As the manager of Celtic, Neil Lennon is in a position unlike any other in the footballing world. In just his first managerial role, the former club captain has been thrust into one of the most high profile jobs in Britain and one of two big jobs in Scotland. The post-match comments of Lennon and his Old Firm counterpart Walter Smith set the footballing debate in Scotland until the next round of important fixtures and, depending on what the discussion is, Celtic and Rangers fans will simply toe the line of their managers without drawing opinions of their own.
Regardless of what else goes on during the footballing weekend north of the border, the stage belongs to the men in charge of Celtic and Rangers to dictate the subject of conversations for newspapers, magazines and blog sites as well as the men enjoying a pint down their local.
If Lennon chooses to single out a specific player as the greatest to ever wear the famous Hoops, it can be assumed that the journalists of the Daily Record will probably fall over themselves to reasonably argue in the affirmative of such a statement. If he were to lambast a player for a poor performance, their career in Scottish football can be done and dusted within a week, not only in print but in the minds of the fans watching on.
Similarly, if Neil Lennon describes Dougie McDonald’s decision to reverse his awarding of a penalty to the Glasgow team as “another strange decision that has gone against us in the last six to eight months” then you can guarantee a host of fans will have the same opinion even if they were doing something else at the time of the game.
Speaking to the BBC after Celtic defeated Dundee United 2-1 on October 17th, Lennon slated the SFA official for changing his mind: “The referee was adamant it was a penalty. If he has made the decision he shouldn’t really have to be overturned by his linesman. It’s very rare you see that happen. I thought Dougie had a far better position and look at it than the linesman.”
The decision has since proved to be correct. It wasn’t a penalty and the fact that referee McDonald changed his mind didn’t have a direct outcome on the game. Celtic still won the game and claimed three points. Dundee still lost and didn’t get any.
Despite that, the linesman for the game, Steven Craven, has quit his position with the Scottish Football Association despite not having a significant bearing on the decision being reversed. McDonald walked over to Craven and spoke to him but it was the referee himself that corrected his mistake. In statements released since the game, it has been confirmed that Dougie McDonald had already changed his mind by the time he spoke to Craven.
Regardless, Craven’s career as a top flight official has been ended due to the heavy pressure heaped on him by Neil Lennon and the many fans, whether Lennon likes it or not, who take his opinion to be their own.
Of course, there is a jump between the Celtic manager being annoyed by losing a penalty and death threats being sent to and phoned into Craven’s home but the post-match interview is where it starts. A warped sense of acting as a soldier for the football club on behalf of your leading Army General, and Steven Craven is left fearing for his life.
Now, I’m not saying that Neil Lennon can be held accountable for every Celtic fan, especially the ones that choose to act in that way, but considering the abuse he took as a Northern Ireland international, he must have known not to fuel the situation.
In the build-up to last weekend’s Old Firm game, Lennon should have left the referee well alone. Ignore the questions. Refuse to answer. Whatever it takes to diffuse the situation. He shouldn’t have followed it up by heaping even more pressure onto Willie Collum. Days before the 31-year-old took charge of his first Old Firm derby, Lennon pretty much guaranteed a contentious decision when he spoke to the Guardian.
“It’s a difficult one for him,” the Celtic manager said. “You know, considering the recent history of controversial decisions that have gone against us in these games, I just hope he has a good day and we’re not talking about him after the game. I just hope he gets the big decisions right.”
With that kind of pressure weighing on Collum’s mind, he was always liable to get something wrong. He won’t have meant to, but sadly he handed Rangers a penalty when it is painfully obvious that he didn’t see it properly. Caught out of position with his attention elsewhere, it sounds reasonable to me that Willie Collum thought it easier to simply award the penalty for fear of being attacked over ‘bottling’ a big decision rather than leaving it alone.
In the end, the decision didn’t affect the outcome of the game. Rangers won the game 3-1. If Celtic had scored a consolation goal then maybe Lennon could be vindicated in criticising Collum’s decision but like Dougie McDonald’s penalty reversal at Tannadice, it ultimately did not change the numbers of points that both teams ended the game with. Regardless, Lennon said, “I have problems with my team but you have to get the big decisions right. I’ll be asking for an explanation”.
Naturally, the Celtic manager is doing what he can to deflect attention away from the toothless performance that his men turned in during the biggest game of their season so far. Rather than focusing on the many failings that his squad showed, Lennon is diverting attention away from the below-standard Celtic squad. Like Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho managed in England as they lead Manchester United and Chelsea, Neil Lennon has attempted to use the decisions to develop a siege mentality around his team. Get them to believe that they are all banded together, taking on the world, and they’ll go far.
Sadly, he has done it in the wrong way. One official has already walked away from the game; a young official with a bright future at that. There isn’t an infinite line of youngsters queuing up to have bricks thrown through their windows because they might get a decision wrong.
The pressure and abuse that is levied at referees has to stop and it has to stop at the very top. If it means Neil Lennon is censored, so be it. It’s no longer acceptable for managers to undermine the referees and their assistants for a single decision. If the most talented officials available are being forced to quit in the face of public pressure, then their replacements can’t be seen to be improvements.
When asking about Collum’s performance on Sunday, Neil Lennon immediately said, “He has got a lot of questions to answer.” Unfortunately, Neil, so do you.
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Tags: Celtic, Dougie McDonald, Neil Lennon, Rangers, Scottish Premier League, Steven Craven
Well, what to say? So many paragraphs, so many mistakes, inaccuracies & grammatical errors…
In the wake of Craven’s recent interview with a Sunday tabloid in Scotland, this ‘article’ just becomes a parody of poorly written fan pieces masquerading as journalism.
Nice story, you should read this one though: http://celticquicknews.co.uk/?p=3729#comments
@McPhumper
Do impart your wisdom on the English language. I’d also be interested in how this is “masquerading as journalism”.
Actually, I wouldn’t.
@twofootedtackle listening to latest pod. Would like to hear next week’s apologise for the garbage about an “official retiring because of death threats”. Mr. Craven has stated he received nothing of the sort. He retired because his bosses hung him out to dry and because of a massive cover-up. I do enjoy the pod, but it’s a shame these kind of baseless accusations, clearly based on third-hand knowledge, are made.
@Daniel Matthews
While I appreciate your point, you need to recognise that this website, the podcast and everything connected with either is contributed for free and at significant personal cost in terms of both time and money. Therefore we won’t be apologising to you or anyone else. The podcast is not a request show and you have absolutely no right to demand an apology for anything, regardless of whether or not an error was made.
In fact, we won’t be covering Scottish football again. Well done.
Wow.
While the hard work put into both the podcast and the site is appreciated, it does not entitle you to make slanderous comments. As a fan, I have EVERY right to ask, that’s ASK for an apology not “demand”, as you decided it was acceptable to report that Celtic fans issued death threats to an assistant referee which caused him his livelihood. This is false.
You are like everyone else entitled to an opinion but as we are talking about cold, hard facts here this is not the issue.
I’m pretty disappointed with your response given that I do enjoy the podcast but if you cannot behave with some integrity and want to spit the dummy out then perhaps it’s best Scottish football isn’t discussed in future, especially if the standard of discussion is of the level produced last week.
Kind Regards.
I’m not saying we are entitled to make slanderous comments. We are more than open to being corrected, and we might well have entertained the idea of including a correction in next week’s show.
I am sorry that you are disappointed with my response, I agree that it was over the top. However, while I welcome constructive criticism or correction, I feel that asking for an apology was a step too far. Asking for an apology is how you deal with paid, professional journalists and broadcasters.
We’re amateurs. We make mistakes, we miss facts and, sometimes, key developments in stories outside our comfort zone (we cover Scottish football because we feel it deserves to be covered) get past us. If we’re corrected, we thank people - I didn’t feel that was the tone of your comment.
I apologise for my reaction, I’m sorry (lowercase ‘s’) for getting our comments wrong on the podcast last week. But there will not be an apology on the podcast. If we did that every time we made a mistake there’d be no point in the show. I’m actually beginning to think that might be the case anyway.
I appreciate your point about paid journalists/broadcasters and appreciate you taking the time to respond.
It’s so frustrating to hear non-Scottish press pick up on the tat that some elements of the media up here spin, especially as a large percentage of listeners to the podcast will hear that and take it as gospel. That said, my original comment was pretty reactionary and I apologise for that.
I do hope nobody listens to us and takes anything as gospel. We don’t have the inside line at all and we *do* rely on what is sometimes almost inevitably spin. The way this story developed left sites like this vulnerable in that sense.
Daniel,
Just a bit of context, regarding the discussion about the podcast. It was a last-minute insertion, at my prompting, so the pod wasn’t as well briefed as it normally would have been.
I listened back on Friday, so it’s a little hazy in my mind, but it did strike me at the time that the Willie Collum and Steven Craven situations got a little muddled in the discussion. I know they’re slightly different situations - Collum got death threats, while Craven retired.
However, there is one fairly main point, which I think still stands: Officials shouldn’t be forced into premature retirement and certainly shouldn’t have to deal with death threats for attempting to keep order in the game. Also, Neil Lennon really should know better.
Back to the pod, next time I ask to put in an extra topic, I’ll make sure the guests have enough advance notice, other than five seconds beforehand (we’re usually quite prepared otherwise). I dislike errors and inaccuracies as much as the next man.
And that’s the diplomatic answer.
Gary, I take your point on the last-minute nature of the discussion.
The official tendered his resignation because he was, and this is a direct quote, “For a while I felt I had been a victim of harassment and bullying from them [Hugh Dallas and John Fleming (the SFA referee development officer)]. A lot of guys are not happy with it and are ready to walk away.”
I agree officials shouldn’t be forced into early retirement. This issue has nothing to do with Celtic.
As for Willie Collum, if indeed he has been subjected to death threats then that is a disgrace. I would contest the accuracy of these reports as there are no quotes from Collum himself to support them. The only source here is Darryl Broadfoot, who is the SFA’s Communications Manager. He also happens to be a journalist that has spent the past fortnight conducting a smear campaign against Celtic on both radio and in print by accusing them of being responsible for the aforementioned Steven Craven’s resignation, which has since been made absolutely clear to be an internal issue between the official and the SFA, nothing to do with Celtic. Mr. Broadfoot is employed by the SFA, who are desperately trying to deflect attention from the cover-up by shifting the blame onto Celtic, despite the official himself absolving Celtic of any blame. It should also be noted Hearts released a statement at the weekend asking for more transparency from officials:
http://www.heartsfc.co.uk/articles/20101031/hearts-call-for-increased-accountability-for-referees_2241384_2202854
As for Neil Lennon, he has done nothing a host of other managers haven’t already done in the past. Walter Smith in a press conference in 2008 lambasted a linesman for chopping off a goal and threw in “Mr Murphy was quick to allow a Scott McDonald goal at Celtic Park last season. And he was quick to disallow that one tonight.”.
Jose Mourinho has said himself the game doesn’t begin at kick-off, it begins in press conferences days before. That it doesn’t end at full-time, that the post-match media interviews are part of the game.
Yes, sadly, the are. And when did any good ever come from them, alas, other than cheap, quick and easy lines?
I don’t think referees should be above criticism. But I think many managers should know a lot better, and act accordingly. And that includes Walter Smith, Neil Lennon, and any other manager north or south of the border.
I think more than anyone, Lennon is aware of the unique position he holds - two Rangers fans were jailed for assaulting him in the street, knocking him unconscious. He’s had death-threats - not from pished neds, but proper ones with code words for “loyalist” (sic) paramilitiaries following his switch to Celtic.
Houston’s post-match rant against McDonald was more extreme than anything Lennon said.
The facts are - match refs and linesmen lied to Lennon’s face and to the public about a contentious decision (one of MANY that day in Dundee), the chief of scottish refs was complicit in those lies (he was told post match the truth but spun the lie the following day), the SFA held an inquiry, discovered the lies and let everyone off scot free (no pun intended). The only person who has fallen on their sword is someone who felt they were being bullied and forced out of the game (nada to do with Celtic as has been shown) - the exact inverse of the “young official with a bright future” you suggested - where did you get that from?.
The fact that the decision “didn’t affect the course of the game” or course it did! It was a penalty not given. It gave fresh impetus to Dundee Untd and knocked the stuffing out of Celtic for a good period. The fact we won makes this the best time to question decisions - otherwise it’s sour grapes - we can’t win ! Well some would like us not to…
All these issues, and you would have Lennon in the dock?
Gary - you are right - officials should not be forced into retirement - they should be SACKED for gross misconduct and bringing the game into disrepute. Referees must have the trust of the game - teams, managers, fans - and if they abuse that trust and their position they should be sacked. I am asking you directly - would these shenanigans be tolerated in England?
[...] with the now usual recaps of the SPL matches, I also produced a piece on Neil Lennon’s responsibilities as Celtic manager. Of course, it has since been proved that what I wrote was so wrong its painful to read back [...]