Lee Congerton, who left his post as Celtic chief scout, to re-join Brendan Rodgers at Leicester, will not be remembered fondly by Celtic supporters. We can look to Olivier Ntcham, a £4.5m acquisition from Manchester City, whom Celtic had a pre-existing relationship with, and to Odsonne Edouard, a 2018 £9m acquisition from PSG, whom Congerton identified as a loan signing during his first transfer window at the club in 2017, as success, but they were few and far between.
The debit column has Marvin Compper and Jack Hendry, two central defenders who Lee should have discovered were not what Celtic required before putting his name to the players, but the most alarming signing was Charly Musonda.
Charly was one fo the slightest players I have seen in a Celtic jersey. He had something about him, but so do lots of players. What Charly did not possess was the detrmination to success at Celtic, or the physical attributes necessary to work in the professional game. He was an extravagant signing, at the time the best-paid player in the Scottish game, and a complete misfit at Celtic.
Five transfer windows did not produce as many players able to command a regular starting place.
Football loves a scapegoat at Lee is a perfect fit. I have little sympathy for him, but scouting is as nuanced as any other aspect of life. Scouts are repeatedly employed by managers because they do not wipe their bums without the boss telling them to do so.
The fact that Lee left Celtic surprised no one, but the real question is, why did Brendan employ a scout who was so ineffective for him at Celtic? It seems an incredulous appointment, but Lee got the Leicester gig because he did what he was told at Celtic to the satisfaction of Brendan.
Chief scouts who keep their jobs and are repeatedly re-employed by the same manager observe one rule: Let the boss control everything. I have heard this straight from one well-known chief scout, who suffered the odd period of negative publicity, while only privately despairing at his manager’s signing choices.
A chief scout acts as gatekeeper to the countless agents promoting undiscovered never-will-bes, while trying to convince an agent with a talent in demand that his club is the perfect platform for the next stage in the player’s development. It is a job of phone calls, video feeds and airports – so that the manager doesn’t have to. The manager, often inspired by his confident ability to produce Lazarus-type recoveries, will then allow everyone to marvel at his wisdom.
I have no idea if Lee Congerton is a good scout or not. I can tell you his knowledge of obscure European players was impressive and his analysis was consistent with other good analysis I checked, but the data is not complete. Judging him is a big like judging a striker on his goals tally without known his Expected Goals stat.
All we know for sure is that the outcome was not good enough for Celtic, but was good enough for Brendan to give him another job.
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When jumping into the breach for us Neil would have been given a very tight brief and contract to fulfill the task of interim management of the Club thru till seasons end. This would have been discussed and agreed. Period.
Doubtless, during the conduct of the ensuing games contact and communication between the main “players” Neil, Dermot and Big Peter will have taken place as naturally as these unusual times/ events will have allowed.
Nothing would have changed the original trajectory of our agreement with Neil (imo) –
See us through to seasons end , where the Club would then have a review and establish the required management structure. A big task even at the best of times.
Nothing, not even a defeat at Asbestox or a triumphal humping would have altered the substance of that agreement. While it is always interesting conjecture for the body language experts and mind-readers ( me included) :) no substantial changes with regards to our contractual agreement with Neil will have been made in the interim.
The headline grabbing guff is just that.
Let me also take this opportunity to state as fact, ……..FACT!….that I am “interested” in the management position at Celtic Park.
Good morning to all Tims!
HH.
Philip Cocu…. surely !
new article posted.
FACT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Monaghan1900 – thank you for last night’s insight (incite?) from FF re compliance officer.
My friends – I think Sevco followers have a valid complaint.
Too often, one club is being dealt with arbitrarily.
So, Celtic should rise above any parochial considerations and table the following.
“That all Celtic supporters and all Rangers supporters be removed from any position of influence within the SFA”.
Surely our noisy neighbours would support this?
Hail hail
BAMBOO @ 8:11 AM,
:)))))
Yes, it sounds like there are worse jobs…
Yet, in 5hat role today, there must be a huge amount of technical expertise involved as well, unless that’s delegated to “IT Ghuy”.
TRADITIONALIST88 @ 1:17 PM,
CHAIRBHOY on 14TH MAY 2019 1:14 PM
Good point, we don’t really know which players he has recommended, which were ignored by the manager, which were vetoed by the CEO, indeed which chose to go elsewhere.
That said with the pulling power of a high profile manager and successive CL campaigns you’d have expected player recruitment to have been a bit more exciting, to say the least.
HH
I kinda replied to this yesterday but I didn’t have much time and you raised some very salient points…
Now with Lee Congerton on his way, who seemed to be putting forward players to suit our manager and that our CEO found difficult to “bag”.
And John Park not coming back, who seemed to buy into the CEO’s moneyball approach, it will be interesting go see what happens going forward.
If we assume the scouts will still be in place, the current processes (that so impressed Mr Houston) will still be in place and the executive framework (the CEO, Manager and HofR finalising targets) stays the same then will a different Manager and HofR garner different results? Because they have to.
The process when John Parks was in the role might have been a numbers but we did unearth some gems and a not inconsiderable amount of first team and squad players.
Recently we have had nothing like that success. As you say we should have unearthed some pretty exciting talent along the way, good prospects that want to win trophies and play in Europe.
Edouard and N’tcham for me don’t quite fall into that category… if you pay first tier Clubs 4.5 and 9.5 million pounds for prospects you should be getting quality.
The BR era has been about how players can be instructed, trained and coached to massively improve. No Wanyamas or even Johanssons were found.
Hail Hail