Neil Lennon’s dressing room message to his Celtic players last night at half-time was a simple one, stay patient and their time will come, he shared with BT Sport after the game.
The manager was understandably disappointed with the evening’s events at Celtic Park when speaking to BT Sport’s man following full-time.
However, he refused to assign individual blame to any players for the defeat against Copenhagen, despite some defensive howlers.
Instead, his message was very much one of succeeding and failing as a team and coach unit.
Why his players didn’t keep things as relaxed as Lennon communicated they should in the dressing room we’ll never know, but it’s clear that the manager was pretty happy with our first-half display.
Speaking to BT Sport, he said: “I thought we played well first half, I thought we had good control of the game and we could at least have been in the lead.
“We’ve given away a poor goal, the first goal, and then they’ve done brilliantly to galvanise themselves and get back in the game. And then there are two minutes between us equalising and them scoring again.
“We said at half-time: ‘be patient, it’ll come’. Sometimes you can’t legislate for individual errors, that happens in the game, so we’re not here to scapegoat anyone. We lose as a team, we win as a team. We’ll come again.”
Lennon’s task will now be less about recriminations as a result of last night’s performance and more one of rebuilding ahead of what is a crucial match on Sunday.
We visit St Johnstone in the Scottish Cup and must be wary of our season unravelling. A defeat in that competition would be a bitter pill to swallow following the Copenhagen shambles.
Celtic have a great record at McDiarmid Park and won 3-0 at the venue just last month. There can be no excuses on the players’ part and no European hangover.
Last night’s defeat is now behind us and, while no-one is happy, we still have major goals to achieve this season.
The weekend’s fixture will be a real measure of the squad’s character.
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