Larsson will laugh off criticism - Lennon

Neil Lennon considers Henrik Larsson to be one of the world’s best strikers and told Giovane Elber that the worst thing he could have done was disrespect the Celtic star.

Lyon frontman Elber, whose side face Celtic in the Champions League tonight, has accused former Sweden striker Larsson of being a big shot in Scotland, but unproven at the top level despite his impressive scoring level.

This follows a long line of slurs against Celtic during last season’s exhilarating journey to the UEFA Cup final.

The comments that stand out in the memory are those of Garry Flitcroft, who revealed that Blackburn manager Graeme Souness had told his players it was men against boys in their tie at Parkhead.

Celtic responded by dumping them out in the second leg at Ewood Park and Lennon has told Elber he should have known better than to rub Larsson up the wrong way.

“He is one of the best strikers in the world at this minute,” Lennon said. “It is not just his goalscoring that is superb but his all-round game which he contributes to the team.

“I hope we continue (to make people eat their words). I don’t think any of the players need any more motivation for tonight.

“Maybe it will give Henrik a bit more of an incentive, but I don’t think he needs to prove anything to anybody and certainly not the players and people at this club.

“He just laughs it off as we all do. It started last season, but look what happened.

“Anybody can have a bad night and obviously we didn’t play as we could and should have done that night against Blackburn.

“There was obviously things said in the Blackburn dressing room that maybe should have been kept in-house.

“That gave us a massive motivation to go down to Blackburn and it turned the tie in our favour.

“People keep disrespecting the Scottish game and the teams here, but we have proved that we can beat the big teams and Rangers have started well also in the Champions League.”

Larsson will not need reminding that the last time he faced Lyon he suffered a career-threatening broken leg in the UEFA Cup in 1999.

The Parkhead favourite battled back from that horrific moment to stamp his place as Scotland’s biggest star and Lennon believes the memory will not hinder him tonight.

“I don’t think that will faze him in any way,” said the Northern Irishman.

Celtic have also been given an Old Firm boost with the news that Joos Valgaeren returned to action for the first time since Celtic’s 2-1 win over Partick Thistle in August.

The Belgian defender played 45 minutes of Monday evening’s Under-21s victory over Hibernian and showed no ill effects after being out for over a month.

Martin O’Neill will take some encouragement from the fact that the 27-year-old appeared comfortable throughout a high tempo game at the Shyberry Excelsior Stadium.

With Bobo Balde suspended for Saturday’s Old Firm game while Johan Mjallby has just made a tentative return to training and both Ulrik Laursen and Stephen Crainey remain in the treatment room, Valgaeren’s return is timely.