Yeah, that plan of mine to have some downtime from here this week…
Given the events of today I think that I am now on firm enough ground to share the following:
Since Lenny had gone to Hibs I had an open invitation to attend any Hibs game as his guest.
This was communicated to me by a source very close to the Armagh man.
I had interviewed Neil for my book Minority Reporter.
There is an entire section in that work devoted to an exploration of Lennon’s time in Fair Caledonia.
I remain an admirer of him both as a soccer coach and as a person for what he has had to endure for having the temerity to be Irish and Catholic in modern Scotland.
Moreover, Neil is quite clear as to why he became a bête noire of the Ibrox klan.
Indeed, in a recent presser, he even delivered the “R” word to the assembled members of the Stenography Corps.
They examined their brogues as he spoke truth to power.
It had been my intention to attend a Hibernian V Celtic match at Easter Road in the spring.
When I finally got in touch late last year to plan that I was surprised by the response I received.
I was told that Neil wasn’t long for the home dugout there.
It was clear from the person I was speaking to that he wasn’t a fan of Brendan Rodgers and we agreed to differ.
For me, the Invincible Treble alone put the Antrim man in the pantheon of great football managers anywhere.
It was an amazing achievement.
My view was countered with the other person pointing out the expensive failures in the transfer market like Compper and Musonda.
My take was that, in the round, Rodgers had been an amazing acquisition for Celtic.
“Anyway he’s away to Leicester soon” was the riposte.
I didn’t believe it then and I’m still processing it now.
At the time I tried to stand up his assertion that Rodgers would leave for Leicester and various sources at Celtic dismissed the very notion.
Clearly, the person that I was speaking with late last year knew far more about the situation than I did.
Lenny did indeed leave Hibernian under less than clear circumstances not long after the conversation that I have related to you.
Officially Neil didn’t resign and he wasn’t sacked.
Now this…
In life, timing is pretty much everything.
As far as Celtic is concerned it could not be much worse.
This can only be seen as a huge victory for Heated Driveway Productions.
One of the many baffling components of this drama is that I have difficulty in seeing Lenny happily toiling once more under the untitled director of football at Parkhead.
The Sevco High Command will be walking on air today.
This entire denouement has a Shakespearean quality about it.
Of course, King Lear was the eponymous founder of…Leicester.
I’m surprised the folk are surprised as BR was touted for every job vacancy at the EPL. If any manager at Celtic brings success then others will come looking for him, just like they do with players. It’s no biggie. HH
No one can ever doubt Brendan rogers commitment – his commitement to himself ,that’s the real truth of this unedifying situation, clearly there were problems between lawell and rogers with transfer policy /matters ,but this decision wasn’t majorly influenced by those issues , the unpalatable truth here is the main deciding factor was Brendan rogers ruthless ambition .
Rogers seamlessly moved into ‘smug’ mode at liecesters match tonight ,not a care in the world saying all the right things etc etc, ‘ill give my life to take liecester forward’ ! a disgrace. a real celtic man with the clubs interests at heart does not bugger of with 2 months of the season left and the title within our grasp.
Re peter lawell one has to ask would steve clark be able to work with someone of lawells’ dubious’ integrity ? A real problem for me has allways been the fact that both rogers and lawell are very similar in personality , giant egos ,scheming, smug and underhand and as in most of these type of situations only disruption can be the result , and that’s why our club has ended up with an interim manager with 2 months to go in arguably our most important season in recent times .
We need clear moral leadership at our club urgently.Who will provide it god only knows allthough I can tell you for sure of two people who certainly wouldn’t provide it.Good luck to a real celtic man neil lennon as he navigates us through till the end of the season ,thankfully no question marks over lennys commitment to celtic.
Does anyone know why he did this…??..has he made a statement…??…have we appointed a successor…??…do I care anymore…??..do I feck…one more example of a faithful support being shafted….But look on the bright side….we get many millions in compensation. So DD and the Board will be delighted….What a feckin’ shambles.
Maybe Brendan wanted to play in a real football league with rules and standards that are applied to all fairly.
Where the referee’s declare their team and no one knows or cares which school you went to.
Or maybe he saw Pete’s big fat bonus and thought he would have some of that.
Worrying times. Neil Lennon’s tenure at Bolton and Hibs clearly shows he does not have the temperament even for clubs with that level of expectation. BR clearly made the judgment call that he was not getting back to a top 6 EPL club directly from Celtic, however successful at the domestic level. In that, at least, he was probably correct. Given the treatment of Ranieri though I hope he got a very strong commitment to attainable performance indicators on his part. I have had a sense of dread all season. I now know why.
Boyata, Dembele and now Rogers.
They can kiss the badge all they like, and say all the right things, but they are nothing but mercenaries.
Heated Driveway Productions versus Conceited Driveway Productions!
We will probably never know the truth, but the timing of Brendan’s departure to Leicester is suspect and a tad inconvenient bordering on irritating!
Leicester?
I lived in the East Midlands for years before moving further south and this really is a baffling choice of destination from a football perspective. Take the fairytale of two years ago out of this and you are back to Martin O’Neill and the league cup triumphs as the only footballing achievement of note in living memory at Leicester.
The fact that Brendan even wanted to speak with Leicester is beyond comprehension.
7 out of 7 trophies won, on the brink of number 8 with a good go at The Scottish Cup to follow. Was he bored? Or was it the board?
Leicester?
” Brendan ” a great manager? No not really, He was shown up in Europe and anyone would think that having the largest budget in Scottish football would be an advantage. The Lennon incident in the Hibs dressing room was covered with knowledgeable speculation but could there be another reason for him engineering his departure? Could it possibly be Celtic knew that ” Brendan’s” departure ( as shown but the comments of the person you communicated with ) was on the cards, and is it not beyond possibilities that Celtic ” tapped up” Neil Lennon, strictly against all the rules?
Could it be “x” amount of people see 10 in a row as bad for business…lack of competition and so on…therefore take a dive to keep the opposition coming through the gates….only sayin’
Phil there are quite a few sub scripts in this story. As far back as September I was told by a well informed source with connections to Peter Lawell that BR would be heading out of Celtic as soon as he found a job that was to his liking. Now for maybe even more bad news PL informed my source that David Moyes had already been lined up as the next full time Celtic manager. I hope this has changed because I really want Stevie Clarke.
Clarke would be a terrific choice in my opinion but has ruled himself out. Moyes would be an unmitigated disaster and they would have real problems selling that one to season ticket holders. It would be like having Walter Smith.
Agree with you one 100% At this stage Lenny looks our best option
Your right Phil, the small minded will be loving this.It means they won’t have to buy anymore drink for the guy in black. The question is always WHY, WTF, money ?, Having to play against 12 instead of 11, or is it down to the suits not listening. We will always have Celtic Football Club 1888, that won’t change. Hail Hail.
A few things that don’t make any sense.
1. The timing! A couple of months till season end and a historic treble treble on the cards?
2. Leicester, who between the board, players and fans have already got two managers sacked, one of whom had given them a never to be repeated EPL title.
If he had hung around, for say, Sarri being sacked at Chelsea then it would be easier to understand.
No doubt he will be back in the summer to hand pick the players he wants.
Benkovic, Burke and number one target McGregor.
Time for the players and fans to rally to the cause starting tomorrow night.
Not unhappy to see Lennon returning but I’m definitely in the anyone but the ex Man Unt and Everton manager camp!
Agree entirely with last paragraph. However, Benkovic is already a Leicester player and Burke is on loan. If he comes after Calmac, KT or any of our own he should be told in no uncertain terms we’d sell them to sevco first. Safe in the knowledge obviously that sevco could NEVER afford them!!
Hard to take in, especially the timing, which Phil as you say, is pretty much everything. His time here was a success, and I would have thought he’d have spoken to the fans. Any speech would have been bluster, the real words to say and the truth would never have been said. Disappointed is an understatement, on how I feel. Lenny is a fans favourite, but he does have baggage. If it’s his call, and he’s in, he’ll need to hit the ground running. Hearts will provide a good test, but he’d better watch his back from the Hearts fans, they attack you…..
I thank BR for all his success, but the way he has behaved is more than shoddy. I hope Neil Lennon gets the job on a permanent basis and stays the course.
Peter Lawwell? Well if I were Dermot Desmond I would honestly be asking him to clear his desk. I read a snippet of information today that I wasn’t aware of. The CEO received more in his bonus than we spent on transfers in the last transfer window. If this is true it is simply outrageous.
£38m in the bank has never won a football match and never will. We have to have a CEO that puts the team and the fans first, whilst still operating the company with fiscal competence.
Question for dermot desmond – is peter lawell bigger than celtic football club? if the answer is no.time for lawell to be shown the door.
As for davie moyes ? if he comes in as full time manager all we will be doing is opening the door to a sevco comeback. Moyes is NOT an option.We need a no nonsense calm straight shooter who knows when to bring out the heavy artillery , unfortunately as much I love lenny hes not that man. Steve Clarke ticks all the boxes but apparently he is stating he wont manage another scottish club. ?
This is a real shambles of a situation rogers has left the club to sort out ,also can someone explain to me how is it possible to sort out rogers and all his staffs compensation /leaving packages arrange lennons package within a 24 hour period? we are asked to believe that lawell and or the board had no discussions prior to this week? You don’t negotoiate/clear the loss of your manager at an a club like celtic over a period of two days these complex packages would be put together over weeks /months not two days. Celtic fc are insulting our intelligence with this narrative. What a 48 hours for our great club ,somebody on the board better get a grip of this situation very quickly or implosion could be the result ,anyone seeing lawells interview last night must realise he is not that man a disgrace of an interview clearly disengenous, still I suppose that’s what a £2.3 mill bonus gets you. – zero integrity zero leadership. Disgracefull. celtic disgracefull.
I am gobsmacked. All his words were just kidology.
I think we all accepted that he would eventually return to the overhyped EPL but to leave us high and dry at this time of the year is appalling.
Brendan, you have tainted your legacy.
Very surprised that he is leaving mid season…. Says all about money and it’s lure…
Yes I’m sure our boards tight fisted Attitude has contributed but everyone has their price…. Even a supposed Celtic fan already being handsomely paid and constantly talking up his happy lifestyle in Scotland.
Fed up arguing with English club fans about how their teams are bigger than Celtic,…
The problem is and always will now be money. Their game has been ruined by it rather than improved. Mediocre clubs like Brighton and bournmouth etc with vastly more cash thN Celtic merely because they eat the scraps from a grossly overfunded and greatly overrated league.
When they say Leicester is bigger than Celtic they are talking purely in financial terms…….Because that’s all it is about to them.
They and all epl fans have a skewed, sky tv induced vision of how a football clubs worth snd status is measured…
Nothing to do with regular support, global following, history, honours,
Leicester could have 500 fans only turning up for matches and would still be at a multiple times advantage financially over us. Such is the morally unbalanced (corrupt?) weight of the English league structure.
Brendan leaving cant be about boredom , he has a better challenge this year.
It can’t be about Europe – as the only European run he will get at Leicester is pre season training in Spain.
There’s surely a transfer budget issue but wouldn’t that wait until end of season at least ?
He’s paid well – but we can probably presume that that skewed wealth that even a mediocre mid table EPL club has is enough to tempt him away on the verge of unprecedented history at Celtic.
He will not be remembered fondly now if he goes.
My biggest worry now is not so much his departure but the potential for him to lure other players from Celtic in the summer.
If he does go – and it’s looking likely – he will be walking away from the chance to become a legend at Celtic.
He could and would have ultimately had a statue outside CP if the Treble Treble and TIAR happened.
Now he will just be another manager (a few records granted) in the succession of managers towRds that achievement should it happen.
Celtic legend or EPL mid-table mediocrity and potential relegation battler?
That can only be a decision based on MONEY
Its a money decision. His deal at Leicester will mean that his net take home pay will be more than his gross at Celtic.
The deal would have been done long before Puel got binned.
Hero to zero.
I hope he enjoys making up the numbers with the big boys in the EPL till he too gets bumped but at least he’s set up for life as a result.
We all knew he had an ego but if he thinks he can set foot in Celtic Park again and be warmly received he’s living in cloud cuckoo land.
“My biggest worry now is not so much his departure but the potential for him to lure other players from Celtic in the summer.”
This.