Chris Sutton Live on Air Rant; Brands His ‘Mate’ Neil Lennon ‘Delusional’

CHRIS SUTTON finally broke his tough Celtic stance on Neil Lennon after watching hi old side get thumped for the second time in three weeks at the hands of Sparta Prague.

The BT pundit has come in for criticism from some of the support in the last month when he refused to really criticise Neil Lennon despite a very poor run of results.

Sutton cracked on Thursday night, first on social media, then on live TV. The former Celtic striker even went so far to brand Neil Lennon ‘delusional’ in his post-match interview.

The comparisons with Tony Mowbray and Ronny Deila also came out and the pundit now believes the board have a big call to make with regards to their manager.

Chris says all this with the caveat Neil Lennon is his mate.

If your mates think you’re done, it says it all.

“If I’m honest I thought that Sparta Prague were the better team throughout the game.” Sutton told BT Sport as cited by SunSport.

“This is a Sparta team who have lost four out of the last five games, this is a team Celtic should be beating. 

“They have been humiliated over two legs. 8-2 was the score over two games. 

“Neil Lennon now is under severe pressure. This is a team who have conceded 21 goals in the last nine games. They haven’t stepped up in the big games. 

“They look disjointed, disorganised and, he’s my mate, but he’s in big trouble. I can’t defend that – it was a hopeless, hopeless performance. 

“I know that the board have backed him, but they have a decision to make. The last time a (Celtic) manager was on this bad a run was Tony Mowbray. Ronny Deila failed in Europe too. 

“This isn’t the Champions League though, this is the Europa League and for Celtic to be out after four games isn’t good enough. 

“This time last year Celtic beat Lazio and they qualified after four games. They’ve regressed and he’s in trouble. 

“I’m not sure it solves the problems if he does go. It’s a huge decision for the board to make. He’s won nine major trophies as Celtic manager. Do they trust him? 

“I don’t know what’s been going on behind the scenes. Whether Peter Lawwell has seen enough with what’s going on in the training ground to trust him. 

“The fact of the matter is the results have not been good enough and it’s been all season. It’s been on Neil Lennon’s watch.

“You can’t get knocked out the Europa League after four games. It happened to Ronny Deila and I don’t know where Neil goes from here. 

“He needs a reaction. But I watched his whole interview (after the match) and some of the stuff he was saying, in my opinion, was delusional – and he’s my mate!

“He got a lot wrong about tonight. I can’t stick up for him on the evidence of what we’ve seen this season.”

The record of two wins in nine games, eleven points behind in the title race albeit with two games in hand, out of Europe with two games to spare and the general performance leave all season paints a dire picture.

We get no satisfaction from saying we think Neil Lennon looks done as the manager. There would be nothing that would delight me more than seeing Neil win the ten, but it looks so far out of reach with the way things are going, can we afford him the opportunity when failure looks almost inevitable?