Lennon denies field has been left clear for all-conquering Celtic

One of those sides referred to by Lennon visit Parkhead today. Motherwell will seek to provide some evidence to support Lennon’s claim although their own form at Parkhead in recent visits suggests that there are still some sure-things in the SPL. Motherwell have conceded 11 goals at Celtic Park in Stuart McCall’s time as manager and have yet to score.

Yet Motherwell are the team who are running Rangers closest for that much-coveted second Champions League place. They are also the side against whom Lennon believes Celtic truly turned the corner. The storming second-half display at Kilmarnock in October, when Celtic came back from 3-0 down to earn a point, is generally credited as being where it all started to go right for Lennon, after he had stood, briefly, on the brink.

However, the gritty comeback against Motherwell at Fir Park, which saw Celtic win 2-1 after conceding an early goal, is when Lennon considers that his team began to believe in themselves.

“Since then we’ve never looked back,” he said yesterday. Indeed, the Celtic manager’s own team have been doing their best to highlight just how much the SPL could be dismissed as being a foregone conclusion. Celtic are out on their own after 16 straight victories, which, when coupled with Rangers’ ten-point sanction for going into administration, leaves them 20 points clear at the top.

But don’t mention to Lennon that the rest of the season amounts to a stroll for his side. He has already delivered a strong reaction to pundit Craig Burley’s contention that the Celtic players should be “sacked” if they fail to land the title this season. He was giving even less time to anyone seeking to flay the game north of the border.

“It’s not as bad as people make it out to be and I’m fed up of the game getting battered up here,” he said,

“I think for the size of the country the product that we put on the pitch is very, very good. It’s entertaining. The only people who put a negative slant on it are people who are outside the game looking in.”

Lennon must be alert to what a 19-game winning run looks like from afar. This is Celtic’s domestic record since drawing 0-0 with Hibs in October. Observers will simply conclude that Scottish football has become even less competitive.

“If you look at the games we have been in on this run, some of them have been pretty close, pretty tight,” responded Lennon. “It’s not as if we’ve won every game 3-0 or 4-0. In 2004 we had that team with Henrik [Larsson], and we basically steamrollered most of the teams. This year, there have been close calls in a lot of the games.

“I’m fed up and I get really irked about the negativity surrounding the game [in Scotland],” Lennon added.

He criticised those such as Burley who are “based in England”, and yet who set themselves up as self-appointed “spokesmen for Scottish football”.

“[They] don’t really know what the game is like up here and they don’t know the budgets that managers have to work under,” added Lennon. “For me this year, there are a lot of progressive teams like Motherwell, Kilmarnock and Dundee United. Hearts have been a bit up and down. Inverness have played some good football, and there’s been a huge improvement in St Mirren.”

When asked directly whether he was offended by the notion that Celtic, divested of a challenge from Rangers, should romp to not only this season’s title, but also the next few after it, Lennon bristled again. “I get offended,” he said. “But I think managers, chairmen and players at other clubs should take more offence than anyone else to that kind of attitude.” There seems nothing to suggest that Lennon himself is taking things easy. He has been angered also by the scenario where Celtic are scheduled to take on Aberdeen next Saturday in a 12 noon kick-off, following a midweek card of international games.

“I don’t know who arranged that one for us,” he said. “I’ve got maybe 12-15 players away. Ki [Sung-Yeung] is in South Korea, Georgios [Samaras] is away with Greece. To have a 12pm kick-off in Aberdeen on the Saturday is not beneficial to us in any way. It’s a bit unfair on the support, too.

“I don’t know when these games are scheduled but they don’t take into consideration the people it affects the most. I won’t get any work done with the likes of Ki or Emilio [Izaguirre]. They’ll be back Friday morning but what can you do? They will probably have been travelling for eight hours, so it’s a recovery day, when they should be getting as much fluid and food into them as you can.

“We’ll be travelling to Aberdeen on Friday anyway,” he said. “So I would doubt they’ll even be in contention for the squad.”

Unhappy as he is with that situation, Lennon admitted he prefers the grit and the attrition of brisk afternoons at football’s sharp end to the possibility of summer football . Questioned on the Scottish Football Association’s decision to examine a possible switch to summer-based fixture calendar, he said: “I’m not a fan of summer football personally. I like to be on the beach in the summer, topping up my tan.”