manager welcomes lenny home

Gregor Kyle
WHEN Gordon Strachan bid farewell to his erstwhile captain at the end of last season he expressed the hope that they would not be long in being reunited. However, neither man could have anticipated that it would have happened so quickly.

“When we split up at the end of last year we did say that hopefully we’d be able to get together again and work somewhere together,” said the Celtic manager.

“Neil’s not been away too long, but I think he’s going to be a good coach and he’ll be helpful at this time.

“In the short term he will help the coaching staff here try to continue our challenge in the league, because at the moment there is room for another coach at the club.

“He will have a role to play between now and the end of the season and in the summer, his role will be defined.

“I am sure he has an eye for the game and if he wants to work with a player, talk to a player, he can do that,” he added. “He will be an example of not only being a Celtic player, but a winning Celtic player, but that’s the last bit of it and the first will be on the coaching side.

“It’s nice to have different opinions. The manager listens to opinions, they make the manager think and then the manager makes decisions. So he’s here to make me think as well.”

Having continued his own playing career until he was 40 years of age, the manager could, of course, tell his new first-team coach a thing or two about the mixed emotions that a former player can feel in his first season off the park.

He did admit that Lennon will perhaps be in a much tougher position though, given the fact that he was still playing in the UEFA Champions League a year ago.

But as the manager explained, his former captain was determined to take up the post as soon as possible.

“It wasn’t so difficult for me because I had a wee break where I took the reserves and played for the reserves whenever called upon," he explained. "But basically, I was shot to pieces at that point, so I didn’t want to play.

“The position was that it was okay for him to come in the summer,” the manager continued, “the job would be there in the summer, but Lenny wanted to move right away.

“What we didn’t want to do was affect Paul Lambert’s chances of promotion with Wycombe Wanderers, that wouldn’t be right. But there is a coaching shortfall here at the moment, that Neil was able to fill.”

Speaking at the pre-match press conference, the manager was quick to add that Lennon had not been brought back to fire his side with passion or enthusiasm, explaining that he felt that every one of his players was showing commitment and attitude in this title run-in.

“I hear Arsene Wenger saying all the time that his team were unlucky and people let him away with that and say, ‘you could be right’,” he commented.

“I think we’ve been a bit unlucky and I think there is only one team deserved to beat us in this recent dip of form and that’s Barcelona.

“The players are working hard, they are tackling, running hard and passing the ball, so we are doing all these things and Lenny doesn’t have to help us in that situation.

“But he can help players as individuals, if they need some help, which we feel we are already giving them. But as I said, Lenny’s role will be more defined in the summer and will be more long-term.”