Neil Lennon: ‘I have let myself down’

Celtic manager is embarrassed by Hampden tirade

NEIL Lennon has legitimate reasons for balking at his demonisation in this country. However, the Celtic manager concedes he gave in to a little devil on his shoulder in confronting referee Euan Norris on the pitch following Celtic’s Scottish Cup semi-final defeat by Hearts last month.

The fall-out from that very public remonstration with the official will be felt when he faces an SFA hearing on three misconduct charges tomorrow. It seems certain that before his team are handed the league championship trophy at their match at home to St Johnstone in the evening, Lennon’s afternoon will be spent being handed a sizeable new touchline ban. He just completed a two-match suspension in watching Sunday’s derby win from the stand.

Lennon is full of remorse for what he believes to be his one indefensible intemperate moment this season, and is preparing a letter to Norris that says as much. “I regret it. I’m embarrassed by it,” the Irishman said. “It was an instinctive reaction and I have let myself down. It’s the one time this season I have felt really flat afterwards because it was a stupid thing to do; my general demeanour and the way I reacted. Looking back now, it was pointless.

“I’m hoping to get the opportunity to speak on Thursday at the SFA and also send some sort of correspondence to the referee. It will be a private act, the letter, because it is not good enough on my part. I’ve let the club down, the board down and, more importantly, I let myself down.

“We are human beings, at the end of the day. We are passionate and we do feel aggrieved at times. I’m not at war with the SFA and I’m not at war with referees either, but there are times when you have that sort of flash. Every other manager in the country has done it. Every other manager in England has done it. They have ran on pitches. I have seen far-more experienced managers than myself doing it, yet I seem to get every Tom, Dick and Harry coming out and telling me how I should behave.

“I think, and maybe it’s just crappy me, that things get exaggerated when it is myself that it is involved. The thing at Ibrox [when sent-off at half-time], the tribunal and the fair hearing saw fit not to give me any punishment and that was my take on it. Really, we’re talking about one specific incident during the course of a season which, considering the amount of controversies you have as manager in the Old Firm, it’s not too bad.”

Lennon supplied a cryptic response, meanwhile, when asked about the Twitter element of his day of “frustration” that boiled up over a wrongly awarded penalty that settled the tie. “I’ll tell about that on Thursday; there is a bit of mileage in that as well,” he stated.

Beyond “drawing a line” under the issue, the most important hearing for the Celtic manager this week will be the one he hopes to receive from Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell over his plans to augment a squad with plenty of mileage in it. Lennon is willing to add after subtracting, but wants both done before players report back for pre-season training on 2 July, for a season-shaping Champions League third round qualifier at the end of that month. He is open to the possibility of reducing his sellable assets by one to finance new recruits, the £10m taken for Aiden McGeady two years ago paying for a new team, and accepting that Celtic are no longer in the market for marquee signings, which he believes they “don’t need” anyway with his young squad “blossoming nicely”.

“If you bring that one superstar in, it might upset of tip the balance in the squad. We are just going to follow the way we’ve worked the last few years and see if we can find some really good players out there for affordable prices,” Lennon said.

He cites Victor Wanyama and Adam Matthews as two shining examples, the pair among a clutch of assets that have risen in value belong in £5m-plus bracket. “‘It’s what a club like Celtic has to do. We have to look elsewhere and be imaginative. But it will get harder. Once you develop that reputation then clubs might ask a bit more. It will get tougher every year in that respect. But we are in the market for two or three and hopefully we’ll not be far away from getting them.

“If you get the right kind of money in [there might be scope for one to go]. I’m not that keen on selling but needs must at times. And if we can maybe sell one and trim the squad that will bring in more revenue and cut the wage bill down. That might leave it open for two or three to come in. We have done that the last couple of years and it has worked quite well. But you go only go so far with young players if you really want to make inroads in Europe, so I think we’ll look to enhance the squad quality-wise and experience-wise.”