Would ye take Lampard?
Silence over Neil Lennon is deafening
Wednesday January 27 2021, 12.00am GMT, The Times
It broke at 9.45am on Monday that Frank Lampard was about to be sacked by Chelsea and, 34 minutes later, the same source identified Thomas Tuchel as his successor. Confirmation of the Lampard dismissal followed at 11.25am and, the following lunchtime, Tuchel was on a flight from Paris to London. There was even talk that he would be there in time for their training session and he is expected to be on the bench at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers tonight.
You can call that decisive, clear-headed and businesslike. Or you might think it callous and depressing. In truth it’s a mixture of all that. It’s a disrespectful way for a club to treat a legendary figure but then you don’t befriend an arsonist and gift him matches. Lampard knew that even his peerless standing at Stamford Bridge would count for little when Roman Abramovich became unimpressed with results. Chelsea were top of the Premier League at the start of last month but Lampard was axed for having the worst average points-per-game of any of Abramovich’s ten previous managers despite having spent £220 million in the summer. Managing Chelsea amounts to juggling with a chainsaw. Everyone knows
how it ends.
They were cold and unsentimental to Lampard but that level of ruthlessness did spare him the slow haemorrhage of fans’ affection which would have taken hold if his results settled into long decline. That is what has happened to Neil Lennon. We live in an era in which the Celtic Park car park has been a venue for a candlelit vigil for Lennon after bomb threats and the place where some of the same fanbase congregated nine years later to howl that he should “get tae f***” from the manager’s job. Both episodes were over the top, really, but at least the first one showed some respect.
Lennon isn’t cutting any sort of broken, beaten figure right now. He isn’t moping around feeling sorry for himself or trying to win sympathy from reporters. Quite the opposite: folk in our business still know all about it if he’s aggrieved. His infamous media conference last week took a flamethrower to everyone and he was spiky with the BBC’s Kenny Macintyre before the Livingston game. Lennon’s not going down quietly. At times the strain has been obvious but Tony Mowbray, Mark Warburton and Pedro Caixinha all looked far more chewed up by the Old Firm when the end came.
It would annoy anyone to see others linked with their job while they were still in it and Lennon bristled about that yesterday, but that’s the game he’s in. There is speculation because that’s how most clubs behave. It is done through third parties, with deniability, but they sound out other managers while they still have one. How else could Chelsea know that German coaches Julian Nagelsmann and Ralf Rangnick would not consider joining them mid-season? How else could the deal to appoint Tuchel be done so quickly?
And so Lennon has the awkward reality of others seeing him as a dead manager walking. He must deal with Celtic, who pushed the boat out as far as they could to get Brendan Rodgers on £2.3 million a year, being linked with fantasy appointments like Eddie Howe (who earned £3 million a year at Bournemouth), Lampard (£4m at Chelsea) and Rafa Benítez (£12m at Dalian Professional in China).
This is day 51 since Celtic announced that progress would be reviewed in the New Year. It doesn’t take 50 days to judge a manager or the best overall structure of a football department. They’re assessing how to run a club in the Scottish Professional Football League, not the NHS. Having enough high-calibre people in charge of the relevant decision making is what matters, not the job titles. If the review needs to be radical then who will be accountable for letting the entire operation become so unsuitable?
Celtic’s review feels like a stalling tactic. Chelsea’s ruthlessness is nothing to admire but how Peter Lawwell, the chief executive, must envy Abramovich’s ability to click his fingers and have a top-class manager running. Money is power. If there was an attractive, available, enthusiastic and affordable candidate out there Celtic surely would have paid off Lennon around the time of the second Sparta Prague hammering and the Betfred Cup loss to Ross County. Instead it is impossible to shake the belief he is still there because the Celtic board has frozen about what to do next. The growing belief that they could keep him for the rest of the season feels more like paralysis rather than patience. Lennon knows a Celtic manager doesn’t survive a season like this.
While he is there, he draws most of the fire: a human shield for the board. Without him
no-one cares what a caretaker manager has to say so the heat is turned up on Lawwell and Dermot Desmond, the club’s majority shareholder. It is a dereliction of duty that not a single figure above Lennon at Celtic has said anything to the media all season, leaving him to do it all. He has consistently fronted up while others have hidden.
So it all carries on in the eye of the storm, a game against Hamilton tonight, suspended reality, like a dam waiting to break and all sorts of news to spill out. The big worry for Celtic supporters is that their club is silent because it still has absolutely nothing to give them.
Lawell retiring in June
1 Like
Some rugby jock replacing him.
What, both?
No knockout European tie victory in his 15 year reign?
What an absolute cancer.
Great stuff
1 Like
I know Davie Provan gets a lot of flak on his co-commentary performances but he has gone after Lawwell relentlessly in the press for 2 years and he was pretty much a lone voice in doing so.
He was absolutely spot on in what he has said and what has unfolded with regards to the club and he’s gone way up in my estimation for that.
He’s more of a Celtic man that anyone who backed or defended Lawwell in that time.
This new lad from Scottish Rugby, would me know much about the cutthroat world of professional soccer?
Probably another stooge.
Desmond and Lennon are next.
Six foot two
His eyes are blue
Davy provan
Is after you
1 Like
There’s two professional rubby teams in Scotland.
I’d say he’s ideal.
2 Likes
Bobo’s gonnae get yae
Rumours that Lennon’s time is finally up.
3 Likes
Welcome to 3 months ago.
1 Like
Rafa to paradise?
Before @thedancingbabys time but real feel of the last days of davie hay now
1 Like