'I'm not going to whip them' - Lennonpublished at 14:23 British Summer Time 6 October 2019
FT: Livingston 2-0 Celtic
Celtic manager Neil Lennon on BBC Radio Scotland: "I’ve no complaints with the red card, it’s totally unlike Ryan Christie. At half-time I thought we were okay.
"We gave away a bad goal, too passive, lost the ball in a bad area, but we didn’t press Robbie Crawford before he played the through ball and there’s no excuse for that. At 1-0 we were forcing the issue and looking okay, and the second goal is really poor. I don’t think that’s down to being down to 10 men, we should deal with that, it’s a straight long ball over the top.
"We have to, at times, roll our sleeves up and do the nuts and bolts of the game more. I’m not going to whip them for that performance but I didn’t think we were anywhere near as ruthless as we could have been.
"It’s our first defeat. We have to accept it, look where we went wrong, can’t be too emotional about it. We were too emotional in the game. It’s a learning curve for some of the new ones that not everyone is going to let you play the way you want, you have to earn the right to play. With 11 men, it’s difficult enough. With 10, it became more difficult. The game just got away from us."
