The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
After Neil Lennon resigned we discussed how Celtic have recently appointed managers to address the most glaring deficiency of the previous boss. Gordon Strachan bought in value markets, whereas Martin O’Neill pretty much bought players who appeared on Match of the Day or Sportscene.
Despite his success, Gordon was manager of Celtic, not the leader of the club; there was always some distance between him and a section of the support. As a consequence, we next appointed the guy who ‘invented’ the Celtic huddle.
Tony Mowbray was close to our hearts, but he was also a flop of a Celtic manager. People inside the club knew this from the first week he was there when he asked to spend close to £4m on Marc-Antoine Fortune.
Tony was out of sync with scouts and coaches. How do you fix that? You appoint one of the coaches who saw it all happen.
Neil Lennon didn’t have many obvious deficiencies. If we were to ask what his weakness was, there would be a range of answers.
Perhaps as a consequence, we’ve gone out with a clear remit: our manager should be intelligent, technically capable, insightful, and have a progressive and modern approach to the game. He must dovetail with the infrastructure we have worked so hard to build up, and be in tune with strategy.
All we know today is that the criteria for the job was correct and our man matches that criteria.
Ronny is one of the scientific innovators in the game who has had the ‘Moneyball’ tag applied. Back in 2009 I wrote about the books, Moneyball, and the football spin-off, Why England Lose (now re-launched as Soccernomics). I also put a copy of Why England Lose into the hands of a senior decision maker at the club.
The point about Moneyball and this type of analysis cannot be abbreviated in few short sentences, and it is certainly not as prosaic as ‘buying low and selling high’ – that’s old news now, which makes it a dead topic as far as Moneyball is concerned. The Michael Lewis book which did so much to publicise ‘sports economics’ was actually titled, Moneyball – The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.
The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
The game is unfair because others have more money, or more experience, or more sympathy with officials, or whatever your circumstances dictate. But most sports are also full of enormous inefficiencies.
Football clubs are hostages to ridiculous forces, just listen to the names within the game who urged Celtic to appoint a well-known name in order to put bums on seats. Some clubs do this – put a ‘name’ in, in the hope they sell some tickets, without realising there are enormously difficult football games ahead.
The football industry is top-heavy with fools with big budgets who don’t know what they are doing. Celtic’s job is to build a team who can compete at an ever-higher level in the Champions League. To get there we need a ruthless conviction against the inefficient nonsense which paralyses the rest of the game.
In 10 years I’ve never once agreed with a Celtic managerial appointment. I welcomed Gordon, Tony and Neil while saying the board have made the wrong decision. All of these appointments are risky, there are no guarantees – for short-term or long-term success. Guru managers don’t exist and Ronny has years of work ahead of him to build Celtic ever-higher, but I couldn’t be happier at his appointment. Eye on the prize…. it’s all about winning.
Welcome to Celtic, Ronny, you’re going to love it here, but keep your kilt on.
All of this and 300 Celtic fans at the CQN the Lisbon Lions gig in Greenock tonight! Hold me back!
Lladro replica World Cup trophy
My thanks to Liam, from East Kilbride, who donated his prize memento, a Lladro replica World Cup trophy, commissioned by the Spanish FA in 1978, and acquired by Liam in 1982. It will be auctioned on Saturday with proceeds going to our Mary’s Meals school kitchen appeal. You can get involved in the auction, or keep an eye on it as it happens, here. The auction takes place at Great Western Auctions, on Dumbarton Road.
Visit the CQN Bookstore to get Tommy Gemmell to sign your personal copy of his tome, All the Best.
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SFTB
We can surely welcome a new manager without talking down the abilities of a previous one four managers ago.
There’s something deeply sinister here about the way MON has been turned on. I wonder if it is because he told the truth about Roy Keane.
‘Tony Mowbray was close to our hearts, but he was also a flop of a Celtic manager. People inside the club knew this from the first week he was there when he asked to spend close to £4m on Marc-Antoine Fortune.’
###
Doubtless there will be another side to that story.
And doubtless we’ll get the Peter Lawwell version on here.
Little known facts.
Ronny is a fan of Johnny Cash!
LB
Welcome Ronny may your stay be long and fruitful.
Got to say I’m pleased to see the same people that told us WGS was not Celtic minded enough are now getting behind a new manager that has never been Celtic minded, are CQN’ers growing up ?
Bobby Murdoch’s curled up winkle pickers
Celtic have beaten Slovak opposition twice over two legs and lost once to one over two winning the second match.
In the sixties Celtic defeated Slovan Bratislava in the cup winners cup I think 1-0 both legs and Bobby Murdoch scored a penalty in each leg.
In 1996 Celtic drew and defeated Kosice 1-0 on agg after a 0-0 in Slovakia and a Big Pierre penalty miss at Celtic park.
Artmedia we all know about but Celtic did win the second leg 4-0 and missed a ton of chances into the bargain in doing so.
Should Celtic negotiate their first round this season there is a chance that they can draw Slovan Bratislava in the next round should they get through their tie of course.
I really need to know this stuff living where I do.
We’ll done Celtic for taking a risk with the new manager
The only one through out the years I got wrong from the start
A mr win Jansen and his cheap £650,000 striker
Mind you that went down to the last league game;-))))
Got a good feeling about ronny bhoy
Thats me on the happy clapper list
Cannot wait till the new season starts
COYBIG
Jam67
Michael Collins:
Get with it mate… the truth, especially the truth, is not allowed to be whispered even in thought.
SETTING FREE THE BEARS 1342
Garbage.
‘much, much, much, much, fewer’
Your English teacher-and Mr Irving would know to say ‘significantly fewer’
Fewer is more,or summat like that.
Sftb
Agree.
This place is menkil at times. Poor menkil.
Bobby. It’s cold , I am tired and if I wake up in the morning to be banned from CQN when I go to work. So be it. Will stand by legends and shout down anybody who tries to be little them
Off on Monday due to lizzies bday
For all our new, confused Norwegian lurkers who are playing catch-up, our goalkeeper is Forster and our CEO is Lawwell.
http://www.onfieldsofgreen.com/the-man-who-came-in-from-the-cold/
Sydneytim
“He indeed struggled with substitutes”
You take that back right now!
Kit,
It absolutely was a dig and not the first one at Martin on this site over the past few days.
It’s also total nonsense. MON signed plyers he had personal knowledge of from his time in the English game. Sutton had been labelled a failure yet MON made him our record signing. He was also unlikely to have seen Bobo Balde on Match of the Day or Sportscene.
As I said earlier it’s sinister and un necessary.
It would be hypocritical of me to say I’m pleased to have Ronny as our new Manager, but he is our Manager and as such he has my total support & respect. Welcome to the best Club in the world Ronny, deliver success and you will be loved as a Legend. I hope & pray that you will have a great career with us.
Having a look at Ronnys attire, I have no doubt in my mind I will be bumping into him in Slaters at some point, I’m very impressed with his dress code, says a lot about the man yi know.
SNAKE
Sorry,had forgotten Kosice.
But since you really need to know these things,etc,Slovakia didn’t exist as a country in the 60s.
Teams from there represented Czechoslovakia.
But you know that,still disnae alter the fact that East Germany was correct!
I’m really pleased with the choice of new manager. People were asking Peter Lawell to think outside the box and it looks as if he did. I wasn’t getting excited about any of the names that were bandied about including Roy Keane.
Of course it wouldn’t be CQN without someone wanting to have a moan on the day our new manager is presented.
There are definitely hun interlopers on this site fishing for bites and they always get them.
Michael. Mons time was a time when we put ourselves in debt a large one at that But we all loved it on the park
The problem with that , if PL was there at the time he would have had his basic salary and no bonus
His bonus would have been zero at Seville zero !!
The debt was paid off our club was never in trouble with the banks. But is was great !!! For the fans
Now it is all about PL personal income and that’s it End of Story
Michael Collins:
That is why I said “true to a large extent” but I can’t honestly say I read a dig into Paul’s words. Rather than digs and perceived digs, I’m much more concerned with the spin and the lack of honesty coming from our club. Neil Lennon certainly let a few cats out of the bag labelled for drowning. What he has said in print contradicts a lot of what I’ve read from others. I wonder how many more cats he’s going to let our and if goaded I think he will, regardless of how much affection he has for the club I think he has as much affection for the support wrapped in battered black and blue empathy.
Tell you one thing about MON. He wasn’t a very good psychic.
Get used to life in the slow lane? FFS MON. We are parked on the HARD SHOULDER!
Hopeless you were.
MWD says AYE
TONY DONNELLY
He seems to have a slack attitude to his attire!
Michael Collins
Sinister?
Wow! Did you forget a pill? I’m away to enjoy the sun
I though Paul 67 was pretty even with his criticism of MoN he did in fact look no further than his backyard for players but then again he was bankrolled with 10’s of millions to do so.
Now you cant blame someone for spending money they are ahem given to spend
Anyway it was a different era different circumstances oldco were spending so much you would think they would go bust and we had to compete.
It was a gamble that paid off big time of course and under MoN we broke oldcos stranglehold on the big prize money in the CL
When it comes to criticism I think TM got more than his fair share some justified some not imo
I thought he was bit too honest for the skullduggery up here and the season of honest mistakes of the century didn’t help either.
HH
Seemingly it was someone at Manchester City who put us on to Ron Manager, they were very impressed by him when he was down there studying their methods
Welcome Ronny Deila
hail hail
West End to East End
He certainly did think out of the box once his main list of candidates were a no go.
Here Dezzie wait a wee minute there. how about that boy who was going to be NL’s no.2. he’ll cost a fiver or something?
MWD says AYE
Martin buying only players he saw on Scotsport/ MotD isn’t revisionism. It was being said on here during his own time. How true it is or how much he varied from our other managers is another matter. It certainly doesn’t mean he was a bad manager. Nobody’s perfect.
Paul67
Did you bookmark the chapter on the lunatic approach to appointing managers?
What Celtic and the support in general have as an abundant resource is intelligence, wit sprinkled with half wit.
As long as it is used in that order we should be fine.
west end of east end 1408
Rarely true.
What you have is a collective of Celtic supporters who want the best for our club.
With differing opinions on how to do it.
Most of us are experts,btw.
And we are all absolutely correct.
tonydonnelly67 @ 13:59
‘Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy—rich, not gaudy,
For the apparel oft proclaims the man, …’
FF
Bada Bing
I heard it was someone in Judea!
MWD says AYE
Ron Manager is a stickler for his players being dressed smartly
Good…no EPL failure.
We got a good European coach, who I think will do well for Celtic
Ive no complaints today…Well done
HH
Syd, a touch sensitive dear chap.
Sutton, Thompson, Lennon were all known to MON as established EPL players. Great signings each.
Valgaeren was spotted by MON while a pundit at Euro 2000.
Douglas and Agathe were locally sourced. I doubt MON had seen either on the telly before he arrived, but both had played against his Celtic team before they were signed.
The following year we signed Balde and Hartson, again, great signings. Clearly he knew BBJ, but Bobo was picked out of nowhere, so I assume his field of vision extended beyond the BBC.
Up until 2002, MON hardly missed a trick, Michael Herbet excepted.
Thereafter, from 2002 onwards, MON’s complete list of signings noted below. Which do you consider were scouted, identified and assessed in the normal course?
Guppy – known from Leicester days – the odd one out
Sylla – starring for St Johnstone
Fernandez – starring for Livingston
Hedman – starring for relegated Coventry
Laursen – starring for Hibs
Broto – starring for Livi
Varga – not starring for Sunderland
Pearson – starring for Motherwell
Juninho – not starring for M’bro
Henchoz – not starring for Liverpool
All players signed from clubs playing football in Scotland or England.
Consider the reach of our scouting nowadays, where it is actually quite unusual for us to sign a player from a British club, and compare and contrast with the players MON signed during his 5 years at Celtic Park.
There wasn’t much effort put into identifying talent that wasn’t already on Sportscene or MoTD, was there.
Maybe that’s just the way things were from 2002 onwards. Maybe that’s how MON liked it. He could have spent his (limited) funds anywhere. He chose Scotland and England. He chose players he was familiar with.
Nowadays, most players who sign for Celtic are largely unknown to most of us.
MoTD scouting has been replaced by Youtube and Google.
Can’t see there’s anything there to get too upset about.
BMCUW
If East Germany is correct why is Argentina not also correct.
I dont think Europe wad mentioned in the question
Actually MON was as good a pshycic as i am and smelling.
MWD says AYE
SydneyTim – That’s your opinion, doesn’t make it a fact. Someone on here last night was bemoaning that it’s all the fault of the PLC. Would they like to go back to the days of the White’s & Kelly’s ? I know I wouldn’t.
I was there during their 9 in a row, if someone had told me then where we are now I would have had them sectioned. I’m just sorry that the good men who went before us like my Grandfather who took me everywhere to watch Celtic aren’t alive today to see where we are today.