LAWWELL MAY FOLLOW LENNON OUT OF PARKHEAD

BY ANDY RITCHIE

I WAS spot on when I was the first to reveal that Neil Lennon would be leaving Celtic.

Followers of No Grey Areas were tipped off weeks ago that Lennon was poised to quit. Now I believe a second high profile figure may soon follow Lennon out of Celtic Park – chief executive Peter Lawwell.

The majority shareholder Dermot Desmond wants Roy Keane as Lennon’s successor and I believe that could hasten Lawwell’s departure.

Why do I think that? My gut instinct is that Keane wouldn’t be Lawwell’s preferred choice. Keane doesn’t strike me as the sort who is prepared to compromise and take instructions. I also get the distinct impression that when he sets his mind on doing something, he’s unshakable.

Lennon was Lawwell’s man. Keane is Desmond’s and I suspect there would be an inevitable clash of personalities.

It’s no secret either that Lawwell has been touting himself for high-powered chief executives roles with Premiership clubs. He was keen on the Arsenal job and there have been one or two others.

So, watch this space, and remember who told you first when there are further changes at the top at Celtic.

To be honest, I do think Lawwell really wanted to do more to try to persuade Lennon to stay. I believe he had already made his mind up that next season would be Lennon’s last and it suited him when the manager announced he was quitting.

No great effort was made to persuade Johan Mjallby to stay and it was made clear that other changes were required in the coaching staff, including Garry Parker leaving.

I reckon Lawwell thought the treble was a gimme, given how little pressure there is on Celtic at the moment domestically.

Lawwell expected a clean sweep of honours and losing to Morton in the League Cup and going out of the Scottish Cup to Aberdeen constituted major disappointments.

So, no great effort was made to keep Lennon. Significantly, there has been no gnashing of teeth or wailing from within in the wake of the announcement.

At least that was the feeling I got and I am sure Lennon read all the signs and reacted accordingly.

But if he’s honest with himself, he’ll probably reflect that he should have acted sooner when his stock was at its highest in the wake of Celtic beating Barcelona and qualifying for the last 16 in the Champions League.

If Keane does get the job I expect he’ll shake the place up and the fact that there are no credible challengers to Celtic’s dominance in the SPFL and Rangers are still stumbling around in the wilderness would probably make the transition fairly straightforward.

But while Desmond would be quite happy to see Keane in charge, I don’t think Lawwell would share that feeling.

Lennon was Lawwell’s man and he had to put up with a lot. Keane does not fit into the same category, in my opinion.

But, let’s be perfectly frank, the Honey Monster could move into the Celtic dug-out at the moment and be expected to win the treble.

But,  judging by their initial reaction to the news, whether the fans feel the same way about Keane is a different matter entirely.

FROM HERE TO OBSCURITY

By Andy Ritchie

THE gurus/gorillas at No Grey Areas have asked me to comment on the madness of the traditional managerial shuffle in both England and Scotland.

Well, this particular shuffle threatens to turn into a stampede. It began some weeks ago with the ousting of Malky Mackay at Cardiff and Davie Moyes at Manchester United, and has since gathered momentum.

And just think, we’re only just going into the close season, the traditional time for reassessing positions.

We’ll return to Malky (and his unreserved apology to Cardiff owner Vincent Tan) in a minute. I’m gonna start with one directly out of left field: my forecast is that Guy Poyet will leave Sunderland and go to West Ham.

For that to happen, of course, Sam Allardyce, would have to leave Upton Park. He’s the man, remember, whose name is inevitably on the lips of every chairman who sees his club disappearing down the nearest plughole.

But, since he’s managed to haul West Ham away from that plughole, I suppose he’s sort of expendable. So, enter the impressive Uruguayan, the wizard of Wearside. Well, that’s my reading of the situation - I trust myopia is not overtaking me!

I think that Poyet may have made the decision eight to ten weeks ago, even when he thought that Sunderland had no chance of wiping its feet on the welcome mat of the Premier Division next season. Alongside that, he maybe discovered that this wasn’t the club that he thought it was.

Let’s be circumspect and say he would have suspected that West Ham were looking to make changes, and it went on from there. Anyway, it wouldn’t be the world’s greatest surprise to see him installed in East London next season.

I’ll return to the Stadium of Light soon. First, let’s take a trip down White Hart Lane. It seems Mauricio Pochettino will shake the hand of Tottenham’s executioner-in-chief, Daniel Levy, any day soon - provided he starts speaking in English, of course.

Hey, my information is that the Argentinian’s English is very good. Why he refuses to do it on television is anyone’s guess. Even people who are close to his situation at Southampton don’t understand it.

Maybe it’s to keep a shield between himself and the public; maybe it’s to avoid being, er, misquoted. The laugh is that he’s responding to an English question in his own language before the interpreter has finished translating.

Anyway, should Pochettino take the Levy shilling and start speaking the Queen’s, there will be a vacancy at Southampton, a club due to lose players like Luke Shaw and Adam Lallana. The rumour is that Harry Redknapp might fancy a return to the south coast.

It didn’t go too well for old ’Arry last time, when I believe he entered conflict with a certain Sir Clive Woodward. The rugby guru, evidently, had a hotline to the chairman’s ear at the time and that was never going to be the ideal situation.

Why would Harry want to leave QPR? Might I suggest that the aroma of a ten-pound note might have something to do with it? Hey, if Harry was getting more money to return to Bournemouth, he’d be right up there with the ice cream sellers on the prom.

The Championship play-offs will determine all, I’d imagine. If Rangers don’t make it, hauling your arse up and down the road to faraway places with strange names like Huddersfield doesn’t quite hold the same allure.

Still, I don’t think it’s tablets of stone stuff yet. Southampton may very well have gone beyond the stage of Harry Redknapp. They would maybe like to bring in someone of the same ilk as Pochettino.

Many jobs could be up for grabs, It seems to be the way of the Premier world. A run of good results makes a man the flavour of Belgian chocolate, a run of bad ones puts him under pressure and there’s no safety net.

Davie Moyes (alias Billy McMoyes) knows that better than anyone. I suspect that, having sampled the white sands of Mauritius, or wherever, he’ll be ready to return and he’ll get a job again, no danger.

He won’t penetrate the top six again at the moment, so it’ll be Newcastle or Aston Villa. It’s suffice to say that I don’t think Paul Lambert will start next season as manager of Villa. The new people won’t want a regime that was less than successful.

The majority of these changes are the product of poor results, but the fall-out between Malky Mackay and Vincent Tan ran a lot deeper. Cardiff were in a position of safety when Mackay left them. So now a settlement (did he get any money?) has been made and a fulsome apology thrown into the mix.

As far as we know, there was nothing for which to apologise, so why would you do so? I don’t suppose we’ll ever really know the real story: it’s just one of the many unexplained tales that surround this game. Anyway, Mackay is now clear to take another job, and I expect him to go to West Brom very shortly.

Meanwhile, up here in Scotland but not, maybe, for very much longer lingers the Neil Lennon situation. There will be positions open to him down south - Norwich in the Championship and Sunderland in the Premier Division.

Take your pick. My message to sports journalists is see that you don’t run out of ink. There’s a lot more to come.

There are questions marks over the futures of Terry Butcher, John Hughes and also Jackie McNamara. Blackpool has gone, but will the lure of the Championship prove too strong for him?

Finally, I come to my old club, Morton. Who will be the next manager? I’m stumped with this one at the moment: give me 64,000 dollars and I still couldn’t tell you. All I’ll say is this: after Allan Moore and Kenny Shields, who will be the next one that the chairman plucks out of notoriety and plunges into obscurity?

The Green Brigade may have hastened Neil Lennon’s departure from Celtic Park.

BY ANDY RITCHIE

CELTIC’S 6-1 defeat by Barcelona was an embarrassment and it may also turn out to be the moment when Neil Lennon decided that it’s time to move on.

Lennon’s stock was never higher than it was 12 months ago when Celtic progressed through to the last 16 of the Champions League.

That would have been the ideal time for him to have actively sought a job in the Premiership and I don’t know whether he chose to remain at Celtic or there were no managerial offers forthcoming.

But one thing’s for sure, his stock is not nearly so high a year on. Celtic’s results in Europe have been disappointing to say the least and that will have impacted on Lennon’s chances of landing a job in England.

It used to be that simply being manager of Celtic and Rangers was sufficient to guarantee you a job down south if you made it known you wanted one. Not anymore.

But there’s nothing to keep him at Celtic that I can see. He punched well above his weight last season as far as Europe was concerned but this campaign has been a huge let down not even qualifying for the Europa League.

And if he has any sense – and I believe he does – he will seek pastures new over the coming months.

It’s clear that the sort of money required to achieve a level of success in Europe isn’t going to be forthcoming from Peter Lawwell and Lennon understands that he needs a different type of player for Europe, and they cost big bucks.

He lost three players at the end of last season and tried to replace them with something like seven others who proved to be less than effective in the Champions League and maybe even the SPFL as well.

So, I think he’ll be saying to himself that he has probably gone as far as he can at Celtic Park and as the situation stands in Scottish football, the Premiership is a bigger deal, even at the clubs lower down.

If you have genuine ambition you must want to test yourself by flexing your muscles in the Premiership, and that applies to managers as well as players.

I suspect the Norwich job will become available soon although I hear that Malky Mackay is in line to take over there, and, if so, there will be a vacancy at Cardiff, while there may also be an eventual opening at West Ham.

It’s getting to that time of year when chairmen and owners start becoming increasingly twitchy, as we saw in the case of Fulham, so there will definitely be opportunities.

It all depends on how much Lennon wants to test himself at Premiership level. If, as I suspect, he does, then he’ll let it be known in the right circles.

Meanwhile, the so-called Green Brigade isn’t doing Celtic, or Scottish football for that matter, any favours.

They have caused mayhem in recent weeks and while they are clearly a minority of the support, there is a sizeable enough number to cause concern and they appear to be gathering momentum.

I have no idea exactly what their agenda is or what they are trying to achieve. Maybe if they declared their aims something could be done to tackle the problem before it gets completely out of hand.

The situation can’t be allowed to continue and if their aim is just purely vandalism then the sooner they are kicked out of football the better.

At £55 an hour for each constable, the SPFL clubs have been examining ways of reducing policing costs for some time now and selective matches have been police-free within the stadium.

By that I mean the stewards have carried out policing duties and taken on responsibility for ejecting unruly spectators and handing them over to officers stationed outside the ground.

I was the SPL delegate at the first ever police-free match, a 2-2 draw between Motherwell and Hibs at Fir Park several years ago, and the hope by now was that the majority of fixtures would be policed by stewards only.

But events at Fir Park have opened a fresh can of worms with the throwing of flares and the ripping out of seats. in addition to various other health and safety issues.

The bampots responsible have effectively set the whole policing issue back years at a time when the clubs are desperately trying to reduce their outgoings.

After all, with all due respect, you are not going to get stewards earning a fifth of what police officers receive risking serious injury trying to deal with the thugs who are hell bent on causing maximum damage and disruption to the game they profess to be fans of.

The Green Brigade may also have hastened Neil Lennon’s departure from Celtic Park.