‘The Grinches who doubted Lennon should show respect’
● Mcgregor hails Celtic boss for his drive to succeed
Sceptics were not in short supply when Neil Lennon was unveiled as Celtic’s interim manager following Brendan Rodgers’ abrupt return to the Premier league with leicester in February.
They were still in evidence when he was offered the role on a permanent basis immediately after the Scottish Cup final win over Hearts three months later.
Even after the 1-0 victory over Rangers in Sunday’s Betfred Cup final, there were many who criticised his tactics and team selection and bemoaned the team’s performance.
However, midfielder Callum Mcgregor, one of three players, along with Scott Brown and James Forrest, to have appeared in all seven of the winning finals as Celtic have claimed all of the last 10 domestic trophies, believes it’s high time the Northern Irishman was treated with respect.
“He had such a big task when he came in but he’s such a winner that he handled that and he galvanised the group,” said the 26-year-old.
“He was asked to win two trophies when he arrived. And he did that. Now he’s added another, on a day when people were maybe looking at him and asking if he could do it again.
“You can see his winning mentality reflected in the performance of our players’ that’s exactly what the manager is. With the tactical side, the backroom staff are unbelievable and he’s a massive part of that every day. All his attributes were shown in [Sunday’s] performance.”
Mcgregor, who broke into the Celtic first team in the season following Lennon’s departure in 2014, added: “His standards are super-high every single day. He comes out to training and, if one or two are off, he stops it. He just tells us we’re off it and then makes us get back on it. That’s the way we work.
“Every day we’re trying to get better and he’s the man who [intervenes] to make that happen. Those are the standards he drills into us every day and that showed in our willingness to win against Rangers.”
Mcgregor has been on the winning side against Rangers 12 times since the latter won promotion to the Premiership. That includes two 5-1 victories, as well as a 5-0 and a 4-0. But he insists that the 1-0 victory at Hampden on Sunday meant much more than the others.
“We’ll probably get to many more finals and never play that badly again but that just shows the character in this team,” said Mcgregor.
“The treble treble probably gets overlooked because we’ve been so dominant but, even within that period, we had difficult moments in the cup finals against Aberdeen and Hearts and still came out on top. We’ve shown that, when we’re really up against it, we can pull through.
“Against Rangers on Sunday, we even conceded a penalty and the big man [Fraser Forster] saved it. That galvanised the team again. You think: ‘You know what? We might have to win this one-nil’.
“That’s when we ran the legs off each other and really dug into get that trophy.
“In terms of confidence, it’s a big one, probably more so for us because we’ve come through it without playing well and they’ve created so many big chances in the game. We’ve got to take confidence in knowing that we can grind out big results.
Rangers probably couldn’t play much better than they did against us at Hampden and we’ve still somehow managed to win the game.
“As far as wins over Rangers go, that’s the top one, in terms of pure endeavour to win the game, the will to win, the boys sticking together, the big man making some huge saves – and, obviously, there being a trophy on the line.”