NEIL LENNON sat down after watching his side get a very credible draw against a tough Rennes side in France and was asked about the parallels between the 1-1 draw on the night and the same result back in 2011.
The Irishman made one very important distinction straight off the bat when he made it clear the team he has at his disposal right now is superior to his 2011 class. Now that’s a team who would go on and take out Barcelona in the Champions League just a year later and qualify for the last 16 of the competition. The manager would not have made the distinction flippantly.
“I think the team I have now is superior. I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but we’re building something.” Lennon told CelticTV.
‘Building something’ – those two words resonated with me on the night after being proud of Celtic’s onfield efforts. Always the pessimist – I watched Rennes against PSG earlier in the season before I even knew Celtic would end up in their Europa League group and I was so impressed. It’s very easy to hear a club’s name be drawn against your team and base your opinion off the last time you played them or just the last time you paid attention to them – as if they had been frozen in time until you took a look over the fence.
Rennes were and are a very good outfit in the French League and for Celtic to not only hold their own against them but look like they could have got the win is extremely heartening but it speaks to a bigger picture going on at Celtic Park and it all boils back down to those last two words of Neil Lennon’s quote.
I made a mental note of Neil Lennon’s words at the time thinking they were worth picking over but I just hadn’t got around to putting them down onto the site.
It was not until I heard Kristoffer Ajer’s words over the weekend that it jogged my memory.
The Norwegian spoke about the current state of play in the Celtic squad and it very much overlapped with what Neil Lennon was talking about.
Ajer talks about a feeling among the players they are growing as a team and building towards something.
“I feel as though we are growing and developing as a team.” Ajer told SunSport.
“Domestically, we’ve had a great start to the season and I think we are showing better performances away from home in Europe now as well.
“As a team, we are more calm and more composed away from home in Europe and it seems to me as though we are building something good.”
I think many Celtic fans will look at the team right now and apart from the anomaly of Cluj – this Celtic team have not looked as good since the invincible season. The outcome of all three seasons has been the same but there was a stark difference in performance from the first to the last treble.
The bhoys look galvanised and playing with a real togetherness and purpose. There will be speed bumps along the way but I can’t help but feel the nucleus of this side will be the reason Celtic not only get nine but ten in a row.
