If you can withhold pressure from the baying mob after poor football results, you are built from strong stuff. Looking in from the outside, it is easy to understand why sacking a manager should never be done on the back of one poor run of form, least of all a manager’s first poor run of form. This holds true, even if you expect to go through a painful period of results before the outcome becomes inevitable.
When you replace a manager you need to worry about what comes next. When some Celtic fans demonstrated to remove Neil Lennon from his job, at that stage, he had won five out of five domestic trophies available to him and topped a Europa League group. The world and his dog suspected Neil was no longer right for the job, but trigger-happy clubs do not attract quality managers who have options.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst led a team to the Europa League final and won a Scottish Cup. He compounded this felony by qualifying for the Champions League group stage. The demands of which took its toll on a squad which he had squeezed the last breath of quality from.
Within six months of that wafer-thin loss in Seville, his board capitulated to the demands of the mob and sacked him. I was delighted.
While Gio was under pressure, Michael Beale was top of the English Championship with QPR and a prospective ‘Premier League manager’ in the making. With his stock never higher, he strode into Ibrox like the Pope, well, maybe that’s not a great analogy, but basically, when he was flavour of the month and van Bronckhorst was suffering, he made his affinities known to club and fans alike.
Beale loaded the gun which fired van Bronckhorst. His QPR were soon in freefall, with the London club happy to let him leave and Newco desperate to quell the baying mob, the deed took place under cover of an international break.
High earners were emptied from the squad without transfer fees, a bevvy of new recruits were bought for around £13m (according to Beale) and none of them are up to the task of dislodging Celtic. An aside, John Park is chief scout there, the man who went to Holland and brought Virgil van Dijk to Celtic Park and Sam Lammers to Ibrox. Bizarre, really.
The league is not over. Newco have two months of benign domestic fixtures ahead; all winnable, with a decent chance of being top of the table in November. The best thing they can do is take their medicine from Sunday and let the manager get on with it. They will fail hilariously.
Football clubs suffer most damage, not at the hand of opponents, but from fans who have achieved nothing in the game and who rely on a win to bolster their fragile self-esteem. If you figure out how to overcome this, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.
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Happy 70th birthday Tom.
Hope you have a swell day sir.
HH
RP
Good afternoon all from Giffnock. Lovely day in East Ren.
JUSTSHATERED on 5TH SEPTEMBER 2023 1:02 PM
“While every signing is a gamble to some extent, people in our Board briefed their press poodles that we were going to spend big to make an impact on Europe.”
As they used to say regularly round these parts – SOURCE?
Can’t see why they would do that – they don’t need it to shift Season Tickets and would only alert selling clubs to up the price. More likely SMSM would float the idea, knowing fine the model we work to in order to sew discontent amongst a support they would like to divide?
GreenPinata
“Their record signing is £340 k wheras ours is circa £ 13.6 m”
I must be having a brain fart – who did we sign for that much?
Edouard at £9M I can recall but not this one.
QB
PARKHEADCUMSALFORD on 5TH SEPTEMBER 2023 1:43 PM
Hasn’t taken the begrudgers long to start their moaning again. Shame.
———-
Only my opinion, but I think yhey have overpriced the CL package. It is priced for a TV audience.
We could have given something back.
Remember, jut how much more are we raking in on Interest on our money sitting in the bank.? I would imagine we are getting 6 or 7%. Compared to virtual zero earlier this year.
Do the maths.
HH.
Quadbhoy,
I believe Jota was circa 16 million Euros.
HH.
GreenPinata
“I believe Jota was circa 16 million Euros.”
I thought £6M – £6.5M.
Guess we never really know.
QB
GP
I think your 16euros is from transfermkt site. Lots of weird stuff in there (including the wrong fit they kick wi!!)
First time i have ever seen that figure quoted , would have expected it to have been big news (maybe they added wages by mistake)
£6.5m is what was widely reported as what we paid – us and Benfica making a similar profit from the £25m
PS this is an interesting read – shows how football values changed gradually, rapidly, pulled back and then went up again. Sky, EBTs, CL money etc all had an effect
https://www.thecelticwiki.com/record-fee-signings/
Happy Birthday Tom, enjoy your day.
No transfer window,to moan about,no Board getting a mention, no players,or “projects”, to comment on.
H,mm,I know,let’s moan about the article.Lets do a Media stunt and cherry pick from it.Miss out the bit that does not suit
“The world and his dog suspected Neil was no longer right for the job,”.
Next up,CL ticket prices,that old chestnut should run for a while.Every year,same moans,every year no chance of a ticket,unless,ST holder,or one of the lucky few.But hey,the euphoria from the weekend is abating,International week,it’s a bit of a struggle to find new moans,but sure to try.
Well off to transfer the money to pay for the CL tickets,double dunt,but a nice early Xmas present.
Sevco have made 9 signings over the summer and other than Butland none of them, at the moment, look anywhere near an improvements on those players who left.
How could they get it so wrong.
During the summer most of Sevco board resigned including Ross Wilson, the director of football.
As a result Beale took over and found himself completely responsible for all new signings including the contractual arrangements. He committed Sevco to something like £15m outlay on players, handing out 4/5 year contracts which probably means at least a further £35m in wages over the contractual period. (if not more!). These players look to have little sell on value.
I suspect there was no due diligence carried out by anyone within Sevco on any of these players. They were Beale’s pick and no one challenged him.
Over the summer Beale was the darling of the media, any doubts by “good ranger’s men” of Beale prospective signings within the Sevco corridors would have been crushed by an obedient media.
So in my opinion we have Beale committing Sevco to contractual obligations of around £50m or more with no due diligence/challenge carried out by the new Board. All the Celtic sites were pointing out the stats associated with strikers such as Lammers and Dessers, they weren’t going to get any better!
Beale has rolled the dice, if it doesn’t work he is on a massive payout since he just signed a 4(?) year contract and if it does he wins as well.
Over the summer when the new Sevco Board allowed Beale to commit the club to massive contractual obligations without proper due diligence/challenge. Would the old Board have done the same? Who knows.
As the sergeant major in “it ain’t hot Mum “used to say “Oh dear, how sad, never mind”
QUADBHOY on 5TH SEPTEMBER 2023 1:55 PM
SOURCE.
I may be wrong but I think McGowan, from The Mail, was quoting a large budget. He seems to have been the guy who got stories before.
Investing in infrastructure is all well and good such as developing Barrowfield but running that and Lennoxtown seems to me a lot of duplication.: grounds people, security, medical facilities, gym equipment.
I just wonder how much money in the Bank do we need ?
I’m not for one minute suggesting that we blow the lot on Smarties or six Albian Ajeti’s however unless there is a plan to upgrade the stadium surely it is a valid question to ask.
We certainly don’t want to be living from share issue to share issue every January onwards each year like some clubs but where does the club go from here.
Strong reserves of cash, Barrowfield upgrade, possible hotel (is that still a goer) Perhaps that is the plan for the money.
AIPPLE on 4TH SEPTEMBER 2023 11:00 PM
Thanks for the article… Identity politics are a dead end, no surprise Hitler was a big fan… Pity the Dems in the states and Labour over here have chosen to go down that route.
PARKHEADCUMSALFORD @ 1:43 PM,
Hasn’t taken the begrudgers long to start their moaning again. Shame.
What do you mean start their moaning
I’d suggest you go and read the comments after the game on match day.
A multitude of barbed comments against Celtic supporters
Noticed that those that were quite happy to take a pop at our manager after the St Johnstone game were quite happy to get on their high horse Sunday
If you disagree with a comment, why don’t you do what the Celtic team did on Sunday and man up
Hail Hail
“ Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer. “ – he could have danced the pants off of Winnie “
Mel Brooks
Gents,
Apologies if I have got the Jota figure wrong.
BOURNESOUPRECIPE on 5TH SEPTEMBER 2023 2:48 PM
A great line.:-)
A version of which was also used in an episode The Boys for those who got the reference…
Excellent article Pablo.
Patience is vitue that can’t be taught and humility comes with age I’ve found, well to most of us.
Two weeks to nurse the injured and bond with the new guys. Never thought I would welcome an international break.
Just wanted to say Neil was sounding excellent and very open on plz as a pundit this week. Good to hear him focused and relaxed.
Fast food football.csc
KLV
100% Vale bhoy,
His (morelos) career was ruined at Ibrox with help from the sfa and msm they all turned him into a monster. There was a reason there was no interest in him for months. His career is over already . His baggage far outweighs his ability.
BTW Haska done as well by the looks, the distractions of the modern spoiled player claims another talent.
KLV
The hun solution to Beale is simple, say he has resigned!
Saves them paying out, unfortunately Beale will find out that he has resigned via the media as happened to Warburton and Weir in 2017 😅🤣😂
138 for Champions package isn’t bad.
KLV
Beal won’t resign. Will struggle for his next gig, shown no loyalty to qpr, wastes money at huns and bottles the big games. He may snake oil salesmen a lower league gig I fink.
Complete chancer.
KLV
PARKHEADCUMSALFORD on 5TH SEPTEMBER 2023 1:43 PM
Hasn’t taken the begrudgers long to start their moaning again. Shame.
So true PCS.so true
HH
Paul
You say…..
” An aside, John Park is chief scout there, the man who went to Holland and brought Virgil van Dijk to Celtic Park and Sam Lammers to Ibrox. Bizarre, really.”
No he did not bring VvD to Celtic, he may have taken Lammers to the bigot dome, but he didn’t bring VvD to Celtic, he took the credit for it, for the life of me I can’t recall the fellas name just now, but I will, all he did was watch videos of players and was a stato, he never got any recognition for his efforts and left the club.
TOM MCLAUGHLIN
A very happy 70th birthday,Tom.
I see discontent starting to emerge again from several posters. I got up early on Sunday for the 6am kick-off and as usual headed straight to CQN to see the line-up. There were no surprises there for me, I didn’t see Brendan throwing any new bhoys into that environment. Read through the first page of comments and closed the site – we were clearly in for a hammering. What followed was an absolute joy – one of the best games of the last couple of seasons for many reasons. The sight of Callum strutting his stuff on the pitch, at one point smiling at an opposition player who had tried to foul him, had me feeling a sense of calm not usually found during these 90 minutes. The bhoys clearly had a plan and they played it to perfection.
Every single player played their part. Standouts for me were Hart, Callum, Matt, Maeda and Kyogo. The defensive 4 played very well as a unit. The average age of this side is 21. Think about that. Stop worrying about us not being ready for the CL. Brendan will hopefully have his system bedded in and his new recruits flying. We are in good shape. Try to enjoy Sunday a little longer.
109 pounds for those in a certain age brackey and 138 for those outwith that bracket.
Before saying whether that is good or bad, it would only be fair to show how much other Clubs charge for the same deal.
Paul has made these points on many other occasions.
“Football clubs suffer most damage, not at the hand of opponents, but from fans who have achieved nothing in the game and who rely on a win to bolster their fragile self-esteem.”
This pressure is then converted to damage, rubber-stamped, and implemented by the officers of the club in an effort to appease. It is usually the easy way out and highlights lack of intellect, character and courage.
We didn’t follow the Ibrox model ‘down the rabbit –hole’ during the Murray years, although many of our ‘informed fans’ thought we should. They are trigger-happy and knee-jerk, we are not.
Some great responses to the article from the undernoted:
TANGBHOY 12.42
GREENPINATA 13.47
KEVINLASVEGAS 15.02
Let’s not forget that things could have transpired differently on Sunday and no doubt the “bed-wetters”, to use Paul’s vernacular, would again be running/ruining the debate at this precise moment.
I firmly believe our model is right and I’m convinced Brendan and his backroom buy-in 100%.
We are on our way to the formulation of a young/vibrant and hungry squad who, together with the best manager we could have engaged, will deliver the league title in this most important season. HH
FRANKTERRY re: Identity politics article from last night
Cheers. I hear you. Was a decent wee read and made me think on a few other things.
“MNCELT on 5TH SEPTEMBER 2023 3:43 PM
Try to enjoy Sunday a little longer.”
Unfortunately, not in the make up of some of our support.
HS
I would take a guess that the huns will charge that for the EL!
MNCELT
Well said.
https://cdn1.tbrfootball.com/uploads/27/2023/05/GettyImages-1467365433-1200×824.jpg
Hopefully signing a new contract 🙏
PRESTONPANS BHOYS on 5TH SEPTEMBER 2023 3:47 PM
More if they think the hordes will buy it !!
Anyway, it`s a cheerio for now from me as I find this lengthy lull between games not to my liking.
Happy Birthday Tom,
Two Hails for you young man.
Have a great day.
Ctv put up some nice unique angle stuff today to watch with your birthday cake.
KLV
I suspect the dead club will charge more for the Europa league package than we are for the CL.
Preston I’d imagine it won’t be that dar behind ours, but they will still pay it.
They were some of the dearest tickets the last time for them.
KLV
Jist a wee thought on who knows whit? ….written over a year ago…. but perhaps a nostradamus prediction of what lies around the corner!!!
https://enematic.wordpress.com/2023/09/05/vorld-var-vone/
Right ….back in the shadows!
Hail Hail
Matt