Celtic and Neil Lennon on the brink of title glory

YOU probably have to trawl the records of every bookmaking firm in Britain to discover when – if – Rangers went into an Old Firm match at Ibrox as 3-1 underdogs, but that is the price being offered on a home win by one layer today.

Rangers and you’ll be doing well to get even-money on Celtic. Mostly, Neil Lennon’s team are odds-on. In betting terms, the professionals cannot see beyond a Celtic win. At a push they can see a draw, but the one outcome they’re not having is a home win. As they say in the trade, Rangers are utterly friendless in the market.

They will be amongst friends this afternoon, of course. Tens of thousands of them. Psyched to the eyeballs. Arriving in hope and fear and armed with banners and songs of defiance in readiness for the Celtic choral assault. Lest you have been living a blissful life well away from the madness that has surrounded Rangers this past month then you’ll need no reminding that this is the first Old Firm game since the Ibrox club entered administration. It’s the first chance that Celtic supporters have had to face down their rivals and take the mickey out of them. But above all else it’s an oppotunity for the Parkhead side to clinch the title at the home of their greatest rivals. Celtic just need to win and the championship is theirs. These games always come with a health warning. In terms of the craziness and its potential for international embarrassment you hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

“I’d rather talk this game down than talk it up, but it doesn’t matter what I say, people will pick bones in it,” said Neil Lennon on Friday. “I seem to evoke a lot of emotion in people by blowing my nose or looking at people the wrong way. I want to play this down, but I think there is going to be a huge police presence inside and outside the ground. I hope so. There will be more police in the ground than normal, which is to be expected. We had the police up on Wednesday just reminding the players of their behaviour on the field. They’ve been delighted with both sets of players this season. They’re just a little bit concerned about other aspects outside [the ground] as opposed to inside. That’s become standard with these games.”

Lennon might still be a young manager but in the business of the Old Firm he is a gnarled veteran and he wouldn’t have much truck with bookmakers’ odds as a result. He’s seen too many things happen in these games that weren’t supposed to happen. The first meeting of the season, for instance. At half-time at Ibrox, Celtic were looking comfortable with a 2-1 lead. Second half? Three unanswered Rangers goals and a Celtic capitulation. Nobody saw it coming. Sure, two of Rangers goals were scored by Steven Naismith, who is injured, and another by Nikica Jelavic, who is no longer around. The fourth was by Kyle Lafferty who, even if he is fit, is hardly match-sharp since he hasn’t played since 2 January.

“Rangers at home are a formidable team, regardless of the personnel. They’ll also have a huge support behind them. It will be intense and raw. It will have all the ingredients of an Old Firm game you would expect – but with a little bit more riding on it than normal. I was just really disappointed [after the 4-2 game]. I don’t want to feel like that again.

“We didn’t compete in the second half, which was very unlike us. We still weren’t sure of the team at that time, though. I wasn’t sure of my best team. There were a few making their debuts and a few still finding their feet at the club. There’s no excuses though, we were second best in that second half. I didn’t see that coming. Rangers were pretty strong at the time. The usual suspects were playing. I imagine that would be the case come Sunday. There will be more than a familiar look about them by the time the game comes round.”

The dog days of the autumn must seem so distant to him now, but to fully appreciate the feat of management that Lennon has performed in bringing Celtic to the brink of the title, it’s no bad thing to go back a while to a time when he was on the edge of something very different. In October and November, Celtic played a dozen matches in all competitions and managed to win only four of them. They got horsed by Rangers at Ibrox, they got turned over by Hearts at Tynecastle, they were 3-0 down at half-time against Kilmarnock and got booed when drawing 0-0 at Hibs. That was 29 October and the atmosphere at Parkhead was turning hostile. Lennon lambasted his players in the aftermath of the soul-less stalemate with Hibs and you really wondered if he was beginning to lose control of his fate.

Even a month later, things were grim. On the evening of 5 November, Celtic were 15 points behind Rangers in the SPL table. True, they had a few games in hand but even the best-case scenario – two wins reducing the gap to nine points – wasn’t one that lowered the temperature of the Celtic fans all that much. It wasn’t so much a case of “We’re all Neil Lennon” at that point, more a case of “We all used to be Neil Lennon, but enough is enough”.

The turnaround has been dramatic, an epic run of consistency. In the period from December to February they played 17 games in all competitions and won 16 of them, the one they didn’t win being a draw away to Udinese in the Europa League. You could argue that getting a point in the home of a top Italian side was the best result of the lot of them.

In their last 27 domestic games they have lost only once, against Kilmarnock last Sunday. It was the 3-3 draw at Killie that Gary Hooper spoke about on Friday as the catalyst for Celtic’s revival. Hooper hasn’t been himself of late and is an injury doubt for today, but he readily acknowledges that the comeback at Rugby Park was the key to everything that has happened to Celtic since then.

“Yeah, 3-0 down at half-time. The point we won that day has made our season up to now. That weekend helped us a lot this season. The manager kept the team playing, he didn’t change the game at all, even if we were 15 points behind. All the staff stuck with us, training didn’t change, we just kept at it and did it on the park in the end. We had a lot of injuries but we got them back and stuck to our job.

“The ten-point deduction for Rangers is nothing to do with us. We are here to win games, and 11 points between us – if the ten-point penalty wasn’t there – is still good going from being 15 points behind. This season has been very good, we have been unbeaten since October in the league. We are playing really well, really solid in the league, and I think the points show it.”

Indeed they do. And how Celtic people will let their counterparts know it this afternoon. Lennon says he wants his team to get over the finishing line as fast as possible, so if it’s not today it has to be next Sunday, against St Johnstone at Celtic Park. The sooner the better. Put it to bed.

“I’d much rather win it at home, to tell you the truth,” he says. “I’d like us to win and play well but whether we clinch it or not, we’ll have plenty of time to enjoy it afterwards.”

Much turbulence to get through today, though. The storm before the calm is nigh.