Lennon, Celtic's driving force

As a leading exponent of the holding midfield role Neil Lennon should be familiar with the adage of "patience being a virtue", but there is one aspect of his career where patience is clearly running out - the failure of Celtic FC to progress beyond the group stage of UEFA Champions League. Of this Celtic side, the Northern Irishman is the only survivor from the team that made their UEFA Champions League debut in 2001/02 under Martin O'Neill and the midfielder is quick to see the similarities between both campaigns.

Gutsy performances
Back then Celtic started with a gutsy 3-2 defeat at Juventus, the same scoreline they recorded against Manchester United FC at Old Trafford on Matchday 1. Just as they faced Scandinavian and Portuguese opponents Rosenborg BK and FC Porto on their maiden adventure, Celtic also find themselves lining up against FC København and SL Benfica this season. Having helped his side to their first victory against København, Lennon hopes the similarities do not end there.

'Home truths'
"The similarities are there for all to see I suppose, but the most important thing in the Champions League is to win all your home matches," Lennon told uefa.com. "Having said that, we managed to win all three in that first campaign and it still wasn't enough, but as a rule nine points is usually good enough to take you through. We played well without getting anything from the first game against United at Old Trafford, but it was important to get three points against Copenhagen and now we have to take the confidence from those games into the next one."

Portuguese test
That next game is at home to Benfica on Tuesday and having met his fair share of Portuguese opponents in his six years at Celtic, Lennon knows how difficult that will be. "The next two games, back-to-back with Benfica are going to be absolutely crucial for us," said the Celtic captain. "They are a class outfit as they showed last season when they knocked out United and the defending champions Liverpool [FC]."

Passing game
While the O'Neill era majored on the physical presence of Chris Sutton, Henrik Larsson and John Hartson, the team being assembled under Gordon Strachan aspires to a quicker, passing game as exemplified by the fleet-footed Aiden McGeady and Shunsuke Nakamura. "The first Champions League team was a very powerful and strong one. This one has a bit more pace in it. We are not as physical as the previous team but we showed a lot of bottle against Copenhagen and we had to. There's a lot of boys in our team who are relatively inexperienced at this level, but no one has been fazed so far which augurs well for the rest of the campaign."

Incentive
At 35 this might be Lennon's last chance to reach the knockout stages - not that he is ruling out another crack at Europe's élite tournament. "I said in all probability this would be my last season with Celtic, but we will see how it goes and if the manager still feels I can make a contribution. I feel good and I'm enjoying it immensely playing with this new team. It's a big ambition of mine to lead the club through to the last 16 of the [UEFA] Champions League. It's the only thing I haven't done in my time here and it goes without saying that's a real incentive for me."

This is an abridged version of an article that appears in this week's edition of the uefa.com Magazine. To read the feature in full, click here.