Gary Parker aiming to put the smile back into Celtic

THE natural reaction to Gary Parker bigging up Neil Lennon as being born to his current role is that the 44-year-old Englishman would say that. Parker is unabashedly the new Celtic manager's faithful friend and the real wild card making up the club's coaching gang of four.

It would be easy to present him as a likely lad who has now landed on his feet - the left one not long out of plaster after a recent break that caused him to suffer a mini-stroke - 14 years on from bonding with Lennon at Leicester City.

Parker's career, however, demands respect for his football judgments. Especially when he can rhyme off Brian Clough, Martin O'Neill, Ron Atkinson and David Pleat as the best he worked under. After two League Cup wins with Clough at Forest, another with O'Neill at Leicester, and a second-place Premiership finish with Atkinson at Villa, he ought to know if someone has what it takes cut it in management. And he sensed Lennon possessed the necessary from the pair's opening conversation, which took place in the Leicester dressing room following a 3-2 away win for the club over Wolves on February 21, 1996.

"He's a winner, who is a good football man and a very good bloke. He'll become a top manager was my first impression when I saw him."

Parker says his job, along with fellow backroom members Johan Mjallby and Alan Thompson, will be to "help him (Lennon] achieve that". While Mjallby has been handed the title of assistant manager, and Thompson designated first-team coach, Parker's duties haven't been so clearly defined. The man himself says he will be "a first-team coach along with Tommo" who "won't mind going with the reserves" and believes he will be in the dug-out on matchdays, sometimes going "upstairs, just to see what is going on". Lennon has stated that a key element of Parker's responsibilities will revolve around scouting, with talent-spotting for O'Neill at Villa his connection to the game in recent years.

"I'd like to think I've got a good eye for a player," he says. "Martin trusts me. I could have stayed there working for him and he was going to take me on to the coaching staff this season but this was too good an opportunity to turn down. I said I'd always be there for Lenny."

Parker certainly won't be looking to revive any of the madcap methods of the "one-off", the "unpredictable" Clough, in the job he began last week. "I was only a young kid, but he was brilliant. There was no training. Just five-a-sides every day. You can't say it was wrong because he won things. He got the best out of his players. Yet, he'd turn up on a Monday, walk down to the training ground to see that the players had turned up, and then he'd say: 'That's enough, see you Friday'."

Parker offers up such nuggets with a glint in his eye that suggests part of his remit will be creating the right atmosphere at Celtic's Lennoxtown training ground. Lennon has bemoaned the colourless, timorous nature of the club's football displays as they slumped under Tony Mowbray last season. In Parker, he has brought on board a man who both has the sort of perky personality he wants behind the scenes, and the knowledge of the British scene to recruit the types he wants on the field.

Working at Celtic has given Parker a senior full-time position in football denied to him since he was caretaker for one game at Leicester in 2001 and it ended with a 6-0 slaughtering by Leeds United. Working anywhere might have seemed fantasy in the fearful moments that followed his leg break 17 weeks ago - sustained playing a veteran's league match on the very day he was meant to travel to Scotland to link up with Lennon following his promotion to interim Celtic manager.

Doctors treating the fracture picked up an irregular heartbeat and Parker suffered a stroke while at home recuperating. Previously, he has admitted he "could have died or been left disabled" had his wife Petra not acted quickly in recognising what was happening as one side of his face dropped. Now, though, he is keen to down play the seriousness of his recent health problems.

"It was only a little stroke, a minor thing, and my health's OK," Parker says. "It is only because I broke my leg (that] my heart went out of rhythm. I had to have a cardio-electro shock to put it back in, but it was nothing to worry about. It is a ten-minute thing. I'm fine, and with the leg I hope in five or six weeks I can start running and doing things."

When it comes to what needs to be done, Parker channels the mindset of Clough, O'Neill and Lennon, even. "Football's not a complicated game," he says. "You keep it simple and, at the end of the day, it's about winning football matches."

For the past year-and-a-half, winning football matches has been anything but simple for Celtic.