Celtic ‘spent more time laughing than preparing’ as rivals Rangers conquer nine-in-a-row run
Celtic and Rangers have long since dominated Scottish football. For the last thirty-six years running the Scottish league title has been shared between them, and that hasn’t changed this season.
What is changing is whose decade of dominance is coming to an end. Since the 2011/12 season, Celtic have won all nine league titles, five Scottish Cups, and five Scottish League Cups.
Celtic’s aim this season was to win their tenth league title in a row. Celtic and Rangers have both won nine titles in a row in their respective histories, but neither have managed ten. This season was a chance for Celtic to one-up their rivals and get their hands on the coveted crowning achievement. However, they failed.
Talking to Stevie and John, hosts of Glasgow is Green, the official podcast for SB Nation’s Celtic site, The Jersey Doesn’t Shrink, showed how much fans expected the win.
“Celtic were in an excellent position to achieve ten in a row, or so we thought at least,” the duo tell Just Football.
The dream officially died on March 7th, when Celtic drew a must-win game against Dundee United, handing Rangers their 55th league title.
🏆 We Are Rangers
🏆 We Are Champions#Champion55 pic.twitter.com/UjiBguexfe
— Rangers Football Club (@RangersFC) March 7, 2021
So, where did it go wrong?
Lennon runs out of steam
Football is a results-based industry. If results don’t come then owners will usually make changes. Often, that first change is a managerial one.
Lennon has been a familiar face at Celtic Park since 2000, when he first signed for the club. Funnily enough, his first season saw him become a part of the team that denied Rangers their tenth league title in a row.
Lennon instantly became a beloved player at Celtic, with his technical ability and dynamism in midfield as well as his aggression and passion. In a seven-year playing career at Celtic he won eleven trophies and captained the club in his final two years.
After a robust playing career he retired and became manager in 2010, winning five trophies before leaving to manage in the Championship.
Five years later he returned, replacing Brendan Rodgers. His first two seasons back reinstilled the love the fans had for him during his playing career, with the unparalleled third ‘treble treble’ (the club’s third domestic treble) in 2018/19 and similar success in 2019/20.
This season, however, it started to crumble. Lennon’s tactical knowledge has always been under scrutiny – he’s much more known for his ability to motivate and inspire his players, as well as his development of youngsters.
However, it’s clear that his strengths started to dwindle when long spells of poor results led to failure to qualify for the Champions League group stage, early elimination in the Europa League, fumbling in the second round of the League Cup and overall poor league performances.
Celtic Football Club today announced that Neil Lennon has resigned from his position as Football Manager with immediate effect.
We thank Neil sincerely for all he has done for the club and we wish him every success going forward.
— Celtic Football Club (@CelticFC) February 24, 2021
“[Lennon] did have us playing extremely well in early 2020, albeit against teams we really should have been beating,” said Stevie and John.
“Last season, the major failures such as exiting the Champions League… and the self-inflicted mess that was Copenhagen in the Europa League were signs that Lennon was self-destructing once more and hadn’t learned from the previous mistakes that haunted him.”
The second Old Firm loss of the season in early January was the final straw for most fans. Eventually, he left the club in late February, leaving them 18 points behind Rangers in the title race.
“He saw the shutdown as ‘time off’ instead of preparing the team the best he could in challenging times. Rangers used that time to plan out how they would play next season. We were awarded a title over ZOOM and seemed to spend more time laughing about that than being productive with the team behind the scenes.”
It would be unfair to solely blame Lennon, though. Individual performances all across the pitch have been poor, and signings that aren’t good enough for the club to compete have left them in their current situation.
Scenes at Ibrox as Rangers and Gerrard celebrate winning their first league title in 🔟 years 🥳🎉 pic.twitter.com/WFuMVMSl6H
— 433 (@433) March 7, 2021
Celtic’s current affairs seem to match the club’s major slump in the early nineties. For the past decade, Celtic have dominated, with a stronghold on the league that few teams – Rangers aside – can muster. One need only look at the two rivals’ number of league titles won – Rangers are 55-time champions and Celtic have won it 51 times – to see the dominance. In third is Aberdeen, who have won the league four times.
For Celtic, the only real time they were not a dominant force in Scotland was in the nineties. Financial strife during this era led to a slump so bad it reached the point where they weren’t even the second-best team behind Rangers anymore. In 1991, finishing third behind Aberdeen was seen as an accomplishment, after Celtic finished fifth in 1990 with just ten wins in the 36-game season.
It wasn’t until 1996 that Celtic finally emerged from this dark period to return to the top two of the table, finishing behind Rangers in successive seasons before finally winning their 36th league title in 1998.
Manager merry-go-round
Prior to 1991 Celtic had only ever had seven managers in its history, going all the way back to the club’s inception in 1887. Yet the club seemed to have a revolving door in the manager’s office in the nineties, going from seven managers in 103 years to seven more in a decade.
The worry for Celtic fans is that this season could mark the beginning of a repeat of what happened in the nineties. While the financial issues aren’t as extreme one wonders why Neil Lennon wasn’t backed by the board, especially when they hired him permanently.
Steven Gerrard, who was unveiled as Rangers’ new manager back in 2018, was granted around £24.5 million to spend on new players. While it seemed that Lennon had that same financial backing, with the Celtic board giving him £31 million to work with, the club in the meantime has sold upwards of around £40 million to compensate for these signings. These signings have not made a good enough impact.
Who the board decide to hire as Celtic’s next permanent manager will say a lot about where the club are heading.
While Lennon is a Celtic legend, it became clear towards the end of his tenure that he was struggling badly, and the club were clearly prolonging his sacking. With John Kennedy now caretaker manager until the end of the season it’ll be interesting to see if they decide to hire Kennedy on a permanent basis like they did with Lennon or look for someone more experienced.
“Horrendous feeling”
For Celtic fans, not retaining the league was, of course, heartbreaking, but losing out to Rangers, say Stevie and John, was “crushingly upsetting” and a “horrendous feeling.”
The Old Firm is a rivalry rooted in social and political hostilities. Since their formation, both clubs’ identities have been polar opposites, with Celtic fans predominantly identifying as socialists in an Irish Republicanism and Rangers fans identifying as conservatives in a Northern Irish Unionism.
Celtic will need to bounce back but it may not happen anytime soon. The club’s long-standing chief executive Peter Lawell is also set to depart at the end of the season after 17 years in charge, having overseen 29 trophies during his tenure. Celtic fans are aware that a total rebuild is now necessary, and could take some time.
“It’s been depressing the way it’s crumbled in front of us,” say Stevie and John. “We saw it all coming, but the powers that be at the club have just ignored it.”
“[Rangers have] a settled squad, a winners mentality and Champions League income to bolster them.”
“The rivalry has always been intense, but this year has hammered home just how important it will be to regain our dominance in Glasgow once more and not ever be complacent again while in a position of strength.”
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Words: Yara El-Shaboury | Main image credit: Celtic FC on Twitter
