Lennon on a tightrope with no safety net
If you know the history, as the fans’ song goes, you’ll appreciate that when Celtic go they go the whole, dysfunctional hog.
Nobody does rosey to ropey quite like the club where volatility is in the DNA.
As things stand at the moment the fans who didn’t want Neil Lennon appointed manager in succession to Brendan Rodgers are now even more firmly entrenched in the belief that a gross error of judgement has been made.
The hard core of supporters who have been given their own designated standing area of Celtic Park unfurled a message at the weekend which blamed the directors who had indulged them in the first place with downsizing the club to its detriment.
Then there was the sight of the manager gathering his players together at the end of two tortuous hours against Dunfermline and publicly telling them he was proud of their efforts while removing a Championship side from the Betfred Cup with the help of extra time and a deflected goal which came minutes before they might have faced trial by fate in the form of a penalty shoot-out.
This spectacle took place as one caller to Superscoreboard informed us he had left the ground in protest before extra time even started because he could no longer stand to watch “rubbish.”
It is not exactly a picture of serenity from a garden of contemplation, is it?
And this comes after Celtic had started the season by scoring twelve goals in their first two league games for the first time since 1971.
Now comes the hard bit.
Celtic will face AIK of Stockholm at home on Thursday night in a Europa League play-off tie against a backdrop of discontent, disharmony and disorder, and that’s just the back four.
That will be followed by a league game against Hearts which will kick off, in all probability, after Rangers have leapfrogged Celtic and gone to the top of the league following their lunch-time start at St. Mirren. Dropping points will not be an option.
Then comes the derby match at Ibrox which will either make a difficult time for Celtic positively toxic or offer the manager a shot at redemption in the eyes of those who have come to the conclusion his appointment was ill-advised.
As ill-advised, I would suggest, as the stage-managed show of unity at the end of Saturday’s scare in the cup.
There was nothing the manager said, or did, that couldn’t have taken place in the privacy of the dressing room.
If it was an attempt at deflecting attention away from what was a sub-standard performance then it was being played out against a stadium that was emptying faster than an evacuation due to fans trying to distance themselves from the scene of an unsatisfactory display as quickly as they could.
They would not even have noticed the impromptu Huddle, far less have been taken in by it.
Telling the media afterwards that he was proud of his players in the immediate aftermath of Celtic’s failure to stay in the Champions League qualifiers sounded like hollow excuse making by the manager.
As questionable as the fans’ banners about downsizing when they were sitting there watching the second most expensive player in Celtic’s 131 year history, seven million pounds worth of Christopher Jullien, play for their team.
But the banner did get across one, unmissable message with its reference to the Celtic board gambling with Ten in a Row.
The hard core never miss a game. This band of supporters have no interest in Europe whatsoever. They come from the densely populated, deeply committed constituency where the only thing in the world that matters is being above Rangers.
The banner made no reference to CFR Cluj, the Champions League or anything other than Ten in a Row, the distinction which is as important as life itself to the supporters who believe the club’s only reason for being is to be better than their greatest rivals.
The trouble is Steven Gerrard shows every indication of having assembled a squad of players which could be more than a match for Celtic where all domestic competitions are concerned.
The games played between the two clubs will, in all likelihood, have a pivotal bearing on the outcome of the title race. If the first one is ends in defeat for Celtic the fall-out will be of epic proportions.
And, of course, it’s only fair and balanced to point out that, if Celtic win at Ibrox then, to use the local patois, Rangers’ gas will have been put at a peep.
This is the tightrope Lennon has to walk between now and then. And there is no safety net underneath him.
The disaffected element among the fans don’t care about Europe but will reserve the right to react badly to elimination from that arena.
The fans have watched all of the certainties in their lives be removed and it’s created disquiet.
Rodgers told them he was there to win Ten in a Row and then left. Kieran Tierney, the fan with the jersey, did the logical thing and went off to explore the big, wide world at Arsenal.
And then the air of invincibility the Celtic fans had about them was disturbed by the sight of Romania’s finest running rings round their team and scoring four goals in Glasgow.
Now they’re not sure of anything anymore and under those circumstances the scatter gun comes out and everyone from the boardroom to the manager’s office gets targeted.
Players and hierarchy alike will now need to demonstrate resolve and resilience. Anyone who crumbles under increasing pressure will only have proved the club was too big for them in the first place.
It is, you must agree, compelling viewing. And that is the only thing on which there will be unanimous agreement by the look of things.