Has Lennon lost just a match or the Celtic dressing room?

Perhaps moods have calmed overnight and Sunday brings a more reflective rather than angry review of Celtic and manager Neil Lennon’s situation. Even so, questions remain unanswered.

Social media comments from Celtic fans and others after the Saturday debacle were sore, hurt and angry. They pointed fingers at Lennon’s abilities and questioned whether he is the man for the job. In the end it all comes down to three main questions.

Has Neil Lennon lost the plot? The dressing room? Or a match?

There are many views that Lennon is not up to the job. Observations are made about his arm folded, sat in dugout position through most of the match. He seemed to show as little appetite for the match as the players on the pitch. There wasn’t any obvious tactical or positional guidance being offered during the game.

Celtic fans want a leader, at times Lennon provides that, but during Saturday’s game it wasn’t apparent. It’s now the third consecutive game where Steven Gerrard’s tactics and players have got the better of Lennon, and yet he hasn’t seemed to learn or adapt.

Other stories and comments reflected on his other coaching abilities. Does Lennon lead the coaching and training sessions or are those left more to Gavin Strachan and John Kennedy? Are the players and perhaps even the management team in need of more direction?

If Lennon has distanced himself from the squad, and that’s quite possible given lockdown scenarios and changed training routines, then it’s usually a lost cause and hard to get back. The biggest factor backing the point is the inability of the team to appear motivated into producing better performances.

There is a further more balanced point to be made that it’s not all doom and gloom. Celtic have lost a match, one battle not the whole war. If the game in hand can be won, then the points position at this point in the season isn’t disastrous nor unrecoverable by any means.

Without doubt team selection issues were a factor yesterday. Celtic’s squad has depth but the combination of players unavailable for the game was quite significant. There may not have been too many alternative options to the line up which started. That doesn’t fully answer questions about how poorly that combination performed other than it being an unusual line up less familiar with playing together.

Has he lost the plot? Lennon is capable of better than yesterday, he can deliver results and turned things around after a similar abject defeat last December. His agent Martin Reilly took to Twitter on Saturday in defence of Lennon.

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Has he lost the dressing room? There doesn’t appear to be any obvious signs of revolts. The post Ferencvaros rant about players wanting to go perhaps didn’t help for whoever it was aimed at. It may have helped rally others who we’re staying or had joined recently.

As a way forward, the players need to pull together and respond. Leaders and characters like Scott Brown, Callum McGregor, Christopher Jullien, Shane Duffy all need to play a part here. We also need to see others buckle down and do what they are there and paid for, Leigh Griffiths and Olivier Ntcham for example. And ideally have Odsonne Edouard recovered, fit, well and back on form.

Lennon definitely lost the match, players on the pitch need to take responsibility but the set up was odd, the desire was missing, instructions looked to be in place for the likes of Frimpong not to advance forward, not to take his man on. Features like that in Celtic’s play were missing. It cannot be acceptable to have such poor performance and lack of attempts at goal. Lennon has responsibilities there for sure. But we’ll also now see the focus switching on to the players more today. Ntcham for one will get attention.

The inquest isn’t over, fresh action does need to be taken, it’s unlikely to be a replacement manager at this point. The next squad meeting and training session could be very interesting. For now, however angry or hurt, ‘Keep the Faith’ seems a sensible message. Celtic have a particularly busy and important period coming up and will need the fans support, virtual and online or otherwise.