Lennon Has Gone

He’s gone. Neil Lennon left Bolton today by mutual consent. I’m not sure when exactly it happened, as they picked the day I was being operated on. Maybe the decision was made when I was being gassed.

Anyway, it seemed Lennon was always a dead man walking under Sports Shield. Rumours were abound from the start that they would appoint Phil Brown, while in Dean Holdsworth’s first interview last week, he refused to completely back Lennon.The finger was always hovering over the button.

Like every manager since Gary Megson, Lennon leaves Bolton with the club worse off than it was when he first came through the door.

At first though, things seemed to be going well. Having won one game all season under Dougie Freedman, we won our first game under Lennon at Birmingham then went on a near two month unbeaten run that extinguished any relegation fears.

We drew at Anfield, played Wigan off the park and Emike Heskey even scored on his debut.

But things started to unravel after that though. Injuries didn’t help. Selling Lee Chung-yong, who briefly looked revitalised, certainly didn’t help. But after the Cup exit, with the playoffs probably proving a bridge too far, the season petered out.

The summer and this season had laid bare our financial situation, which no doubt will have hampered Lennon. But that can’t excuse his odd formations, setting teams up to play long ball to Zach Clough, not making subs until it’s far too late, and the complete inability to set a team up away from home, which he didn’t have to do tpo much at Celtic.