Never mind ten in a row - Neil Lennon believes that Celtic would be attempting to win a 13th consecutive Premiership title next season if it hadn’t been for the coronavirus.
He argues that the pandemic achieved what their opponents had previously failed to do, leaving them vulnerable and underlining former manager Jock Stein’s opinion that without fans, football is nothing.
The defending champions were the bookies’ favourites to set a new record by becoming champions for a tenth successive year in the summer of 2020. Instead they ended up without any silverware for the first time in a decade.
Lennon, who turned 52 yesterday, is convinced that the government’s ban on spectators attending matches was the biggest single factor in his side’s fall from grace that season.
Immediately before SPFL clubs voted in March 2020 to end the campaign while there were eight Premiership fixtures still to play, Rangers captain James Tavernier had confessed in his programme notes that he and his colleagues couldn’t always cope with the pressure of playing in front of their support.
Lennon, meanwhile, claims that Celtic struggled to deal with the absence of their fans, whose passionate backing had frequently drove them on in the past.
“The previous season had been ended early 48 hours before we were due to play Rangers at Ibrox on St Patrick’s Day,” he recalled.
“We were 13 points clear of them with eight games left and they’d just lost at home to Hamilton Accies and been beaten twice by Hearts, the two clubs at the bottom of the table.
“Rangers had lost at home to Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League on the Thursday night and our derby was postponed on the Friday. It was incredibly frustrating.
“We were desperate to play them because we’d won 11 and drawn one of our 12 domestic games that year. We’d already won the League Cup and we were in the last four of the Scottish Cup, about to complete another treble.
“At the time we were flying - absolutely rampant. Then all of a sudden everything was shut down for five months.”
Rangers won 2-0 at Parkhead in October to move four points ahead of the Hoops, kicking off a sequence where Celtic won only one of eleven matches as they failed to rediscover the swagger and belief which had seen them dominate for a decade.
“When we eventually came back we were flat and we never got our mojo back after that,” said Lennon.
“Once we returned to action in front of empty stands it was okay for the first few games because it was just great to be back playing again but it didn’t seem real after a while.
“As professionals, you want to play in front of full houses and, without crowds, the novelty soon wore off.
“It was like playing pre-season friendlies over and over again – and the fake crowd noise they used to play over the tannoy during games did my head in.
“Of course, life in general wasn’t the same that year. Everyone – except for some politicians - was confined to their homes and couldn’t mix with anyone else.
“Training had to include social distancing and I remember going to Easter Road for a game and we weren’t even allowed into the away dressing room.
“We had to change under a stand and sit on plastic chairs in the freezing cold – it was like being back playing for your school team again.
“There were also problems with contracts and players who wanted away and
“Listen, I take responsibility for what happened that season but everyone was pretending that everything was normal and it quite clearly wasn’t.”
