half I thought we were magnificent.
Everything about the team was brilliant, I just really enjoyed watching them play. Rogic was outstanding the whole way through the game but second half Brown, McGregor, Edouard, Christie coming on… I was delighted with the whole team tonight. It’s a brilliant win.
After convincing wins away to Kilmarnock and St Mirren the excuse that they players are missing the fans, the 12th man, is wearing thin. Had Celtic won all of their SPFL matches since beating Hearts in the Scottish Cup Final the gap at the top of the table would be nine points with a game in hand.