Celtic boss bemused by BBC journalist's Scott Brown question

By David Walton

March 8, 2020

Scott Brown’s fitness was one of the topics of the day yesterday in Neil Lennon’s post-match interview with the BBC.

The Celtic captain played 90 minutes of yesterday’s 5-0 rout of St Mirren at Parkhead. However, it wasn’t all plain sailing for the Hoops’ on-field leader.

There were several misplaced passes in the first half as Celtic initially struggled to get themselves into a commanding lead against Jim Goodwin’s side. So tidy is Brown generally when he’s on the ball that it was difficult not to notice some of his giveaways against the Buddies early on.

Celtic captain Scott Brown (Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

This clearly prompted the BBC’s Jonathan Sutherland to question Lennon on the midfielder’s fitness. However, speaking to the BBC after the game, the Celtic boss clearly felt otherwise when asked whether the captain was fit:

“Yeah I think so, why?

“Yeah he’s absolutely fine. He got an injection in the toe a few weeks ago and I think that’s settled everything down now, so yeah he’s playing very well.

“He was superb on Wednesday and he came through the game today very comfortably.”

A sign of Brown’s high standards

If anything, question marks over Brown are clearly nothing more than a symbol of the extremely high standards that our club’s on-field leader has.

In fairness to him, nothing he did yesterday was disastrous. It was nothing more than a couple of loose passes that Celtic quickly ended up winning back. But it goes to show that, whenever he has any sort of dip, it comes as a surprise.

Lennon did say that Brown was “superb” on Wednesday at Livingston. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. He had a decent game along with several others, but absolutely nobody deserved that tag after Wednesday night. As for yesterday, however, the story couldn’t be any different.

Neil Lennon at a Celtic press conference (Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

There were a host of top performers, but it’s clear that Brown is still getting into his stride after his injury in Copenhagen.

The reality is that the same errors the captain made yesterday could be punished next week at Ibrox. Therefore, people are right to hope that Brown’s ball-retention is a bit better next week.

He wasn’t poor yesterday by any means, but there was the odd error. Ahead of next week’s game, we need to minimise any mistakes as much as possible.

Did you think Brown performed well yesterday? Does he look 100% fit to you? Give us your verdict in the discussion forum below.