JUDGMENTS on Scott Brown's first season at Celtic require to be tempered now that it has emerged he played through tragic personal circumstances, with his 21-year-old sister Fiona losing a battle against skin cancer.
Brown did not make the expected impact following a Scottish transfer record £4.4m move from Hibernian last summer. He picked up a series of needless bookings that cost him his place for Celtic's title run-in. But club coach Neil Lennon believes the m
idfielder, who reminds him of himself at a younger age with his "attitude and that wee bit of a swagger", can offer the champions "big things" in his second season as he matures.
"For a young boy having to deal with what he has, he's handled himself very well," the Irishman says. "He is a lovely boy, and I'm not patronising him. He's just full of the devil, and you don't want to take that out of him. Because he's been around for five seasons you can forget he's still only 22. I went through the same thing myself; suffered from a wee bit of impetuousness and immaturity. I don't think we will need to change him. He will have a look at himself and go: 'Right, I need to hold my temper a wee bit and not cost myself a place in the side'. I know he is hungry for it. He carries a big price tag but he doesn't have to justify that."
For Lennon, the disappointing aspect of Brown's season has been the "silly bookings" that totted up. "He is a top-quality player. He is effervescent and we just need to channel that energy. Because he has so much of it he wants to chase every ball. There are times you need to haul in the reins and hold your position. That comes. It is just his enthusiasm for the game and you can't knock him for that."
Lennon cites his Leicester City manager and career mentor Martin O'Neill as having focused his aggression, sometimes with fiery words. "Martin was pretty good but he hated you getting booked or sent off for silly things. If you did he went through you like a hot knife through butter."
A three-game suspension for Brown coincided with Massimo Donati also being dropped. Paul Hartley and Barry Robson took over from the pair who cost Celtic £7.4m last summer... a week after Lennon's dug-out return in April. The partnership between the two £1m – until then – squad men proved central to Celtic finishing the campaign with a winning run that delivered the title.
"They (Hartley and Robson] were terrific, like dogs in there; the specific type of player we needed for those games," Lennon says. "But the other two will play big roles. Massimo is a good player, I like him a lot. His appetite and work-rate were superb, and he can handle the ball well. It can take players a year to adapt and so I'm expecting big things of Scotty and Massimo."
The full article contains 518 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
