'Surely he's on the wind up', 'Resent having my intelligence insulted' - Celtic fans anger over Neil Lennon's comments following Europa League win

The Parkhead boss’ assessment of the game was questioned by fans

Celtic left it late to scrape into the Europa League qualifying play-off round with a 1-0 win over Riga FC.

Comments from Neil Lennon after the victory raised eyebrows and did not sit well with supporters after a difficult evening.

He said: “I thought we were very good. We had to wait a long time for the goal. Sometimes that happens in football. I thought we were excellent and our mentality was good. We missed a couple of really good chances to make life a little bit easier for us."

Neil Lennon's comments following the win over Riga bemused Celtic fans. Picture: Getty

It prompted much consternation amongst fans on social media.

@EddyGrady: “Honestly, bizarre team selections and now more performance spin. I appreciate the win, however, we scraped it!”

@mcallisterkyle7: “Surely he’s on the wind up.”

@cailean01: “Sorry but no. Right result, Frimpong was excellent but other than that performance was below par and needs to be brought up 2 or 3 levels.”

@AJD1888: “I'm genuinely worried if he believes we were very good.”

@AlexMillan7: “’I thought we were very good’. Genuinely incredible.”

@snoogins1967: “His idea of excellent and mine are wildly different.”

@DANICLAFF: “Mental that Lennon managed to finish a big bag of cans between full time and giving his interview.”

@_jaycarrigan: “Lennon becoming a broken record, was torture to watch tonight should be burying teams that offer nothing like that…”

@c10s_: “Must be a Tennent’s bar in Latvia.”

@pods_o: “Who he is talking to and why are they accepting that answer?”

@liamtmt7: "Honestly want to know what game he was watching man. We were honkin. No drive, no creativity, no spark. Boring, one dimensional stuff.”

@_JAM1E: “Ridiculous. Even more so you just knew he was going to come out with verbal ***** after the game. We had to wait a long time for the goal... because we were absolutely woeful, stop trying to sugarcoat it ffs, embarrassing.”

@swordofreason: “You would hope he's of a different mindset in the dressing room, but probably not, which is a problem...”

@keiththejakes: “If he can't see that was one of the most turgid performances we've put in in his second spell so far then it's extremely worrying.”

@lawrencedonegan: “’I thought we were really good.’ As a longtime Celtic fan, I resent having my intelligence insulted like this.”

@GedG101: “I stopped reading this after the first sentence.”

@EtienneBojan: “This is just silly. Riles an already dissatisfied support. We’ve spent £600 for ‘added value’ not weekly delusion and deflection from how poor we are performing, how mental the line-ups are and how thin the squad is.”

Some knew what Lennon was doing:

@HHendo_7: “Folk mad that he called players out after the first qualifier. Now mad if he deflects. Twitter is some place.”

@AidoM67: “Everyone raging with this, would you rather he slaughtered the team to the media? Everyone gave out when he slaughtered them after Ferencvaros, idiots.”

DeadeyeDick16: “Obviously when Lennon speaks its really for the players benefit. Not sure what the rationale is for continually saying we've played well when we clearly haven't.”

@PaulMcT7: “If you didn’t know Neil Lennon was going to say this, you haven’t been watching. Oldest trick in the book.”