Monday 17 October 2011

In Lennon I Still Trust!

For the last two months I have flitted between faith, anger, hope, disinterest, optimism and uncontrollable pessimism while watching the team that I love stumble and stagger through the early stages of the season like a primed boxer who has suffered a headshot which has turned his legs to jelly. It’s been in a word ‘horrific’ and it hasn’t looked liked getting any better. I’ve sought solace in the words of fellow fans hoping for grains of comforts in the dark hours after a disappointing performance, I’ve read through the majority of blogs in the hope of finding answers and for a good while there I found comfort in them, I agreed with them all, it is all down to the board, we deserve the best players but the manager is being manipulated by these evil dictators that wouldn’t look out of place in North Korea. I agreed that each and every one of us, are part of the greatest support in the world and that we deserve success because of the part that we play. After the defeat to Hearts I started to agree that Lennon isn’t the man for the job, he’s naive, inexperienced, scared to make the BIG calls and tactically inept, I found throughout all of these feelings I only needed to switch  on my phone to twitter and I could get these feelings validated.
Then two things happened.
Firstly my five year old daughter commented on life in general to me in the car by stating “Good things only happen when you believe” as she gazed up at the stars in the night time sky and secondly in a moment of clarity later on that evening as I read through my twitter timeline I realised ‘Misery loves company’.
I questioned myself that night on the reasons why I support Celtic and on why I could place so much faith in Neil Lennon and the answers for me and me alone were as follows
1. I support Celtic because I love Celtic. Throughout any success or failure in my own life they have always been there. I get low I pop on a Celtic DVD. I become successful in something I stick on the Celtic tunes and party. Quite simply I AM CELTIC and CELTIC IS ME.

2. The principles of the support identify me ‘FAITHFUL THROUGH AND THROUGH’ Stand against oppression and know how to enjoy yourself!
3. I don’t judge my own life by success and I’ve never judged Celtic by the trophy cabinet. Personally I enjoy the good times in my life to the fullest and work ten times harder during the bad times.  This is the theory I attached to supporting Celtic as a bhoy, I guess it helps that I was born supporting Celtic during desperate times but the majority of older fans I speak with from years back say the same thing ‘If yer in it for the silver, go support the Huns fir yill never beat a true Celtic man’s spirit’
4. I support Neil Lennon because when he was appointed I felt differently to how I had felt about previous appointments. I had the sense that we had a man at the helm who wanted the same as the support. A man who wouldn’t leave us and would rebuild us into what we once were, I didn’t expect it to happen overnight, I saw it as a long term project, this excited me as for once it didn’t feel like an all or nothing appointment it felt like finally we were all in agreement that this was the time to rebuild and grow together as a support and as a team. Last season Neil Lennon gave us all a glimpse of what it could be like, what it WILL be like if we stay the course.
5. I support Neil Lennon because he is an emerging manager with great potential. Yes he has made mistakes and you can be damn sure he will make more but that is part of the process of becoming successful. You learn from it and whether you choose to believe it or not Neil Lennon is learning from his mistakes but if we don’t stand strong in the bad times with him we will never see the progress being made and his potential become realised.
6. I support Neil Lennon because he makes the big calls! It may not seem like it but he does, Lenny has had a large section of support pinning the blame directly on him for the tactics he has employed yet yesterday proved to me as a supporter that yes I personally still would like to see a change in formation but regardless of the tactics used if you have 2 or 3 ‘egos’ in your team who clearly think they’re bigger than the club your tactics go out the window. This also leads on to management of players. Some I’m sure will say that if that is the case then Lenny should have confronted the problem players earlier but would Lennon have been right to call out Kayal and Hooper as trouble makers earlier in the season when arguably Beram and Gary alongside Kris Commons are the main fan favourites and their lack of spark could easily be explained by their agents as ‘early season dips in form’ therefore allowing Lennon’s detractors to accuse him of not being loyal to his best players? What Lennon has done is shrewd he has shown guile and wisdom by playing the problem players  until they expose themselves  to the Celtic faithful thus ensuring there can be no illusions, no counter claims in newspaper articles from ego driven players and agents and no hiding place for them behind the criticism levelled at Neil Lennon. They have been exposed and now they have to react and I’m sure if Lennon doesn’t see the reaction that he desires then these players will be punted in January with the full backing of the club and the support!
Quick point on Beram Kayal do a bit of googling on his new agent Pini Zahavi and you will understand why Beram is acting like a prick for want of a better word!
Getting back on point, we live in a world with an ‘I want, I get’ mentality! This culture has been seeping into football like a virus since the dawn of the 90’s and Celtic are not immune to it. We have become ‘expectant fans’ rather than ‘hungry for success fans’ we expect to win every game, we expect to win every tournament we enter and when we don’t we wield the axe on the failures who have not delivered with stunning regularity. So I have to ask when did we as a club, as a support receive this divine right to win everything. When did we acquire this mentality of ‘deserving success without effort’ Success isn’t bought and paid for, it’s achieved through consistency, hard work, determination, development and perseverance. We experienced good times in the early to mid naughties but in two stark contrasting fashions. One was the ‘splash the cash experience under O’Neil’ that wielded direct results from day one, the other was the direct result of paying for the ‘splash the cash experience’ which was the ‘living by our means and developing a team’ under Strachan. We all may have enjoyed it more under O’Neil but we were more successful under Strachan. Since this period of continued success but more importantly prior to it we have been a confused club and its time we as supporters took responsibility for our part in it. It seems like whenever we go through bad times with a team we automatically demand change and expect instant success as a result, when it doesn’t go to plan we blame the board for the lack of quality on the pitch then we attack the manager and demand he resigns or is fired. What we are experiencing now isn’t anything new we’ve been doing it since 1990!
Yes I know the board are to blame for everything from Hitler to Osama Bin Laden according to some but you know what, you aren’t telling us anything that we don’t already know!
As bad as the board are they are also the ones that sanction the moves for the players that you do adore and approve of, they have changed managers that didn’t bring you success, they have sold entire squads to appease new managers, they have listened to the mood of the support during the bad times and acted on it, which for me is their biggest crime because constant change leads to instability and anger, when what we need is stability, the type of stability that brings consistent success. I hate Rangers and everything they stand for but in truth they stick by their managers through good and bad while we chop and change and the results are crystal clear they are more successful when it comes to a trophy count. (Yes a little part of me died inside writing that but there you go).
We proclaim to be a ‘family’ we are not, families stick together through thick and thin and endure the bad times because they know together the good times will be better for it. In reality were more ‘the oldest swinger in town’ constantly seeking love, thinking we’ve found it then throwing it away when it lets us down, never actually stopping to think of the part we play in the failure of the relationship because there always seems to be a sexy alternative that will surely deliver and match our needs.
I’m tired of all the constant change that happens at Celtic then the inevitable new burst of excitement when we hire a new manager who signs new player after new player who is photographed standing with scarf aloft inside paradise ready to become an idol of our own making when he only see’s us as a stepping stone to the EPL or worse a place to warm his arse on the bench for the entirety of his contract. I’m tired of all the doom and gloom merchants telling me ‘it’s the board’s fault’ then shouting anyone down who disagrees with their opinion. I’m tired of reading blogs about why Lennon is tactically inept and he should have adopted this or that approach from people who are seriously beginning to believe their own hype in a faceless cyber world. It’s time to be brave and change mentality as a support, let’s see the storm through and witness the new dawn we all wished for when Lennon took charge only 18 months ago, lets stand up for Lennon and the bhoys who want to be there and show them that they have our belief and faith and that we want THIS team to be successful. Let’s just support rather than judge! LET’S EARN OUR SUCCESS!!!
I am 100% behind Neil Lennon, I have stated some of the reasons as to why on here and could continue till my fingers hurt from typing. To put it simply my daughter summed it up better than any other could…
‘Good things only happen when you believe”
I believe in Neil Lennon
I believe in Celtic
I believe in the Celtic faithful.
@AngusSunblest reporting for Total Celtic aboard the good ship SixtySevenLive.