Celtic 0 - 0 Hibernian: Frustrated Lennon left scratching head again as Celtic test patience

WHEN asked, after this soporific encounter, to respond to speculation linking him with the managerial vacancy at Leicester City, Neil Lennon said nothing to suggest he hankered after a return to his former club. But, while he may not be at the end of his tenure as Celtic manager, Lennon, as he made all too clear, is certainly at the end of his tether with a fair number of his first-team squad.

The question has to be asked: if he opts to stay, will his present employers allow him the lengthy period which looks to be needed to turn the club’s fortunes around? This draw against opponents who were swept aside in the League Cup just three days earlier leaves Celtic 12 points behind Rangers and three adrift of Motherwell. By the time they visit Fir Park on Sunday, that gap between them and the champions could be 15 points. And, if they lose to Stuart McCall’s team, the chase they will face will be not for the title, but for a runners-up spot that no longer offers a place in the Champions League.

True, Celtic have a game in hand against Dunfermline, there is the prospect of Rangers being docked ten points if they go into administration, and the season has a long way to go. But there is no reason to suspect that Lennon’s team will suddenly snap out of this current run and embark on a string of victories. They have dropped so many points not because of an aberrant or improbable set of circumstances which is unlikely to be repeated, but because they have played poorly. Scott Brown and Emilio Izaguirre, two of the club’s most influential players last season, are out injured at present, and the former’s drive, in particular, has been badly missed. But it is hard to see those two, when they do return, effecting a radical transformation. The rot has gone too deep for that, with too many individuals playing badly not because of a crisis in confidence or a simple loss of form, but apparently because of a loss of interest.

Faced with that mute defiance from a section of his squad, Lennon may feel that moving elsewhere would be an admission of defeat. At best, a return to Leicester would be viewed as a tactical retreat, a down sizing of his ambitions as a young manager in the hope that he could come back all the stronger over the longer term. And he has never been one for taking a backward step.

For much of Saturday’s match, many of his players betrayed a similar reluctance to take a forward step, or at least one made at any sort of pace. Even with time running out and the prospect of two more dropped points looming large, Celtic played at the sort of tempo more commonly seen in a summer friendly.

Hibernian deserve some credit for the result, of course; especially for drawing the right lessons from their 4-1 defeat in midweek. Danny Galbraith stuck assiduously to his task as an auxiliary defender, teaming up with Paul Hanlon to shackle James Forrest; Leigh Griffiths enjoyed some promising moments on the break; and Isaiah Osbourne was tenacious and purposeful in midfield.

But it was not Hibs who forced Celtic to play so slowly, with such lassitude, and in so predictable a way. By half-time if not long before, it should have been obvious to the home team that they would have to vary their play if they were going to break down Hibs. Instead, all they offered was more of the same.

A goal in that first period might just have produced a different game, and it was Celtic who came closest to it not long before the break when Gary Hooper shot off the post following a one-two with fellow-striker Anthony Stokes. Had Hooper squared the ball to Ki Sung-Yeung rather than going for glory himself, the Korean would have had an open goal, and it was little wonder that Lennon, while absolving Ki, Forrest and Joe Ledley from his general criticism, was particularly unhappy with both of his strikers.

In the second half, after a spell in which Hibs dominated but failed to trouble Fraser Forster in the Celtic goal, Forrest briefly promised to be as dangerous as he had been on Wednesday. Breaking free of his twin jailers on the right, he fired in a left-foot shot which rattled the crossbar.

Hibs could have been rattled too if that 64th-minute move had been followed up by any sustained onslaught, but even the introduction of three substitutes failed to shake Celtic out of their lethargy. Encouraged by memories of their last-gasp winner at Parkhead in January 2010, the Edinburgh side played with more confidence the longer the game went on, and Ivan Sproule, on for Junior Agogo, looked livelier than any of Celtic’s replacements. The last half-chance, in stoppage time, fell to Mark Wilson, but the captain could do no more than tap on a Georgios Samaras header into the path of Graham Stack.

A winning goal at that stage would have been undeserved, and it was easy to sympathise with the criticism of his squad which Lennon delivered afterwards in his usual articulate and perspicacious fashion. But, while there is no denying the manager’s ability to explain his team’s problems, there remains serious doubt about his ability to solve them.