the end of the season and had to take injections in order to play matches. Brown played 48 times for Celtic during the 2008–09 season, scoring seven goals. Following the resignation of Strachan at the end of the 2008–09 season, Brown's former Hibs boss Tony Mowbray became Celtic manager. Brown underwent surgery during pre-season in an attempt to rectify his ankle problem, but this didn't work, and he played matches despite not being fully fit. Celtic had a fairly good start to their league campaign, going into the first Old Firm match four points ahead of Rangers, but they lost 2–1. Celtic beat Dynamo Moscow in Champions League qualifying, but then lost the play-off to Arsenal, which meant that they dropped into the Europa League group stage. The 1–0 home defeat by Hamburg on 22 October 2009 was Brown's last action of the year, as Celtic initially chose to rest him in another effort to heal the ankle injury. This proved unsuccessful, and he underwent a second operation in Rotterdam to try and clear up his ankle injury. Brown made his comeback in February 2010 as a substitute in a 1–0 defeat to Kilmarnock, during which he took the captaincy of the team. Mowbray confirmed later that week that Brown would assume the Celtic captaincy. Brown was sent off in the third Old Firm game of the season, after a confrontation with Rangers player Kyle Lafferty. BBC Sport described the decision to dismiss Brown as "harsh". Mowbray was sacked by Celtic in March 2010 and replaced by Neil Lennon, initially on a caretaker basis. After this, Celtic won their remaining eight league matches of the season. Brown played in all of them, and managed to score in Celtic's 3–1 victory over Kilmarnock on 27 March which was Lennon's first match in charge. On 10 April, Brown played in Celtic's 2–0 Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to First Division side Ross County. Being knocked out of this competition meant that Celtic would finish a season without a trophy for the first time in seven years. After the match, Brown apologised to the Celtic fans for the team's performance and stated that it was the players', and not the manager's, fault that Celtic had lost. After being appointed manager on a permanent basis during the summer, Neil Lennon retained Brown as captain because he had contributed significantly to Lennon keeping his position. Brown