Friday, 15th November, 2013
Celtic are a team in transition, manager Neil Lennon has declared.
Lennon saw key players quit Celtic Park over the summer as defender Kelvin Wilson joined Nottingham Forest, powerful midfielder Victor Wanyama landed at Southampton and prolific goalscorer Gary Hooper headed for Norwich.
Celtic might presently top the Scottish Premiership table and still be in with a fighting chance of finishing above bottom spot in their Champions League group, but Lennon feels they are not the finished product yet.
"We are in transition at the moment, there is no question of that, losing Gary, Victor and Kelvin would hurt any team", the Northern Irishman said at Celtic's AGM.
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"They were the spine of the team so we had to rebuild again.
"There was a little bit of pain along the way, but so far, domestically we have been fine.
"We´ve made the Champions League again and we´re still in with a shout, albeit it is difficult, and that´s probably as much as I can ask of the players. They´ve given me, the club and the supporters everything at the minute.
"We´ve had a huge volume of games going back to mid-July, 23 or 24 games and the majority of them are away on international duty as well, so some of them are almost topping 30 games already and we´re only in the second week of November.
"It´s been a big ask, mentally and physically for them after such a short close-season as well but they´ve achieved great things over the last three or four years and we are in a rebuilding process at the minute. We want to be consistent over the next couple years at that."
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