But knowing Neil… Chris Sutton on the night that killed his Lennon relationship

Chris Sutton suspects that his friendship with Neil Lennon won’t be repaired.

Almost exactly two years ago the two men were inside Celtic Park on a dismal night as Sparta Prague won 4-1 in an empty stadium.

October 2020 was the month that everything fell apart for Celtic with Sutton unable to say anything other than what he was witnessing. In the first match f November he got the cold shoulder from his former team-mate.

The Sparta result was Celtic’s third consecutive home defeat, there was another to come against Ross County in the League Cup, with the Czech side missing half a dozen players due to the pandemic.

In truth Celtic’s season started to unravel when Ferencvaros knocked the hoops out of the Champions League, afterwards Lennon blamed players that wanted away without naming names.

No players moved out during the 2020 transfer window but the Lennon/Sutton friendship was about to end.

Picking up on a Currie Club podcast, the Daily Record reports Sutton saying:

We used to go out together as team-mates, as a lot of us did. That particular team was a band of brothers. I’ve spoken to Neil about this. Neil was a broadcaster as well and a really good broadcaster. I think he understands the game in that respect. He will be critical of managers and players.

He wasn’t happy with me and he made that very clear. We walked down after the match and had to leave through a certain exit due to Covid and as we were walking down, Neil had turned the corner to walk up…I said, ‘alright Neil?’ and he said nothing…

From Neil’s point of view, I totally got that because of the pressure. He was the Celtic manager and those Covid times were an absolute nightmare to manage in, because of the way the crowd can really lift the team and (not having that) was really difficult for him.

But the performances at that particular time weren’t there. Now time has healed things a little bit and everybody realises what a brilliant servant he was. He might look back in years to come and think that actually I was right. But knowing Neil….

After recently losing his job at Omonoia Nicosia it looks like Lennon’s future will be working in the media, last season he was part of the BT Sport team covering Celtic’s Europa League tie at home to Bayer Leverkusen in the studio with Paul Lambert while Sutton was on co-commentator duties.