Celtic captain Scott Brown backs Neil Lennon's Dubai score-settling - "what he said was right"

Celtic captain Scott Brown has insisted Neil Lennon has the full endorsement of the club’s playing squad for his scattergun slaughtering of all manner of targets over the treatment of the club amid the fall-out from their ill-fated Dubai winter training camp.

Celtic manager Neil Lennon (left) with captain Scott Brown before the Scottish Cup against Hearts last month, success in which brought a quadruple treble that has been all-too-quickly forgotten says the midfielder. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

Lennon went to town on those questioning Celtic’s professionalism in their United Arab Emirates – a trip taking during a global pandemic that led to Brown, his manager, assistant John Kennedy and 12 other players being forced to isolate for 10-days following Christopher Jullien’s Covdi-19 positive test on their return a week past Friday.

Lennon has been lambasted for his unrepentant outburst on Monday, wherein he took issue with the protocols that resulted in an understrength team, led by coach Gavin Strachan, drawing at home against Hibs and Livingston – results that leave them trailing Rangers by 21-points as they now face the West Lothian side on their own patch in one of the three games-in-hand they have over the runaway Premiership leaders.

Lennon was accused of going rogue in blasting a range of targets on his latest press duties. However, Brown was in no mood to put distance between Celtic’s squad and their beleaguered manager, who has faced growing calls from the club’s followers and former players to be relieved of his duties. Brown chose to counter the opprobrium heaped on Lennon by fighting his corner in unequivocal fashion.

“We all back the gaffer. I think what he said was right, as far as I’m concerned,” said the 35-year-old. “I don’t want to get too involved in the politics and stuff, that’s for the manager and chief executive. But for us players it’s about doing our talking on the park and producing results for the manager. We need to stick together, that’s the big one. We need to be with the manager and all on the same page. It’s about concentrating on ourselves, just focusing on winning all our games in hands and taking it from there.

“The manager loves this club. He’s been here for 20 years all in and he knows nothing else apart from winning. He tries to drive that in to us every single day in training, whether it’s a possession drill or five-a-sides. That’s the way you need to be at this club. In the last couple of months we’ve not managed to do that in the way we are used to – that’s not the manager, that’s all of us together.

“[The stick he has taken] is not nice, especially with all he has done for the club. It’s only a month since we won the quadruple treble, and a lot of people seem to have forgotten about it. That’s just the way it is at a big club like this, everything gets forgotten pretty quickly. Don’t get me wrong, the results have not been great. But what’s been done over the last nine years has been fantastic for this club. It’s been win after win. But we need to up our game, and help out the manager as much as we can. You have to look to the future. It’s been hard the last few games with so many players out. But we have a full squad now and need to make sure we bounce back against Livingston.”

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