Stephen McGowan has thrown fresh light onto Celtic’s disastrous 2020/21 season and the departure of Neil Lennon.
From the Champions League defeat from Ferencvaros in August onwards there were fans calling for a change of manager but with the matches being played Behind Closed Doors the club executive put those claims down to a noisy faction.
Those early concerns were magnified in October when a Glasgow derby was handed over without bothering to get a shot on target. Throughout the autumn alarm grew among supporters but the message from the inside was to chill out and tryst Lenny.
Four consecutive home defeats, back-to-back humiliations from Sparta Prague and a Betfred Cup exit from Ross County brought the fans to the car park. With the title challenge virtually dead and buried a managerial review was announced.
Further calamity fell in the new year in Dubai, the managerial review backed Lennon but after a second defeat to Ross County and denials on camera the Irishman decided to resign with absolutely no sign of successor planning from the club leaders.
Summarising the disastrous state that Celtic are currently in, McGowan writes in the Daily Mail:
Failing to sign Fraser Forster, letting Craig Gordon leave, hanging on to unhappy players in pursuit of ‘the ten’, Bolingoli, the Dubai fiasco and Desmond’s initial refusal to end the tenure of Lennon; these all suggest that mis-steps at managerial level have become a damaging pattern. And the chickens have come home to roost.
The rush to appoint Lennon in the Hampden showers appears to have been initiated by Peter Lawwell and instantly backed by Dermot Desmond.
Slipping back to the comfortable old ways with a non-demanding manager seemed a great fit for a club unconvinced by modern wages such as analysis, fitness regimes and proper scouting of players.
A year on Myjtlland have replaced Ferencvaros, only Desmond remains with the Irish billionaire now putting in a shift as the acting Head of Recruitment.
Last September Desmond told The Athetic that the current Celtic squad was better than the one that reached the final of the UEFA Cup in Seville.
