As well as the significant miracle of winning a league and Scottish Cup double, Martin O’Neill and Shaun Maloney have started to address the gaping chasm that is the recruitment side of the club. So much has happened this season that it’s easy to forget we dismissed our Head of Football operations in January, leaving only a skeleton of the scouting system he put in place.
Martin and Shaun arrived in January completely blind to recruitment plans, where any legacy objectives were no longer relevant and with no time whatsoever to assess the very scant options before them. Assessments of the January recruits were duly made after the players pulled on their Celtic training kits and resulted in few first team appearances.
As well as a manager, we need to appoint a Head of Football Operations and a bevvy of scouts. We also need a chairman and there are new non-exec director vacancies to fill. All this while, by their own admission, the board got the appointment of the last two permanent managers badly wrong. Dermot Desmond’s ‘don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out’ communication on the departure of Brendan Rodgers, and the sacking of Wilfried Nancy after eight games attest to that.
Any of these problems are problematic, having all of them, even more so. But all is not lost. My mind was made up on Nancy during the Dundee United defeat at Tannadice in December. I always knew what to expect from Rodgers (still cannot understand how he was appointed in 2023). We have not had a sustainable forward model since Ange Postecolou left for London.
There are lots of reasons why we’ve won every league since then: Celtic are a winning machine and their direct competitors are more attuned to the role of losers. What we now have, is an opportunity to go again. Avoid a third consecutive unfathomably bad permanent managerial appointment, recruit good recruiters, and we might just kick on.
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Don’t worry Paul.
Daddy despot Desmond has it all in hand….
An elite manager cops it again.
TBB
Thanks for the reply – helps when the other large shareholders are in your camp
Brendan Rogers wasv a brilliant manager who won an unbelievable amount of trophies, this crusade is embarrassing Paul
Brendan! Brendan! in my head, in my head
cranberriesCSC
Kick on? Yeah, that’s as likely to happen now as it has in the past…..
And after an 82-point season we should be looking to do a lot more than “kick on”.
The whole place needs transformed but it’s good for the “old firm” to do very little…
Don’t ask Michael if he knows any recruiting agencies that could recruit us some good recruiters as he’s clearing his desk …
Please don’t 😲🍀
Robbie Keane’s odds shortened drastically. Currently bookies favourite
Had Brendan Rodgers remained at the helm, we wouldn’t have won the league. He chucked it. On top of that, he threw his entire squad under the bus with his “Ferrari” comment after the Dundee capitulation . Guys like Autin trusty watching from the stands at tynecastle because he didnt have a right foot! how did that work out for the rest of the season!
An elite manager, no doubt—when it suited him. But a self-serving sociopath who always put Brendan first.
https://x.com/celticcsl/status/2059912911980491162?s=48&t=pLERKYVBy2vfK2Cym_B3Tw
The Celtic Paradox….
Paul
Succinctly put. Can’t disagree with any of that.
Ave Ave
All this while, by their own admission, the board got the appointment of the last two permanent managers badly wrong.
I must have missed that ‘mea culpa’.
Had Brendan Rodgers been backed he would have skooshed the league and qualified for Europe
Ange only arrived because we messed up with Eddie Howe
So who is getting sacked for mistakes which cost this Club millions?
We need performers and we need a talent pipeline.
The trick is to find players who serve both purposes at once.
We used to be outstanding at this, from VVD, Foster and Wanyama to Dembele, Edouard and O’Reilly to name just a few.
Paul’s beef with BR is that he prioritised performers over talent pipeline. Particularly last summer, he pursued established players and overlooked the prospective ones, with regrettable results.
I don’t think that’s at all controversial, although doubtless some will find fault.
Fact is we have managed to throw out the babies, the bathwater and the feckin bath.
The restructuring job at Celtic is huge as a consequence, and right now we have vacancies for the key roles in the organisation from top to bottom.
It’s difficult to overstate the extent of this clusterbourach. If you want to blame this person or that person for it, crack on, likelihood is that every name mentioned will have had their hand in it.
The real issue is… who’s going to sort it out?
Another ‘I was cuckolded by BR’ article… sigh…
If it’s bevvy scouts we need surely BRRB merits at least an interview if not a Head Bevvy Scout position?
Ps; who recruited the January punts if not MOzn and SM… oh wait, it was Brendan doing it from Saudi right ?
So we got the last two permanent Manager appointments wrong along with the Head of Recruitment.
The big question should really be: do you trust the people who made all of those appointments to get them correct this time?
History and track record is against them.
Ultimately the people who made these terrible appointments are still there draining more wages out of the club. There should be someone held accountable for those terrible decisions otherwise we could very well be about to repeat the same mistakes.
I posted this on the last thread which some folk found helpful. If it’s OK, I’ll repost it here so it’s more visible (with error corrected).
——————–
Dermot Desmond; “The Owner” or Otherwise?
This discussion was seeded by MON a few days ago when he referred to prospective discussions with Dermot Desmond about taking on the manager’s role for the coming season as “talking with the owner”.
Celtic plc has 3 classes of shares: Ordinary shares, Preferred Ordinary shares and Preference shares.
Ordinary shares and Preferred Ordinary shares are voting shares. Each voting share has one vote.
Preference shares pay a fixed dividend of 6% each year but come with no right to vote.
The breakdown of shares is as follows (as at end June 2025)
Ordinary shares 94,878,000
Preferred Ordinary Shares 12,655,000
Preference Shares 15,690,000
The total voting stock is therefore 107,533,000
Of these, Dermot Desmond holds:
Ordinary shares 32,772,073
Preferred Ordinary Shares 8,000,000
Preference Shares 5,131,300
Dermot’s voting stock amounts to 40,772,073, which is 38% of the total voting stock.
At face value, he holds a minority position (less than 50% of the voting stock) albeit he is the single largest shareholder in the club.
However… It’s been fully 30 years since Fergus first took the club public and sold shares to supporters and investors. In the intervening years many original shareholders have become detached from the club or passed away and their shareholding has become dormant, lost or forgotten.
Further, many other shareholders don’t participate in the AGMs and don’t cast their vote.
As a result, of the 107 million voting shares, typically only about 83 million are cast at AGM any given year, about 77.5% of the total.
Dermot always casts his vote.
In these circumstances his vote counts for 49% of the total ballot. Practically, that means every decision taken will be decided by Dermot’s vote.
Consequently, he has virtual control of the club.
It’s worth noting here that the Preferred Ordinary shares are ‘Convertible’ into Ordinary shares at the ratio of 1 Preferred share into 2.08 Ordinary shares. Were Dermot to convert his Preferred Ordinary shares his voting stock would increase to 48,932,000, being 42.3% of the total.
So…
Dermot is not “The” owner of the club, he is one of 30,000 or so shareholders. All of us shareholders are all owners in that sense. Dermot is “An” owner.
Dermot is though the major shareholder, the ‘principal shareholder’ as he has become styled lately, and exercises effective control over the club.
In the wholly unlikely event that the missing shares/shareholders were found and allied with other shareholders in a united front threatening his control, he could convert his Preferred shares and lock down any dissent.
In fact, it’s conceivable that this class of share was introduced (in 2001) in part with this in mind.
In any event, there’s no show without Punch, and no decision without Dermot.
What Dermot says, goes.
B2B @ 10.58
“ Dermott MIGHT just feel partially vindicated by the outcome of the season.”
(If so, that is a concern)
———————————
Spot on, “ we won a double “ told you meh, meh, meh.
All I needed to do was make quick phone call to the King’s Rd ( twice ) you were all wrong.
It was all BR fault
HH
Reposted as a catharsis and takes ages to type ,
Billionaire available for select weddings, barmitzvahs and the odd evisceration. Celtic supporters ( and managers ) glimpse of waxy moustache linger long, ‘the owner’ that strikes fear into mere millionaires, in the 8 billion wide world. I’m glad he made it back in time to sample the rarified Parkhead air and see Daizen’s swan song, the cornerstone along with others, of his next budget.
Motherwell born not, Desmond is one of less than 5,000 and ‘of all the gin joints in all the world he has to walk into ours’. ‘Celtic a business opportunity decades ago, ‘owning’ a sports ‘franchise’ the ultimate sign of wealth.
A club for the needy controlled by one or two greedy, his tier one manager, greedy too, wanted ‘quality’ he did – remember that? Big Daddy of them all loved him, not once but twice the Irishmen combined, to raise Celtic from the new Sevco bottom division doldrum effect. The so called seats of shame reopened and turned 42,000 back into the steady 53,000 money spinner envisioned by Fergus McCann and his 5 year adios amigo, into the sunset plan. The second Brendan voyage wasn’t perfect not ‘invincible’ like the first, but only went and did a double, then another double. Throw in, all time record Celtic ‘turnover’, £143M last season, hoops Brodgeball, had did it again.
But the moneyball hit ( again ) just like the budget blown by Tony Mowbray on Marc Antoinne Fortune, en route to his gardening leave exit. It’s always about money at Celtic. Back in bed with Rainjurz “ high spending “ noisy neighbours the board always knew were coming “. Dead as a dodo, but after 14 years stirred, but still not shaken, ‘cataclysmic retrenchment? quote Paul67 ’ or cataclysmic recruitment?
Brendan ( he had to go ) Rodgers was way too ambitious for the self perpetuating “ we can’t compete in Europe owners “ Remarkable growth and giant scores in PLC branding Nike and then Adidas, the kits just keep on coming. Celtic’s name flourishes good work was carried on, but the football club has been let down by the same PLC which still doesn’t have a modern structure in recruitment, and the ticket office is still a portakabin. Executives who bleed green and white their remit we know enough to see the gap between football and company. Lee Congleton, Mark Lawwell and most recently ‘sacked’ Paul Tisdale were all poor choices. The blame game should have reached as far away as Barbados of the diaspora, recruitment in the modern game has caught up with Big Daddy’s successful structure.
Dermot can swop out the Brendan’s, but he has to look under the hood in his executive engine room and turbo charge more than the Honda Civic. The whole club needs restructured ( Ask Martin? ) on and off the park. We should be bringing in a Head of Football operations empowered to overhaul the footballing departments, particularly around recruitment, analytics and player development.
Dermot Desmond here for 33 in a row 🇮🇪🇨🇮🇨🇮🇨🇮🇨🇮
BSR
Correct . Thus Dermot will see himself as the solution rather than part of the problem .
A useful coincidence that I scribbled the Dermot Desmond stuff above on the same day that David Low’s CSL project published their review of the club.
See Bada’s link above at 12.24
Bada
Certain people in the organisation are allowed the odd mistake without criticism on here.
Nancy, Tisdale and PL left 5 months ago – enough time to get things sorted.
Bringing back BR was not the big mistake. It was bringing back Peter Lawwell.
Sorry, but who made those ‘bad’ appointments? And, who admitted that they had ‘got it badly wrong’?
Somebody(-ies) within the walls of the Celtic Park Boardroom must have been sacked.
Surely?
Who?
JUSTSHATERED on 28TH MAY 2026 12:38 PM
So we got the last two permanent Manager appointments wrong along with the Head of Recruitment.
The big question should really be: do you trust the people who made all of those appointments to get them correct this time?
History and track record is against them.
——————-
World class in everything we do
I wonder if the Robbie Keane momentum is due to Martins chat “with the owner”
Suggestion has been its Martin’s if he wants it
It probably is, but the big question is “does he want it”
Martin is no fool and I suspect (hope) that his chat with the owner included some guarantees about recruitment of players and the budget
Our last couple of Transfer Windows have been abysmal
Martin would not want to live through that level of incompetence again
So if it is Robbie Keane it’s probably because Martin could not get the assurances he wanted
And that is really worrying
67ECW
Reading Paul 67’s “evaluation” of BR’s two stints at Celtic is like reading the assessment of Martin’s capabilities as a player on the FF site.
The hatred for the man totally overcomes rational thought. Cf a few contributions on FF re Martin.. “He was a pish player an a’” which was met with incredulity by others.. “Ffs, he won two Champions League medals, ya dick!!”.
As Rabbie wrote “Oh wid some power” etc.
No matter how poor P67 thinks BR was/is he’s not in the same country never mind league as WN. Now that apppointment even I fail to comprehend.
Like you I was appalled when Rodgers was reappointed. It reminded me of when we when we “re-signed” Mo Johnson – guaranteed trouble and tears. As usual, after 18 months or so the nonsense started. He should have been fired immediately after the cup final, though that was probably too late anyway. Surely we won’t be so belligerent again.
On reading the article today , I read a critique of those making decisions at the club – including reappointment of BR, but encompassing other managers, whole scouting system, dog, empty bard places, no chairman. But the the first 10 posts all went for this being about BR again.
BR achieved great things at this club – but left it in disarray twice. We won’t be bringing him back. Paul didn’t like him. A lot of others did. But he’s gone. Paul and the rest of you need to let it go.
Let’s focus on we need a new chairman , new board appointments, new manager, new dof, new scouting system and we need them now. Why the new chair and new board people aren’t in place now is a major concern. We really need those so that the appointment of a new manager has appropriate governance- same for dof, Scouts etc.
as it is , it looks like new manager appointees by DD with little oversight. How will we fix all the things need in time for training on 26th June.
I really need to read back before posting- dog is dof
Bard places is board places
Just in case you didn’t figure it out already
Like many others, I can accept that both The Board and Brendan Rodgers were culpable in last year’s shambles and that the Martin O’Neill/Shaun Maloney miracle shouldn’t disguise our shortcomings.
I have no doubt that Brendan Rodgers has coaching talent…but to those who view the whole situation as binary and that The Board are solely to blame, I would ask one question.
Do you think Brendan Rodgers is trustworthy?
Quadrophenian 12.34
I am available if selected. 🍻
bashi-bazouks on 28th May 2026 1:19 pm
Let’s focus on we need a new chairman , new board appointments, new manager, new dof, new scouting system and we need them now. Why the new chair and new board people aren’t in place now is a major concern. We really need those so that the appointment of a new manager has appropriate governance- same for dof, Scouts etc.
And how much of this shopping list will be allowed?