Lennon blames poor defending for defeat

NEIL LENNON laid the blame solely at the feet of the Celtic defence after being floored by a late Bayern Munich winner in the Champions League clash at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday night.

The Hoops looked on course for arguably their greatest-ever result in Europe when Alan Thompson pounced in the 57th minute to put last season’s UEFA Cup finalists ahead.

Even though they were “cruising”, according to the midfielder, the 2001 Champions League winners came from behind to win courtesy of a Roy Makaay double.

The devastating winner came with just four minutes remaining and left Celtic without a point from their Champions League Group A opener.

That heartbreaking finale prompted an angry reaction from Thompson, who labelled his team-mates unprofessional for throwing away the lead.

A clearly inconsolable Lennon went even further and blamed the Celtic defence. “The goals we lost were down to poor defending.

“The second one was nonsense. We should have dealt with it a lot better and should have stopped the cross, failing that we should have defended it when it came in. The crosses were not dealt with and we ended up losing a game in which we were cruising.

“It wasn’t even as though we weathered the storm because there was no storm to weather. I remember Ballack had a shot which Magnus saved but, apart from that, there was nothing.

"We didn’t defend crosses properly and certainly not as well as we should have done, but almost all the clear-cut chances in the game came to us.

“(Oliver) Kahn made a great save from Bobo Balde’s header in the first half and when we were 1-0 up Bobo had one close in.”

Stanislav Varga’s mistake led to the first Bayern goal while many thought that Hedman should have dealt with the cross that led to the winner.

The former Northern Ireland international stopped himself short of singling out anybody for the defeat, but already the damage had been done.

“I am not pointing the finger at anyone,” Lennon said. “We do things collectively at this club. It is so disappointing because we played really well and have nothing to show for it.

"Maybe it was a lack of concentration, but you know you’ll get punished at this level if you don’t keep your concentration for the full 90 minutes.”

The manner in which a point was cruelly snatched from their grasp brought memories of being controversially beaten by Juventus in September, 2001, flooding back.

Henrik Larsson said: “In a way it reminds me of what happened in Turin two years ago, but this time they had a little bit of extra luck.

“I am of course disappointed to lose especially because Thompson had given us the lead with a very good goal. We can’t do anything about the result.”

However, the prolific striker added: “We just have to get ourselves going again and hopefully we will feel better next time. The Lyon game is very important now. It was always going to be very important so this result doesn’t change anything in that respect.”

The Celtic supporters were yesterday coming to terms with another glorious failure, but Bayern did give them some words of comfort by hailing them the best in Europe.

A spokesman for the club said: “I would like to say an official thank you from the city to the supporters of Celtic. We have heard about how good the Celtic supporters were, but they were much better than we had been told so this is a message from Bayern Munich and the city.

“The police have also contacted us to say they had no problems at all with their supporters and I must say they are the greatest supporters we have had in the city.”