Lennon resigns as Celtic manager

[RANGERRAB 3,254]

Wonder if they'll go for Coyle after he rejected them for mighty Burnley 4 years ago

[Super Cooper 0]

Not sure why they even bother asking the top 2 or 3 on their hit list. They always get rejected.

 

Liewell admitted he has been looking for Lennons replacement for over a year as well and still hasn't found anyone willing to take it.

[Ser Barristan Selmy 222]

One does wonder what popcorn teeth's real reasons are for quitting.With CL football income over the past few seasons and 40,000 plus ST holders according to Liewell it was said they were facing budget cuts to their playing staff? How could that be? Something doesn't add up here. Porky pies somewhere may be?

I'd hazard a guess finishing bottom in the CL with 3 points was a major factor in his decision. He doesn't want his stock to go down further.

[Gribz 743]

I can still see Moyes or Lambert

[RANGERRAB 3,254]

Why don't they get Gerry Adams & Martin McGuiness as their next management team?

Judging by their supporters songs they'd be the ideal choice.....

[BrahimHemdani 1]

I can still see Moyes or Lambert

 

They won't pay to get Lambert and I doubt he's come anyway whilst he is still employed in the EPL.

 

Moyes looks the No. 1 choice but I doubt Celtic fans would look forward to that.

[ian1964 10,409]

[ian1964 10,409]

Aidan Smith: The game is rigged against Celtic

 

THE tournament is now arranged against clubs like Celtic says Aidan Smith

 

You’re either with the Old Firm or you’re not. Regarding Celtic, you’re either part of “the family” or you’re not. When Neil Lennon quit and the rolling news programme got going – as a procession of ex-Celts from Frankly McGarvey to Frankly McAvennie pronounced, each looking less and less bedhead-ish and sounding more and more reasoned as the day wore on – the man next to me simply wasn’t having it.

 

“Lack of competition?” grumped this follower of another club entirely (OK, he was a Dunfermline Athletic supporter). “How can anyone in the Old Firm complain about lack of competition? Celtic and Rangers carved up Scottish football years ago to suit themselves. They rigged the league so the vast bulk of the prize money and the TV money went to the top two, normally them. Celtic whinge, in Rangers’ absence, of poor crowds, revenue being down, no atmosphere at their games. Well, a more equitable distribution of wealth might have sorted all of that out. But now – hell mend them.”

 

This is how football goes now. You’re for your team and no other. You don’t notice other teams, don’t follow their stories at all. Angry Pars Man would doubtless have it that the Old Firm are to blame. Perhaps he’s thinking back to when his team blazed a trail in Europe. That was slightly before my time but I can read about it in books. The Scottish Football Book edited by Hugh Taylo and The Scotsport Annual edited by Arthur Montford, prize purchases on eBay. Stirring nights under gloomy lights. Black boots, still quite toecappy, white laces. Hot-tempered continentals harassing refs. Kilmarnock and Hibernian also featured in the wholly equitable distribution of coverage courtesy of Hugh and Arthur. And then in 1967 Celtic won the European Cup and, back then, the whole country cheered.

 

Well, didn’t it? I was still young but that’s the way it seemed. The TV Times previewed the final with a photo of Billy McNeill, calling him “Celtic’s skipper”. I’d never heard the term before and really did wonder if he was the best at jumping over a rope during training. This was the game which thirled me to football and, for a while, until I’d worked out that the team all born within a 30-mile radius existed that bit further away from my home town, your correspondent supported Celtic.

 

Glory-hunter. But I had an excuse – I was ten. Not like the loud businessman, English accent, braying into his phone on my train during the Martin O’Neill era, demanding to know exactly when he’d qualify for a season-ticket. Or half the Scottish acting community and all of the River City bad guys.

 

Lennon was a feature of that side, not its glittering star but a growling presence in deep midfield, the heavy lifter, the practitioner of the under-appreciated short sideways pass, and the player other fans loved to hate.

 

It was during those years that we started to hear about the Celtic family, the Celtic global brand. After one of those ritual slaughters of my team, myself and a friend got a lift back to the train station from a Celtic fan we’d met over lunch. This was so obviously a Celtic car because the radio was turned off straight after the report of our game, no other team coming close to being a threat to Hoops supremacy. My pal and I joked that Celtic supporters would struggle to name more than one player from each of the diddy rump. They’d outgrown the rest of us, for sure. So how much longer, wondered the Celtic family, could England and its Premier League ignore our romantic history and our “60,000 – house full” signs? But I still supported them in Europe. That team had charisma.

 

Well, Celtic are still here. In a reduced state with fewer starry players, empty seats, no Rangers and no serious competition. For my lunch hosts of a few years back, a season-ticket’s sole purpose now is Champions League access. They no longer troop along for the bread-and-butter of Motherwell (league runners-up, in case that was missed), far less the pie-crust of Hibs.

 

Lennon, as manager, has struggled manfully against all of this. Boredom did for his team in the domestic cups but he produced three titles and an unforgettable win over Barcelona which – let the records show – was cunning and controlled but wasn’t anti-football.

 

Angry Pars Man and others may argue that this situation is largely of Celtic’s, and Rangers’, own making. Domestically, yes, although Celtic can’t be blamed for their internecine nearest-and-dearest disappearing off like they did. In Europe, though, I have huge sympathy for our regular Champions League entrants. UEFA’s vain and ugly desire for the tournament to swamp all others is to be deeply regretted, but it is still what we like to call the European Cup, a gigantic pot which Billy McNeill – he was the skipper, don’t you know – had no difficulty lifting above his head in Lisbon despite running for 90 minutes in a non-breathable strip, possibly without his own teeth, while lacking the fragrance of the Inter Milan players and an address outwith that 30-mile radius.

 

For last night’s final back in the Portuguese capital, Celtic laid on a jolly for the surviving Lisbon Lions – a nice gesture. The silvery-haired heroes mustered for a photo before the flight and almost had to lean on the cup. 1967 is a long time ago and a triumph which a Scottish team will probably never repeat. The tournament is arranged against clubs like Celtic now. These Hoops are having to jump through so many hoops.

 

Lennon must have looked at season 2014-15 and thought: “Really?” For so many reasons including his modest budget and the prospect of his two best players leaving for the second summer in succession. For another title being greeted with even bigger yawns. For the chat to continue to be about the “goldfish bowl” of the Old Firm, when the reality for him had been much worse, far more sick and a deep embarrassment to Scotland, the likes of which no one should have to suffer in the name of football.

 

“Really?” must also have been the response to three qualifying rounds.

 

Three of them and this time at a rugby stadium. Any Celtic conspiracy theorists out there – and I believe there might be one or two – could be forgiven for thinking their dear club will eventually be required to enter the competition before the old season’s ended, with their goalie playing with one arm tied behind his back, their main striker in drag – and without any recourse whatsoever to their It’s a Knockout joker card.

 

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spfl/aidan-smith-the-game-is-rigged-against-celtic-1-3422049

[Super Cooper 0]

Scottish journalism. Deary me. This is about as deluded as it gets. Poor Aidan.

[ian1964 10,409]

Kevin McKenna

The Observer, Sunday 25 May 2014

 

 

Neil Lennon's persecution shames Scotland

The catastrophic lack of action by the authorities to protect the former Celtic manager is a disgrace

 

Now that the departure of Neil Lennon has been announced, it is time to ask why enlightened and progressive Scotland treated him in such a vile manner in each of the dozen or so years he spent with us. The resignation of a Celtic manager ought only to be the subject of scrutiny on the sports pages, with his success rate and football legacy being picked apart and compared with others who have occupied that seat. Such, though, has been the universal hatred to which this young man has been subjected in every part of Scotland that any interpretation that fails to analyse why is immediately rendered meaningless. Neil Lennon is, quite simply, the bravest man in Scotland.

 

Lennon was that rare thing in the world of team sport, a highly skilful player who immediately went on to become a very successful manager. From 2000, as his career in Scotland progressed, it soon became apparent that he was being abused and vilified at almost every away ground he visited. Something other than football rivalry was being expressed here and it was becoming ugly to behold.

 

In matches against Rangers FC, then Celtic's oldest and fiercest rivals, the abuse was almost unbearable and on one occasion Lennon's manager, Martin O'Neill, put a fatherly arm around his shoulders and marched him halfway up the pitch as if to say: "I know what this is about, but this is my son and we will always support him." Lennon, you see, is a Catholic from Northern Ireland. He has red hair and a belligerent onfield demeanour that brooks no compromise. He never backs down. And then of course, he played for Celtic FC. For some in Scotland, this was a toxic cocktail that deserved a violent response.

 

In his time at Celtic, Neil Lennon was the victim of almost a dozen assaults and attempted assaults. On one occasion, he was kicked to the ground by two assailants outside his favourite wine bar in one of Glasgow's most desirable neighbourhoods. Most famously, he was attacked on the pitch in Edinburgh by a supporter of Heart of Midlothian. The incident was witnessed by millions watching live on Sky TV. In what must have been a world legal first an Edinburgh jury subsequently cleared his assailant.

 

Three years ago, two men from Ayrshire tried to blow up Lennon and his family by sending him a parcel bomb. A judge convicted them of a lesser charge. Others had attempted to send him bullets in the post. He was forced to stop playing international football for his beloved Northern Ireland because he and his family began to receive death threats immediately following his move to Celtic.

 

During Lennon's 13 years in England as a player for Manchester City, Crewe Alexandra and Leicester City, there hadn't been a single controversial incident involving him. As soon as he pulled on the green and white hooped jersey, he became a marked man throughout Scotland and subjected to a persistent and egregious litany of hate. Since 2011, he and his family have received round-the-clock police protection at home and at his children's school. During this time, Lennon was badly let down by every major organisation in Scotland that would normally have been expected to intervene as this extraordinary campaign of personal vilification was being played out before them. Let none be in any doubt about this: Lennon was hated for his religion and for his country of origin. Too many Scottish football writers either chose to ignore what was happening or, worse, tried to justify it by saying that, by dint of his belligerent demeanour, he brought much of it upon himself. They conveniently overlooked the fact that Lennon had an exemplary disciplinary record and never criticised opposing teams or managers. Away from football, he lived quietly and openly in Glasgow's West End, where he enjoyed the company of supporters in the wine bars and restaurants of that neighbourhood.

 

The Scottish government simply chose to look the other way while a migrant worker in Scotland was being racially abused in front of them and the Scottish Football Association refused to intervene. Indeed, on the only occasion that they did so, they hit Lennon with an extraordinary ban as punishment for reacting angrily, but not violently, to something uttered quietly by Ally McCoist, his Rangers counterpart. You got the impression they had been waiting to do that for some time.

 

Meanwhile, the government, in a gross act of cowardice, decided to use that incident to show that it cared by organising an utterly worthless and meaningless summit on sectarianism. Yet it had nothing to say about the campaign of abuse that Neil Lennon endured in this country. No anti-racism body ever came to his aid. There are some who claim that Scotland remains an anti-Catholic country, but it's not really.

 

Nor is this about Rangers FC, that once mighty bastion of the Scottish Protestant hegemony. They have routinely been employing Catholics for years and participate fully in anti-sectarian projects. Rather, there is still a sizable remnant of Scots who cling stubbornly to old ideas of religious and cultural supremacy and who regard the Irish as an inferior race.

 

The pillars of their existence were the Church of Scotland, the Conservative party and the reserved professions where Catholics were once told politely they need not apply. These have all either disappeared or been rendered meaningless. The Catholic Irish, meanwhile, have emerged confidently from discrimination and deprivation to play a full role in modern Scotland. For some, the pace of change has been too much. Neil Lennon arrived at a moment in time and became the sum of all their fears and insecurities. This is not to excuse or justify, merely to offer an explanation.

 

In the 1955 film Bad Day at Black Rock, Spencer Tracy goes looking for justice in a small American town with a secret. Eventually, he finds it and the town finds redemption. Political, cultural and civic Scotland has yet to explain its failure to protect Neil Lennon. Until it does so, it can never fully be redeemed.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/25/neil-lennon-persecution-shames-scotland-celtic-manager