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Hibs head coach Neil Lennon admits he wants his players screaming at each other when the tough gets going.
Lennon gave his players an earful for passively throwing away a two-goal lead in last weekend’s 2-2 draw with Motherwell.
As a player, the Northern Irishman had no hesitation in yelling at a team-mate if he felt they were not pulling their weight, and the former Celtic boss admits he wants to see more leaders take the bull by the horns on the pitch during difficult periods.
Lennon, whose team head to Ross County tomorrow after booking a Betfred Cup semi-final place with a 3-2 win over Livingston on Tuesday, said: “They shouldn’t be scared to have a go at each other, you saw me play for 15 years. “You saw Roy Keane play, you saw Jamie Carragher play.
“Again, I don’t know if it is a generational thing or not, or if they are afraid of upsetting their pal?
“But for me, if you don’t have a go at somebody it means you don’t care about them, you’re leaving them to it, rather than giving them a gee up when sometimes they need it.
“Now there’s maybe ways of putting it across, but some people aren’t as subtle as maybe my good self.
“They’re not doing it to embarrass anyone, they’re doing it to say: ‘c’mon, you can do better here.’
“You want to have a couple of minutes when we turn the opposition and play in their half, it doesn’t have to be silky, take the momentum out of the game a little bit.
“I have to remember as well I am not managing Celtic anymore where you have control of the game or even playing for Celtic where we always had control of games.
“But what I want from these experienced professionals, who have won championships and know how to get it done in big games, is to step up when the bad moments occur.
“Some of the players say ‘sometimes I don’t want to say anything, gaffer’ but I encourage it.
“We cajole them every day. I tell them if you’re not happy with someone, have a go at them. Otherwise, it’ll just keep happening again and again.”
Lennon would not have tolerated the manner of last week’s frustrating stalemate with the Steelmen and insists the Celtic team of his era was not short of strong characters either.
He added: “At Celtic you had (Johan) Mjallby, Lambo (Paul Lambert) was quiet but (Stan) Petrov could lose it, (Chris) Sutton, (John) Hartson, (Henrik) Larsson, they all had strong personalities but you can’t compare what I have got with them.
“As a manager I had Scott Brown, who wasn’t shy in coming forward and barking out orders.
“You want that, even if they are not having a good day themselves, it doesn’t matter, because they lead by example.
“They lead, that’s what good players do on the pitch.
“And if they sense that something is not right I want them to be vocal, rather than just turn their back on it and walk away. If they’re not dealing with it there and then they’re letting the game slide away from them.”
