Neil Lennon issues warning to Philippe Clement ahead of Old Firm derby and reveals ‘delight’ at Brendan Rodgers decision

In the second part of a Ladbrokes: Fanzone exclusive, former Celtic manager Neil Lennon previews Saturday’s Old Firm derby, discusses Brendan Rodgers and his time at Parkhead.

Click on the link for part one in which he talked about his interest in the Republic of Ireland vacancy.

Philippe Clement has done well, but hasn’t faced a derby at Celtic yet

I think Celtic will win on Saturday. I think they’ll see a lot of the ball and they’ll dominate possession. They’ll have to worry about Rangers on the counter-attack, and defend pretty well whenever certain players push on. Free-kicks and corners, all of those areas, they’ll need to be sharp in their defending. But I think Celtic will win the game 2-1.

I just think that, at home, and with the magnitude of the game, I’m expecting all of the big players to turn up for the occasion. I respect Rangers. I think Philippe Clement has done a tremendous job. But he hasn’t faced a derby at Celtic Park yet, and that is a little bit different to anything else he would have experienced.

It’s a really difficult time for a player at Celtic or Rangers. You’ve got so many fixtures coming thick and fast, but you know the big one is coming at the end of the month. But you have to take care of other business throughout December. Celtic have been under immense scrutiny all season, so they’re used to it. I think that this current Rangers team, under the spotlight, struggles to deal with things a little bit. It’s really important that you don’t take your eye off the ball.

People outside of the clubs, outside of the changing rooms, expect Celtic and Rangers to win all of their games, and so these meetings are often considered the title deciders. It doesn’t always happen that way, though. There are so many obstacles that come in the month of December, and then you’ve got this huge one at the end of the month.

My first game against Rangers, for Celtic, was just a blur, to be honest with you. We played against them twice in just a few days and, yeah, that first one on the Wednesday seemed to go 100 miles an hour. It was so physical and so fast. We won that one, and then, going into the second one, I was far more prepared for it.

And then, obviously, as a manager, the wins are so special. We had a few wins at Ibrox, and a couple of comfortable victories at home as well. The place was absolutely rocking. There’s not really a standout derby for me from my time as a player or a manager; each one was important as the next, and there’s none more important than the one coming up for the players on Saturday.

Brendan Rodgers will want to leave another imprint on the club

I don’t think you could have got much better than Brendan coming back in the summer. You only have to look at his previous record, not just at Celtic, but at Leicester, too, where he won the FA Cup and had two top-five finishes in the Premier League. It didn’t end well, but things rarely do.

He’s a top, top manager, and his style of football isn’t too dissimilar to what we’ve recently seen from Celtic. He wants to play front-foot football, attacking football; he’s done that throughout his whole career. It’s a great appointment for the club. Listen, it’s always difficult when you’re following on from such a successful manager – it’s hard to top a treble! Ange [Postecoglou] left the club with his stock very, very high and obviously he’s now gone on to Spurs, and Brendan has come in. I think it was a bit of a surprise at first, but now he’s got the full support of people, myself included. I was delighted with the appointment.

I don’t think he’ll have an eye on anything other than the task at hand at Celtic. He’s got a three-year contract and I think he’ll want to see that out and, again, leave some kind of imprint on the club, like he did the first time he was here. That’ll be his ambition and his motivation. Obviously, he’ll want to have another crack at the Champions League, too, and in order to do that, you’ve got to win the Premiership, so that’ll be his sole focus. He’s already talking about bringing in more quality in January, and that can sometimes be a really difficult thing to do, but I’m sure there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes right now.

Brendan will already have an eye on the transfer window

Sometimes you get a little bump in the road, particularly around this time of the season, just because there are so many games. But Celtic have bounced back, just as I would have expected them to, in really convincing fashion and they’ve picked up two really important wins, going into what’s surely going to be a massive, pivotal game this Saturday against Rangers. They’ll be in a good place, psychologically, going into that game, and that’s so important.

We haven’t had a real title race for a while, so it may well be on this season. I still think that Celtic are stronger, you know. Rangers have brought in a new manager and he’s putting his own stamp on the team and they’ve been very impressive. They got a great win in Betis recently and they’ve obviously got a League Cup now, as well. But Celtic Park, away from home, is a totally different proposition; Celtic have been playing Champions League football, at a really high level. They’ve been a bit up and down, you know, but that’s because they’ve set such a high bar over the last few years, and when you do that, and you step below that bar, people start panicking and asking questions.

But they’ve got an elite manager in Brendan, with experienced coaches behind him, and players who’ve been in this position many times before. I think that with the two games against Livingston and Dundee being put to bed now, going into Saturday’s game against Rangers, I think they’ll win it. They’ll produce a big performance at home, because they need it themselves. You know, they need the big games, and they don’t come much bigger than this.

Losing back-to-back games in the league doesn’t happen all that often at a club like Celtic, but it can happen. I think back to the start of my second season as manager, and we didn’t exactly get off to a great start. We found our rhythm around October time and then we went on a great run of consecutive wins. Bad runs don’t happen very often at Celtic; they’re unexpected. But it goes to show you can’t take anything for granted in football. These players are human beings, at the end of the day. As a collective, you lose a little bit of confidence when you lose a little bit of form. But they’ve corrected that at the best possible time, with Saturday’s game coming up.

What’s important for Celtic in the second half of this season is finding that consistency. I think Brendan will already have an eye on the January transfer window, and how he can improve the squad. But all the focus right now is on Rangers, and if they can win that, it gives everyone a huge lift, psychologically, going into the new year.

Celtic exit came in a really difficult year for me

Things didn’t end well with me at Celtic, because of Covid. And that was really difficult to deal with because, before the lockdown, we were absolutely rampant, and then we had a three-month break and never really rediscovered our form from earlier in the season.

With no fans in the stadium, we found it really difficult to play the type of football that we wanted. That was a really difficult year for me, both professionally and personally. But sometimes things are totally out of your control, and listen, that wasn’t just exclusive to Celtic – it happened at a lot of big clubs. I just wish we hadn’t had a pandemic in the first place. I’m sure millions of people around the world are thinking the same thing! But the club is back in a really strong position again, so that’s great to see.

I never wanted to leave Celtic

I never had any ambitions to leave Celtic, once I was there. People don’t realise this, but the likes of myself, Chris Sutton and Alan Thompson, and big John Hartson… we all made the move in our late-20s. I was 29. I’d had a full career in England, you know, I’d achieved a lot of things that I’d wanted to achieve in my career with Leicester, and when Martin [O’Neill] made the move to Celtic, I knew that was another place I wanted to go and play, especially reuniting with him again.

And I had a great time there as a player, playing in the Champions League, that European final, winning titles. I was playing in a great team with some incredible talents. Henrik Larsson, Paul Lambert…you know, there are so many. When you have a team like that, and you beat Liverpool away, and you beat Blackburn, and you’re winning titles, you didn’t want to leave – you wanted it to last forever. I was settled in Glasgow, so there was never any ambition to go and play anywhere else.

But age catches up with you, and at 36, after we’d won the double with Gordon [Strachan], I knew it was time to go, mainly because there was new blood coming in, and I just knew I was done with it!