Lennon. Imagine.

Published 9th Dec 2019

Neil Lennon has won the Premiership title, the Scottish Cup and the Betfred Cup, along with a place in the last thirty-two of the Europa League as qualification group winners, over the space of the last eight months.

Imagine.

It's a hefty catalogue of achievement in a short space of time when you think about it.

The sarcastic punchline to that litany of success would be along the lines of what would he have achieved if he had been up to the job as Celtic manager in the first place?

But the man in question deserves better than cheap shots aimed at the supporters who delivered a knee jerk reaction to the manager's appointment last May.

The Celtic fans who described him as a downgrade from Brendan Rodgers. The Rangers fans who decried him as their club's best signing of the summer.

Those who called Superscoreboard to decry Peter Lawwell's decision to appoint Lennon as Brendan Rodgers' permanent successor will now uniformally deny ever having said such a thing, but that's part and parcel of life in the twenty-first century.

Never own up. Never apologise.

Neil looked physically and emotionally spent during his post match press conference following the cup win over Rangers on Sunday, and well he might.

The emotional toll that must have been taken of him since May is surely considerable.

If he could rest himself as readily as he will rest some players for the dead rubber of a match against FC Cluj on Thursday night, then he probably would.

Consider the stress he has been under.

If Neil had failed to see the league and cup double over the line last season he would have been condemned as a failure and his legacy as a Celtic player and manager the first time around would have been seriously tarnished.

No-one is left unscathed today.

Rodgers won seven trophies in a row for Celtic, but no-one must speak his name now unless it is to portray him as a Judas and a person of questionable integrity.

What it must be to have permanent occupancy of the moral high ground.

If Fraser Forster was borderline paranormal with his saves against Rangers at Hampden then Lennon was deserving of the satisfaction he must have taken from winning ten domestic trophies in a row

Celtic's appetite for success is insatiable, their will to win second to none. They feast on the fruits of their own labours.

Rangers' famine, meanwhile, continues.

For the last eight years they have been starved of the success that comes in the form of a major trophy.

Now their hunger for a trophy win has to be matched by their appetite for victory.

At the end of the day Steven Gerrard’s side were ten men versus eleven, and a penalty kick to the good, when Alfredo Morelos set them on the slippery slope to defeat by failing to find the net on Sunday.

If the penalty goes in then Rangers, in all probability, win the cup.

It didn't. They didn't.

Gerrard is personable, articulate and refreshingly honest when he speaks. He knew the penalty miss was the biggest moment in the game against Celtic.

In his deepest subconscious he will also know that a backlash to the cup loss must be avoided, starting with Thursday night's European tie against Young Boys.

Defeat and failure to join Celtic in the knock-out stages of the competition, doesn't bear thinking about.

And neither does the concession of further ground to Celtic in the title race before the sides meet each other again at the end of the month.

Rangers were the better side on Sunday. Rangers battered Celtic.

Celtic won.

Last season, Rangers failed to make a cup final. All of this has occurred on Gerrard's watch.

The winning of the league title this season is now an absolute must for the manager or the fear of another kind of Ten in a Row for Celtic will intensify.

And if that happens he'll be back at home on Merseyside quicker than you can say "Bragging rights."

Such is life when you operate in a country where the likeliehood now is that only Celtic and Rangers will, for the foreseeable future, be able to win any of the major prizes