IT is hardly a secret that Neil Lennon holds Scott Brown in the highest regard as both a player and as a man. He has described him as ‘like gold dust’ in the past, both for his qualities on the pitch and off of it.
Alas, as much as Brown remains an integral figure in the Celtic dressing room, his name should no longer be the first one on Lennon’s teamsheet. And if it wasn’t on that teamsheet for the last two matches where victories over Lille and Kilmarnock have raised spirits once more after a horrendous run of form, then neither should it be for the match this weekend, regardless of the importance of the game.
That this match is not only the Scottish Cup final, but 90 minutes against Heart of Midlothian that separate Celtic from the unprecedented achievement of a quadruple Treble, should be neither here nor there.
Instead, as Lennon looks to pencil in his midfield to take on Robbie Neilson’s side, he should immediately jot down the names of Ismaila Soro and David Turnbull.
The Celtic manager’s comments after the win over Killie seemed to hint that the supposed ‘old guard’ would be brought back into the starting XI for the match, rewarding “the players who got us there”, as Lennon put it. But uppermost in his mind should be the players who dragged his side up out of their alarming slump by their bootstraps, and no one was more central to that than Soro and Turnbull.
There may be an argument that too much is being read into Lennon’s post-Kilmarnock comments when it comes to Sunday’s team selection. Perhaps at that stage, he hadn’t given it too much thought, considering the importance of the match that had just passed.
It is often said that there is no room for sentiment in football, but Lennon would have to have a heart of stone to not be letting emotion figure in his thinking whatsoever as this week has passed by.
Brown is undoubtedly a modern legend at the club, and he may feel that his captain deserves the opportunity to play a full part as he looks to lift the 22nd major trophy of his Celtic career, especially as it is such a landmark milestone for the club. The way things have been going for Celtic and for Brown of late, he may not have many more opportunities to climb those steps before his long, glittering career at Celtic eventually comes to an end.
If Soro is to play though, as form should dictate, then sadly that means there can be no place for Brown in the team that starts the game.
The 22-year-old Ivorian has been an overnight success that was almost a year in the making. Arriving in January from Israeli side Bnei Yehuda for the thick end of £2m, he hadn’t made a competitive start for the club until the game against Lille last week. But what an impression he made in that full debut, and he followed it up with another performance full of energy and enthusiasm against Kilmarnock at the weekend.
Indeed, it is his speed and athleticism in the defensive midfield role that makes those qualities in Brown’s game appear more conspicuous by their absence than they perhaps are. Brown hasn’t become a bad player overnight, and still has plenty to offer, but his deficiencies that have been brought on by age have been highlighted all the more by the youthful exuberance of Soro.
So it is that a Celtic career that looked to be going the way of the likes of Eboue Kouassi instead has been revived, and what had been viewed by some as yet another example of decent money being piddled up the wall chasing a pipedream profit on a prospect suddenly looks like a sound investment.
This is all not to say that if Brown plays, Celtic will dramatically reduce their chances of lifting the trophy at Hampden. It may be disrespectful to Hearts to say this given the size of the club, but they are a Championship side despite their Premiership wage budget, and no matter the personnel Celtic deploy, they will rightfully be heavy favourites to emerge victorious.
The ideal scenario playing out in Lennon’s mind, one might imagine, is that should he stick with Soro, Celtic are two or three goals to the good with 20 minutes remaining, allowing him to introduce Brown to the action as a useful contributor to manage the rest of the game, rather than the move being driven wholly by sentiment.
Elsewhere, there are more decisions for Lennon to make. Will Conor Hazard retain the gloves after two decent showings of his own against Lille and Kilmarnock, or will £5m man Vasilis Barkas or Scott Bain come into the reckoning? Like Soro and Turnbull, it would be incredibly harsh to drop the young man when he has done nothing to warrant it.
The other big question surrounds the wide right position, with neither Jeremie Frimpong nor Ryan Christie showing their best form of late. While Frimpong main asset is his blistering pace, Christie offers a more reliable end product in the final third, and having also shown himself to be a man for the big occasion in the past, Christie will perhaps get the nod.
As for Brown, well, he didn’t earn those the plaudits at the top of the article from his manager for nothing. Whether he is on the pitch or on the bench, the man described as being like ‘gold dust’ will be doing all he can to help Celtic lift the silverware.
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