Neil Lennon's Celtic recruitment not the cause of form

The last time the Celtic support took to their numbers and got the spray cans out was when the bank was threatening to turn out lights that had nothing to do with the metaphorical kind.

Back then when the Tennents’ Sixes trophy was Celtic’s Petrofac Cup, the off-field mismanagement was married to bleak despondency on the park. Support dwindled; in 1993-94 Celtic’s average league attendance was just 22,637, almost a third of their current capacity.

If the slick and corporate operation that is Celtic PLC feels far removed from that time - and a trophy cabinet groaning under the weight it holds would suggest there are significant differences - those figures still illustrate just what happens when there is disconnect between those running and those supporting.

In that respect Monday’s statement felt like an attempt at an olive branch from the club to those who have been vocal over the last month about the protracted nature of Neil Lennon’s situation.

Reiterating that Lennon will be given time to attempt to claw back ground in the title race, the club were keen to remove themselves from any allegations of "self-entitlement” towards the support.

The noise, though, is unlikely to dissipate.

It will take only a slip against Kilmarnock this weekend and groundhog day will roll back round again. Fail to beat Hearts, now a Championship side, at Hampden the weekend after in the Scottish Cup final and you might as well send in Kate Adie to cover the carnage that will follow.

Among the most surprised at the support might be Lennon himself. There has been a woebegone look about the Celtic manager with the words still defiant but increasingly without conviction.

The pressure is absolute.

The club feels as though it is suspended in time. An adrenalin shot may well have been delivered with the arrival of a new manager, or it could well have come with a thumping win from the current regime that suggested no-one was going to go gently.

Neither have arrived and the current malaise feels like a state of limbo.

The idea, though, that the board have “been asleep at the wheel” when it comes to investment into the squad is little more than an urban myth.

By all means call out the recruitment strategy and ask questions of Nick Hammond and how the scouting network operates. The players who have arrived this summer may yet come good in time and in a more confident team but so far they have fallen well short of what was expected, particularly given the money that was spent.

Odsonne Edouard will recoup Celtic their money and then some, even with a big PSG sell-on clause, there has been a lack of imagination and scope in recent signings which is little to do with price-tags and more about the identification of talent.

Who makes the final call on signings? Is it the manager or is the head of recruitment?

To suggest a lack of investment skewers the reality.

Celtic’s current wage bill stands annually at £54 million. Criticism that such an expensively assembled squad cannot beat a Ross County or a St Johnstone side whose resources are paltry in comparison is both deserved and irrefutable. But that the money might not have been spent well is different to the allegation that money has not been spent at all.

In broad terms, Celtic’s failure to get into the group stages of the Champions League is often offset by the sale of a player before the closure of the transfer window.

There was no such sale this summer as the club held on their most valuable asset, Edouard, a move that has arguably caused more problems than it solved.

The striker’s form is best described as indifferent with flashes of his capability glimpsed only fleetingly this season. But he is not alone in that respect as the wheels have come off.

Celtic’s form has been brought into sharp focus by not just the consistency of Rangers but the manner of it too. Teams are ransacked and swept aside with the Ibrox side adopting a cloak of invincibility that Celtic wore only recently; prior to Covid hitting in March, Lennon was on course to break the 100-point barrier with Celtic.

Such days must feel a long way away for all in the midst of the current Parkhead crisis.

Women’s football has had to fight tooth and nail for the coverage it gets in the media.

It has come a long way since the days when a picture of a woman in a football kit making it into the paper had to be the titillating kind; skin-tight strip, make-up done and perched on the knee (!) or arm of a high-profile player.

It has some distance still to go but there have been inarguable strides made, helped hugely by the national team and their involvement at the European Championships and then the World Cup.

But if the women’s game is to become more than an exercise in box-ticking and a patronising look at its events, the there has to be an understanding that equality comes in all forms.

Football is an unforgiving landscape. There has to be hard questions asked when there are failures and the unpalatable nature of what follows at times has to be accepted.

Had John McGinn or Andy Robertson called into question the “professionalism” of the national team in the immediate aftermath of the country, as top seeds, failing to make it out of the group and with two games still to play, there would be back page headlines and phone-ins dedicated to a forensic examination of what had gone wrong for days on end.

The same kind of examination needs to come now.