Dempster must regret mutual consenting Neil Lennon

Leeann Dempster must have looked at the Celtic dugout on Saturday and wondered if she backed the right horse in January, when she suspended the then Hibs manager Neil Lennon, five days before he left the club by “mutual consent”.

Neil took over from Scottish Cup winning manager, Alan Stubbs, and won Hibs promotion back to the Premiership for the first time in three years, finishing fourth in the table in the only season he completed with the club in the top flight.  He would finished the following season as league and cup winning Celtic manager.

Dempster replaced Neil Lennon with Paul Heckingbottom, who started brightly, but Hibs now sit just a point off joint-bottom Hearts and St Mirren.  I’m sure the players who were upset at working for Neil Lennon are much happier now, though.

Hibs will not go down, there are worse teams in the league, and for 20 minutes on Saturday, they demonstrated what they can do, if they can be motivated, but having got rid of one manager, there are controls in place to undermine whoever comes next.

Few managers in history can have come through the “mutual consent” trauma so successfully.