The betting for this weekend's and midweek Scottish premiership illustrate how wrong that price was even if Celtic did eventually win.
We host St Mirren today. The visitors are 14/1. On Wednesday Stevie G's Govan Galacticos host St Johnstone who are 14/1.
If St Mirren had been 20/1+ yesterday I'd have put them on the thread.
Going off slightly at a tangent (so you can stop reading now if you're not interested in my thoughts on Celtic - I just need to get this off my chest!), we are in freefall and I will be looking to oppose us in the betting so long as Lennon stays in the job.
There is one word screaming through these days: unprofessional.
I'm glad the CEO is gone and the new guy coming in from Scottish Rugby sounds very promising but we should still be winning the league with the players we have at our disposal. Apart from the goalkeeping position, we are genuinely better man for man than any other team in Scotland (which isn't and shouldn't be difficult to be honest).
I've been trying to catch up on a lot of background stuff and I'm not enjoying what I'm finding out.
The outgoing CEO's business plan on the football side of things was to buy projects, get the coaches to develop them and sell them for a nice profit. It worked with Moussa Dembele (£500k! from Fulham), Virgil Van Dijk, Victor Wanyama, etc etc, and it might work with Odsonne Edouard (talk of £30m coming in for him) but they're becoming less frequent.
We have some brilliant youngsters on the books. But what does it say when they are leaving us to join Bayern Munich etc who, according to one recently-departed kid, impressed him so much with their 'pathway' of development for him already mapped out in order to maximise his chances of making the first team squad. Apparently nothing like that exists at Celtic.
I read a lengthy item recently on John Collins who played for us back in the day. Everybody knew he was OCD about his fitness and he said himself he thought he was a real professional with a serious professional attitude until he signed for Monaco. He was no longer doing 'extra' sessions in the gym. The whole squad was doing three sessions one day, two the next, then three, then two etc etc. Diet was a big deal. Bloods were checked regularly and they were told if they were short on anything, eg zinc. He said it took him to a whole new level.
He brought that attitude to Celtic when he came as assistant to Ronnie Deila but it met with resentment. Already some years retired, his fitness levels were still far higher than the players. He was still doing extra shifts in the gym after training!
Brendan Rodgers brought similar ideas and this time the players bought in, coinciding with the 'invincible' season.
Rodgers left when the CEO refused to bring in the players he felt he needed to keep the club going forward, instead foisting little-known project players from minor European leagues on him. When he left for Leicester mid-season he brought a lot of ill will upon himself from the support but they now understand why. Rodgers probably saw this coming and jumped ship rather than steer it into rocks. Much as I dislike him as a human being away from football, he is clearly a good manager.
Lennon was a cheap and easy replacement the CEO knew would be willing to do as he was told. We had enough momentum about us to go on to win the treble treble and even the quadruple treble but the signs have been ominous for long enough, especially where European football is concerned.
It saddens me to think that not too long ago we had a team that included Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton, Lubo Moravcik and Shunsuke Nakamura and now we're chock a block with young duds who aren't good enough to threaten an underperforming first squad.
I'm told we're back to one session a day training. Fitness levels have plummeted. I keep looking to see if the players are wearing monitors this season and I'm not seeing it but most of the time I'm watching iffy streams or just highlights on TV.
I read today that players are saying among themselves that when they cross the white line they're ignoring the manager's game plan and doing it their own way. Maybe it's because they don't understand the game plan. Either way it's clearly a very serious problem.
Gordon Strachan was a great one for quoting Cesare Maldini: If you have to tell someone the same thing three times and they still don't understand, get rid of them no matter how good they are.
It sounds like we have players who lack the intelligence to understand the manager's plans, let alone put them into action. And Lennon is no intellectual himself.
If Lennon stays, I reckon we will win no more than 50% of our remaining matches, we will probably go out of the cup at the next round and we probably won't secure second place in a poor league.
Other teams up here are punching well above their weight in terms of budgets etc. At the start of the season there was a player came up from a team either in the lower Premier League or upper part of the Championship but not getting a game. He came up to Ross County (might have been Inverness CT) on loan and in his first interview said he thought he had got on the wrong plane and landed in Barcelona. He couldn't believe the levels of skill and training he was experiencing.
These are teams knocking their pans in just to survive financially up here yet it seems our squad is full of pampered fannies.
I've been complaining, going back to the Strachan era, that we tend do drop points as much through complacency as anything else. Since those days I've been using the phrase 'superiority complex'. Our guys seemed to believe they only had to be on the pitch to be successful. It worked domestically but it found them out in Europe.
It was the same right through until last season, Lennon's first full one in charge since his return. Now there is no belief in their ability - other than Ryan Christie who seems to think he is God - and we are all too easily panicked. We can't handle close marking at all. Other teams now know how to beat us and are doing so with distressing frequency. We shouldn't be losing any more than two games a season never mind two or three a month.
I will lose a fortune when we lose the league. I'll still be in front over a three-season period as I've been buying money the last twice and re-investing the net gains but this will hurt. I've been working at clawing some of the money back by opposing us recently and will continue to do so.
If you're still with me this far, thanks for lending your ears/eyes.
Rant over.
Sorry.
). The bottom line is that this is a good horse on his day and his 'day' tends to come when there's big money on offer. He jumped like a snooker table at Fairyhouse in November yet still got into a challenging position two out where he fell, ridden by a "not today" jockey. He might end up going out to 50s so the BOG will kick in nicely if the switch is flicked today.
