adminCeltic seem set to move on from Martin O’Neill – but is favourite Neil Lennon really the right choice for their next manager?
You can only assume that Martin O’Neill never took to the quiet life after he retired back in 2019. After all, if he wanted peace and tranquillity, he would never have agreed to thrust himself back into the madhouse of Glaswegian football. Unfortunately for him, then, he might be shown the door soon enough – after three successive defeats, two of them to Rangers, Celtic look increasingly likely to search for someone else to occupy the hottest seat in Scotland.
Just 12 games ago, O’Neill won the Premiership with a dramatic last-day victory over an ambitious Hearts side that had threatened to disrupt the Old Firm’s longstanding duopoly. But Celtic managers are often judged not by their most recent success, but by their most recent humiliation. Between the collapse against LASK in Champions League qualifying and 1-0 and 3-0 defeats to their old rivals, O’Neill has now overseen several embarrassments since the title triumph. That usually means trouble.
The question seems to be when O’Neill will depart rather than if, but that itself raises an obvious follow-up question: Who will take over? If the bookmakers have the right idea, the answer might raise some eyebrows – because Neil Lennon has been installed as the frontrunner for the position.
Why bringing Neil Lennon back would be a mistake for Celtic
Dealing in absolutes is rarely a smart idea when discussing football. So often, players seemingly destined for stardom fade away, and unheralded managers turn out to be inspired appointments – but it’s extremely difficult to see how Lennon could possibly be the best option once O’Neill heads back towards retirement.
Lennon is a Celtic legend and has overseen some outstanding successes during his previous two spells in charge at Parkhead – but by the standards of modern football, his achievements, which include five Premiership titles, are distant history.
There is a good reason that Lennon was sacked in February 2021, with Celtic a huge 18 points behind Rangers as they endured one of the worst title defences in living memory. There is a good reason that he lasted just seven months at Omonia Nicosia after that, and only three months in Romania with Rapid Bucharest. There is a reason that those are the only two jobs he was able to secure between 2021 and 2025, when he took charge at Dunfermline.
Lennon has, by most reasonable standards, done a solid job at his current club. He inherited a relegation battle, kept his team afloat, and then guided them to a thoroughly respectable fourth-place finish last season. It’s been something of a boost for his reputation in many ways, but one has to wonder whether the manager of the fourth-best side in the Championship is the best that Celtic can do.
Especially when everything went so spectacularly wrong last time around. The question raised by the idea of bringing him back goes like this: What’s changed since 2021? How has he developed as a coach and as a tactician? Why would it be any different now? That’s three different questions dressed in a trench coat, admittedly, but they all require one answer and it’s difficult to see why anyone at Celtic would be entirely convinced by any response Lennon could offer.
The idea of reappointing Lennon seems especially unusual given that Celtic are currently experiencing the consequences of turning to a blast from the past whose ideas were perhaps a little outdated. Lennon is nearly 20 years younger than O’Neill, admittedly, but he doesn’t give the impression of being a coach at the cutting edge. He’d be a hire based on history, sentiment, and the belief that he’d kick some backsides back into shape. Maybe he would – but it didn’t work for O’Neill, at least for any sustained period.
Lennon isn’t the only candidate for the Celtic job – but makes a strange favourite
What Celtic really seem to need isn’t an old warhorse to come in and knock some heads together, but a more modern coach who knows how to handle the high press – because the current squad certainly can’t.
Recent results owe plenty to poor recruitment over the course of several seasons, but also to a lack of technical quality and tactical intelligence in the side. It’s something that appears against the lesser lights of the Premiership, and which becomes glaringly obvious against teams who are even slightly more organised.
A few names are being discussed, most of them coming with question marks of one sort or another: Shaun Maloney, Robbie Keane, even Thomas Frank. Coaches who have inconsistent track records, or who have performed well but done so in unusual corners of the footballing globe. Just how much do you trust a good spell in the Israeli league, really?
What it all comes down to is finding a coach who has the right ideas and who can communicate them to the squad. A coach who understands the strategic rhythm of the modern game at the highest level. A coach who can piece a poorly assembled squad together into a cohesive unit, ideally with methods which are more current than making them run laps after a mistake in training.
Maybe that’s Maloney, although if he would be the right choice one must wonder why he isn’t having a more positive influence on results already as O’Neill’s assistant. Maybe that’s Keane, although heaven knows how his work in Hungary would translate. Maybe it’s Frank, despite the mess he made of the Tottenham Hotspur job. Maybe it’s a lesser-known coach working their way up through the ranks the hard way.
And yes, maybe it’s Lennon. Stranger things have happened and more unlikely stars have aligned. But returning to Lennon for a third tilt at the job feels a little bit desperate – and reeks of a board running short of ideas.
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