Tony Watt on his difficult Celtic relationship with Neil Lennon

In partnership with

The Celtic Star

·13 Januari 2025

Tony Watt on his difficult Celtic relationship with Neil Lennon

Tony Watt famously scored that goal against Barcelona back in November of 2012, in the UEFA Champions League group stages, which more or less catapulted Celtic into the Last-16 of the competition and sent Watt’s name into the stratosphere…

Tony Watt scores! Celtic v Barcelona match in the Champions League on 7 November 2012 at Celtic Park. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

Admittedly, the Dundee United striker who is on loan at Motherwell currently reckons that perhaps that moment came too early in his career and didn’t help his development as you would expect.

Video OneFootball

Tony Watt has been speaking to Open Goal

The former Hoops star has spoken recently about his time at Celtic Park and the intense relationship he had with then manager, Neil Lennon. Both men were at loggerheads continually and Watt has spoken to Open Goal about that time in his footballing life, explaining that behind the scenes, things were often fraught and tensions high with him and the Lurgan native.

‘They wanted to sell me right after the Barca goal’

Looking back on that period, Watt revealed: “He used to terrorise me. There was an incident off the pitch that I can’t say. Well, I can say. He (Lennon) was going to batter me one night, genuinely. I think he was fed up with me and I was fed up with him. I’d asked to leave a hundred times. They wanted to sell me right after the Barca goal. I was gutted. It was like somebody had dumped me and I never wanted to go back.

“They wanted to cash in on me. Remember Juan Agudelo? They’d lined up everything but couldn’t get a work permit so then Celtic said ‘Nah, we’re not selling you’. My agent phoned me and said there were a couple of Premier League teams interested in me. I was 18, 19 and it was the likes of your Wigans and West Broms but there was no money on the table.

Tony Watt scores! Celtic v Barcelona match in the Champions League on 7 November 2012 at Celtic Park. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

“Then he turned around one day and told me ‘you’re not going’ and I was like okay that’s fine. He’d bring me back for the big games but bomb me out for everything else so I’d always be out of the team. Then one night he told me to go up the road and I was like ‘I’m not going’. He said ‘who do you think you are?’ and he lost it with me. We weren’t quite head-to-head but I backed off and we left it.”

‘We had won the league but his team talk was all about me”

Things would never be quite the same from there on in and just a few short weeks later, the old wounds opened up once again when Lennon made a point of publicly humiliating Watt in the dressing room. Watt said: “The next week (after the argument) we were away to Motherwell and I got an assist, then we played Ross County away and he hadn’t been in the whole week so I didn’t see him. I seen him on Saturday for the game, I think we had won the league but his team talk was all about me.”

The striker then told the panel how Lennon gave him a dressing down, saying: “See him, if he talks back to anybody, go through him. And see you, if anybody speaks to you, don’t open your mouth’ blah, blah, blah. So before the game I was genuinely nearly crying. I was in shock.

Kelvin Wilson came up to me and told me everything was going to be fine. He said ‘you know what he gets like, just play your own game and be yourself’ but after that it was done. I didn’t speak to him until after the summer.”

07.11.2012 Glasgow, Scotland. Tony Watt in action during the Champions League game between Celtic and Barcelona from Celtic Park. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

‘I was desperate to leave. I wasn’t ready for Celtic’

He added: “He said about a fresh start but it was done. A month later I was out on loan. I was desperate to leave. I wasn’t ready for Celtic. It came too fast. Far too fast. Now when I train I work hard and I say that running is more bigger than everything.

But back then? It was just give me the ball and I’ll do whatever. I was naive and young. It was definitely my fault with Lennon but I think he could have handled things better. If I saw him five years ago I wouldn’t have spoke to him. If I see him now, I’d speak to him.”

Paul Gillespie

Celtic Pools – Join the Weekly Lottery and support the Celtic Academy. Why not join Celtic Pools for £1 a week with the chance to win up to £25k?