Lennon sounded angry with one of his closest Celtic allies yesterday

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Neil Lennon sounded absolutely furious with one of his closest Celtic allies in John Hartson yesterday.

Hartson has been giving his verdict on what needs to happen at the club in recent days. This has involved the Welshman claiming that Lennon needs removed from the managerial gig.

Speaking on Ten10Podcasts’ Instant Celtic Reaction show (16/01), Hartson said: “It has taken me this long to say I would like to see a change, new staff, a freshness, something different.”

However, Lennon didn’t seem to pleased with how John went about expressing his feelings on the issue.

As quoted by the Daily Record, Lennon responded by saying: “John has an opinion, like more people on the periphery of the game. You either take it on board or you don’t. It has no impact on me. It means nothing.

“When he is praising me, it means nothing. When he’s talking about me losing my job or being removed from my job, it means nothing to me. John feels he has a job to do. Yeah, he could have rang me first and had a chat about it.

“But when you are on the media side – and I’ve been there myself – it’s an easy life.”

Lennon has plenty of allies; Hartson has always been one of them

Look, it’s clear Lennon wasn’t happy with anything yesterday. It was quite worrying how fuming he was in truth, but even so, I don’t believe Hartson deserves this.

Big John was asked a question and he answered it honestly. He’s been a vocal Lennon backer for longer than many of us. He’s quite entitled to change his mind whenever he wants to.

There was no need for Hartson to ring Lennon up either. Why would he even think about doing that? Does he have to check with the Celtic boss whether he’s allowed to go on record and say how he feels? Nothing Hartson said about Lennon was disrespectful or even wrong.

It was disappointing word choice from the Celtic manager here. Saying Hartson’s opinion means nothing to him and that he has an easy life were both real digs. A bit of disdain shown from Neil there in my opinion.

John has consistently talked up Lennon and even in his podcast after the Livingston game he was still singing his praises. But all he’s done now is join the vast hordes of Celtic supporters who believe Neil’s time is up. And it certainly took some convincing.

We can’t all be wrong here, can we?

In other news, we provide our predicted XI for tomorrow’s match at Livingston, with five changes to be made.