NEIL Lennon’s vow to plug the leaks coming out of Parkhead when he was officially unveiled as the new full-time Celtic manager on Friday afternoon seemed slightly unusual at the time.

Yes, some of the players who the treble treble winners have been monitoring in recent months, like Charlton striker Joe Aribo and West Brom midfielder Rakeem Harper, had made it into the public domain.

But stories about who could be arriving in the East End of Glasgow are nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Such reports are commonplace at this time of year. Very often they originate from agents or the selling club. So why the concern?

“There’s a lot of speculation,” said Lennon. “I want to keep a lid on it. I want to stop the leaks as the place has been like a sieve. We’ll do our business and quietly and as quickly as we can.”

The Northern Irishman’s eagerness to keep their intentions in-house is perfectly understandable now.

A document detailing potential arrivals and departures has this week been posted on internet messageboards and social media websites causing much annoyance and acute embarrassment to Celtic and very possibly doing serious damage to their impending and important squad rebuild.

The Parkhead hierarchy have launched an internal investigation into how the three page synopsis of a recruitment meeting back in April made it online and are treating the matter as a criminal offence.

The fact the documents show that several Celtic players who are currently under contract could be sold or sent out on loan was no great surprise. Under Brendan Rodgers the size of the first team pool, not to mention the wage bill, increased substantially. It was well known that they needed to offload dead wood as well as slash the money they are paying out to footballers who are contributing little if anything.

But what an unfortunate way for those individuals who might be moved on in the weeks ahead to learn their fate. It would have been far better if they had discovered what the future held by being informed personally.

How will they feel if, as could conceivably happen, there are no interested suitors and they have to remain in Scotland? It is a regrettable situation.

However, it is having no fewer than 10 of the targets their former head of recruitment Lee Congerton, who joined Rodgers down at Leicester City last month, had identified before he left made known which will be most vexing for Celtic. That could complicate their efforts to bring them on board during the close season.

Lennon - who had, along with his assistant manager John Kennedy and first team coach Damien Duff, watched the players who Congerton and his team had identified while he was in charge on an interim basis - has previously expressed confidence that Celtic will be better in the 2019/20 campaign.

But these documents being freely available on cyberspace will alert clubs in England and around Europe to who they are keen on. If they see an outfit who have ambitions to return to the Champions League next season are tracking someone in a position they want to fill then they could very well be tempted to take a look themselves.

Celtic have an impressive track record in the transfer market. They have repeatedly bought young players with potential from down south and abroad for affordable fees, developed their abilities over time, given them a platform to showcase their skills and then sold them on for significant profits. Moussa Dembele, Fraser Forster, Virgil van Dijk and Victor Wanyama, to name just four, have all been resounding success stories.

Their long-standing and shrewd business model has enabled them to dominate domestically and compete on the continent while remaining in the red in what is, with the big money on offer in England due to their superior broadcasting deal, an increasingly difficult climate for them to operate in.

Their annual results showed they had made over £100 million in revenue and had £27 million in the bank when they were released back in September.

But their sterling work in the transfer market has undoubtedly been aided by confidentiality. If it had become common knowledge that Celtic, a club who have unearthed a few gems in recent times, were tracking Van Dijk back in 2013 would they have been able to land him from Groningen in the Netherlands for just £2.6 million? Would they have secured the services of the Dutch defender at all?

Clubs in England, France, Italy, Germany and Spain and other wealthier European leagues could very easily have outbid them if they had got wind of their interest.

The quality of players the leaked transfer document show that Celtic have been looking at, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have been ridiculed by many in the past couple of days. But was anyone raving about Dembele, Forster and Wanyama when they came in? They fit their signing policy.

Celtic are currently looking for a replacement for Congerton as head of recruitment – suggestions that John Park, who held the position before, will return have abounded – and there have been persistent rumours that a director of football role could be created.

Whoever comes in must, along with Lennon and chief executive Peter Lawwell, make shoring up leaks a priority if they are to maintain their dominance of Scottish football, flourish in Europe and balance their books after this detrimental episode.