Neil Lennon

How are Duffy trying harder than any of the names you listed? He’s clearly swanned up here for the 10 and massively underestimated the challenge, then failed to rise for it.

Lennon has admitted he doesn’t review games and has stubbornly stuck to the same personal all season (despite having Turnbull and Soro available) through loyalty to his mates, all while feeding the fans line after line of what has been at best nonsense, and at worse outright lies in his post match interviews.

I don’t think either can be accused of trying harder than the rest this season.

 

No premiership club, struggling or otherwise, would touch Lennon. When he left in 2014, both West Brom and Norwich were looking for managers and all he could get was Bolton.

Since then he has been sacked by Bolton and Hibs and taken Celtic massively backwards in the last 2 years spending over 32 million in the process.

I think people are more likely to base their decision on the last 2/3 years rather than one result that happened over 8 years ago.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if he got offered anything in England - there a lot of managers out of work with better track records in England than Lennon.

It's quite possible that, given the small pool of managers in Scotland, that he would get something there but it would be at Kilmarnock or Motherwell at best. He certainly won't get a job at a club of any size again.

Fair enough if you think he would be a "cracking get out jail manager for a struggling premiership club". However, I think you are in a very small minority of people who believe that.

 

He would be looking at League 1 or 2 in England and the championship and below in Scotland.

 

To be honest, Lennon is very arrogant and nothing is ever his fault (it's usually the players and sometimes the fans or officials). He may be hanging on to see out his contract or get a payoff.

However, given the delusional BS he's come out with this season (when he is usually talking about a completely different match than the one everyone else watched), it's possible that he really thinks he is good enough to turn this around.

I am still (probably stupidly) hoping that DD is using the rest of this season to line up a replacement in June so he might as well keep Lennon in place as the league is gone anyway.

The next few weeks will tell - if Lennon is allowed to spend reasonable money and bring in 2/3 players - its a bad sign. If we don't do much business, it could indicate that DD doesn't want to leave the new manager with PL\NL "projects".

 

This is going to be an interesting few pages to revisit in a year or so.

 

Why? Do you think Lennon is going to turn this around and win 10IAR? Or leave at the end of the season and go to a premiership club and be a big success?

 

Salford city


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Not the rest ... just the ones I mentioned.

The ones I named have either a) made it clear they dont want to be at Celtic and cant wait to leave or
b) shown total contempt for the Club and the fans but all will continue to get their * huge salaries, till they get their move to Lille or whatever or reach the end of their very generous contract in three years time. Boyata, Dembele and Boli-Bolix have had their fun and * off without a backward glance.

They and their amis still with us, dont give a * and dont care who knows it, they are fireproof.

When theyre gone , we will start to rebuild. Hopefully starting at the back

Sacking Neil Lennon and cutting short Duffys loan are the obvious and cheap options to pacify the fans and deflect theanger. Duffys gone so..

I can only think the Board cant find anyone to take on the mess or Neil L would be gone already.

 

Do you think I think that?

 

Haha, because he never let his ego rule. Especially not this season

He may can spot a player but as a chairman I would look at his most recent performance and see how he failed to develop a single player since he came back. Frimpong regressed from last season and Forrest is back to his before-Rodgers form.

Lennon's lack of game management capabilities would worry me as well. Times have changed and tactics are much more important than 10 years ago. What worked then doesn't work now anymore. You cannot just send the players onto the pitch and ask them to plan on there. That worked for O'Neill 15 years ago.

The only thing Lennon can tactically is to play as an underdog like against Barca and Lazio. So because of that he might get a job at a * club which just wants to stay in the league. But if a club, at the same time, wants to develop players, I can just recommand them to stay away from him.

 

You don't? Traitor!!!!

 

Tbh mate that’s a pretty ambitious project of a club. I remember watching them in the national league under Graham Alexander and they played good football. Doubt Neville and that would want Lenny’s non-tactics approach.

 

Couple of things about this post. Did he actually spot any players, or was that Parker*? I don't know the answer to that for sure, but I suspect it was mainly Parker. As for Developing players I'm struggling to think of any that he actually improved. Under Rodgers you saw a very noticeable improvement in a lot of players, McGregor, Forrest, Dembele, Brown even to name a very few. I'm struggling to think of any that you could say were much better players when Lenny was done with them. I'm sure there must be some but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Wanyama. Maybe Hooper, although as I didn't see him play before coming I'm not actually sure whether he improved, or just got to show here what he'd always been capable of. Regardless, he sure as * hasn't developed any players this time round. it's the complete opposite in fact. Don't you think most chairmen are going to look at the fact he took the best squad in the country and turned them, very quickly, into a complete mess? Chairmen are, by and large, business people, they don't look at what you did 10 odd years ago when the market (or game in this case) was completely different, they look at what you did most recently. That does not bode particularly well for Lenny.

And I'm not sure why you even bothered mentioning Hearts, there is not a snowballs chance in * they would take him, well not unless they wanted to have no season ticket holders for some reason I guess.

Edit: I meant John Park the chief Scout, not Parker.

 

One of the weirdest things about this second stint is the way people bend over backwards to find reasons not to let Lennon have credit for past triumphs that were fairly uncontroversially his before he came back.

Sure, if a bunch of smart people look carefully, they can find grounds to discount almost anything he's done; but taken in the aggregate, to me they look like a bunch of ad hoc reasons with no real underlying pattern.

it gets tiring debating this, because each individual argument about something Lenny has done is usually plausible, it's only in the aggregate that they seem ad hoc. It also gets tiring because of the weird underlying assumption that this is somehow reasonable: almost any manager's record can be explained away if you pour over it highlighting failures and looking for excuses for successes in this way, including even MON's (did MON find a way to win a treble and CL qualifiers or did Robertson? Would he have been successful without Larsson? Yeah, but look at the money we splashed on guys like Sutton and hartson, failed to qualify from the group even once etc, failed at Ireland, Sunderland and Forest, etc, blah, blah, blah.)
Is this reasonable?

It feels like whack a mole, because when you address one argument, up pops another poster with another ad hoc argument. At times I almost feel like I'm facing a tag team and they all like each others posts and I start to feel drained and that maybe if I'm so out on my own with this, my opinion might be as deluded as some are making out and then I remember that these opinions were uncontroversial before Lenny came back.

It's too much. No wonder I keep having to take breaks from it for a few days.

I'll say one thing for sure: yes, of course Lenny is not going to walk into an EPL job; yes, of course he has * up spectacularly this season and should have been replaced months ago; yes, of course there has been plenty of well-reasoned, solid criticism of his performance this season and past mistakes before that; but when this is all over and everyone has calmed down, some of the name calling, some of the hyperbole about his supposed lack of managerial ability and some of the ingenious attempts to explain away the good things he has achieved from a section of our support are going to look * bizarre.

I would only point these people to three facts:

1) Before this season, his win percentage over a large number of seasons was up there with anyone's (cue claims that the league is worse now than it ever was before )

2) Before this season, his European record, while it did include some genuine * ups, such as Cluj (for which he does deserve criticism), is actually up there with anyone's except MON's or Rodgers'.

3) He took Hibs up where Stubbs had failed and consolidated them comfortably in the SPL. As Stubbs, Dundee Utd and Rangers all proved, that's not easy.


Jesus, guys. He can't actually be that bad. No one can be that lucky over such an extended period of time. We can absolutely debate whether he was good enough for Celtic when Rodgers went, but there should be no debate over whether he's a decent manager.

 

Naive. Lawell would have us and the huns at the same level to make money. Hence the colt teams talk which is a joint venture and talks of moving down south. All done hamd in hand to keep money rolling in. Its not about success. Celtive could win the 100 treble, but will make more cash from playing down south in a season.

Batten down the hatches. He's here till the end of the season. Shocking but this is his, PL and DD mess. They have put all their eggs in the basket that is Lennon. So they will be here to reap the rewards of this season. This is there legacy. They deserve it.

 

A shameful dig at Lennon's mental health issues. Some of the language used in this thread has been shocking.

 

ahh yes, complete the full set of clubs with historical connections to the Hiberno-Scottish community! I’m not being sarcastic either, that’s a job I could very well see him in, that or Motherwell/Killie.

 

Martin O'neill has currently been placed at 5/4 favourite to replace Lennon as manager before end of season.

 

Yes - he can actually be that bad. We all enjoyed our 9IAR but it's history.

IMO, and I think in the opinion of the majority of posters on here, we have been going backwards since he returned. We were lucky to beat Hearts and Rangers in the 3 cup finals he has been in place for since returning.

The standard of football has been poor a lot of the time and frankly embarrassing for most of this season.

People can argue about how good a manager he was in his first stint - fine, I don't give a **** this is 2021 not 2013.

When he came back in 2019, the club and football in general had moved on since his first stint and he's not up to it. He was never a great coach IMO but he certainly can't handle modern methods, sports science etc. That comment he made about not usually video reviewing games was laughable.

His reaction to things going badly has been to blame the players (he always had a tendency to do that) and take no responsibility himself. He has also often been embarrassing in his after match comments claiming that we played well and/or were unlucky when it was obvious that we were total ****.

I never wanted Lennon back and believe that Lawwell is as much to blame - I wish he would go also.

I'm interested in performances in this stint as manager not from more than 6 years ago.

He has been effectively sacked from his last 2 jobs and taken Celtic backwards over the last 2 years despite an outlay of over 32 million.

People can make their own minds up about his first stint which ended more than 6.5 years ago.

However, I take exception to your statement "He can't actually be that bad" - based on his record since leaving in 2014 - yes he can.

I want him gone at the end of this season at the latest but after that good luck to him. However, I don't think that hiring clubs will be too interested in your little breakdown of his record since getting the job in 2010. They will be looking at his record of 2 effective sackings before his Celtic return and Celtic fans protesting demanding his removal from this role.

 

There was a palpable disappointment among the support and that was in large part based upon his record as manager the first time round. To suggest there was no controversy about his record until this season went * up is disingenuous.

Some are asking why so many people are talking about his record now. The fact is many of the support have been saying this before he was appointed. Many of us warned this would happen. My own view was this enormous regression was inevitable but I thought we would secure the 10 before Lennon completely crumbled us.

I don’t think anyone is saying he didn’t have any success the first time, but there’s a reasonable debate to be had about the measure of those successes, whether people like it or not. This is particularly true when Lennon defends his own position this season by pointing at those successes.