NEIL Lennon believes Celtic will achieve a feat no other team in history will ever be able to emulate in future if they can overcome Aberdeen in the William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final tomorrow and go on to complete an unprecedented treble treble.
Lennon helped the Glasgow club complete what was at the time only the third clean sweep of domestic trophies in their existence at the end of his first season as a player at Parkhead in 2001 when Martin O’Neill was in charge.
The Northern Irishman, who took over from his compatriot Brendan Rodgers on an interim basis back in February, admits he is astonished the side he has inherited has the opportunity to pull of the feat for the third year running.
“It’s incredible,” he said. “I can’t even believe we’re sitting here discussing it. I said to the players when we won the treble it was the first time in over 30 years. These guys are on the cusp of three.
“But we can’t talk the talk about it because they created it with their own play and dedication and mentality. You can’t avoid talking about it or being asked questions about it, but we have to just focus on the here and now and the next game is Aberdeen. They will be a tough nut to crack, as they’ve proved.
“It’s phenomenal what they’ve done, absolutely phenomenal I think. The hunger to keep going, I think it’s fantastic. It’s not like ‘ach we don’t need it now, we’ve done that’ the hunger is still really there. Brendan has to take a lot of credit for that too.
“They’ve gone 25 cup ties undefeated. It’s not a fluke, is it? It’s not a coincidence. It’s really, really strong consistency. I think it’s a Scottish record. It’s never been done before.”
Asked if he thought the current Celtic side could achieve something no other team would ever be able to match, Lennon said: “Probably, aye. I thought the double treble was good. I thought the going the season unbeaten and winning the treble was something I’d never see again. Now they’ve done two and they’re on the cusp of a third.
“It’s fantastic for what they’ve done for the domestic game. Everybody wants to beat them and they overcome all those obstacles and challenges and they just keep going. It must be fatiguing mentally and physically at times and we’ve probably seen a little bit of that but when the big games come they really sharpen their minds again and focus.”
Lennon has injury concerns over Oliver Burke (glute) and Filip Benkovic (foot) ahead of the last four meeting with Aberdeen tomorrow. “We’ll see how Oli is tomorrow,” he said. “Filip is on the scan for a foot injury. He feels he should be okay, so it’s probably precautionary more than anything else.”
But Lennon, whose side were held to a 0-0 draw by Livingston last weekend, feels the return to fitness of several key players has been timely for Celtic.
“We’ve got some more bodies back,” he said. “Tom (Rogic) had some game time in his legs last week. (Olivier) Ntcham, (Ryan) Christie, Callum (McGregor), these players who had long layoffs, it’s good to have them back and champing at the bit to be playing.
“We’re getting more towards full strength, that’s for sure. It might be a psychological thing with all this talk of a treble treble and getting near to the end of the season but I don’t think the players looked tired last week. We had plenty of chances and although it wasn’t exhilarating by any means I keep going back to the fact that it takes two teams to make a really good game of football.
“We missed good chances and you always want that breakthrough goal where the opposition have to come out and play and we have only ourselves to blame for not winning the game. In terms of the chances created, it wasn’t that bad at all.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel