Mark Lawwell, Head of First Team Scouting and Recruitment, and Joe Dudgeon, Lead First Team Scout, both resigned yesterday to “pursue other opportunities”. Mark joined from City Football Group (CFG) in May 2022, Joe followed from the same source six months later.
While at CFG, Lawwell was Head of Scouting and Recruitment, responsible for Manchester City, Girona, Ange Postecoglou’s Yokohama and others. The pair worked together for three years at CFG, where Ange bought into Mark’s recruitment and development pathway. Mark then recommended Ange to Celtic.
After his successful first season at Celtic, Ange brought Mark up from Manchester to head Celtic’s recruitment. Plans were cut short when Ange left for Tottenham before the pair set to work in the summer of 2023.
It was clear to many that Brendan Rodgers recruitment methodology was different from Ange’s, while Mark Lawwell’s also differed from Lee Congerton’s, who headed recruitment during Brendan’s first term at Celtic. Lee had worked with Brendan early in their backroom careers at Chelsea and followed him to Leicester in 2019.
Both Lawwell and Congerton suffered some reputational damage among the support during their times at Celtic, although Head of Recruitment is only one piece of the jigsaw. Congerton’s reputation in the game got him the top recruitment job at Atalanta in 2022.
After the work he did at CFG and his transformational time at Celtic through Postecoglou, Mark Lawwell also has significant standing in the game. He will end up back in the English Premier League, where there is a bit of flux at the top end.
City and Chelsea are prodigious hoarders of talent, although he may prefer not to return to City and not be further contaminated by Chelsea. Postecoglou moved for him before and could take him to Spurs. I would keep an eye on Manchester United as a possible destination. Their new controlling shareholder is known to respect the work of CFG and will make changes to the football and recruitment operation.
Liverpool are probably too focused on replacing Klopp than making any further senior changes. There are lots of clubs keen to move up the food chain further down the EPL, who may also move for him. Bookmark me if you think any other scenario is likely. What happens next will be a measure of what walked out the door yesterday.
The January transfer window was described as “disappointing” by Mark’s father, chairman, Peter Lawwell, showing his aptitude for understatement. The manager and recruitment department need to work to the same methodology or we end up with £67m in the bank and spending very little. The frustration would have been palpable.
I think everyone had the best intentions when Brendan joined in the summer and committed to work with the existing recruitment system. The manager must always have the final decision in transfers, but if we do not sign who the recruitment department wants us to sign, those at the top will soon move on.
I doubt we will be able to get Lee Congerton back. Whether you want someone like Lee in to work with Brendan they way they did until 2019 doesn’t matter, it is important that we get someone who operates like that. The manager needs a Head of Recruitment who works the way he does, not the way CFG do. It may not be to your taste, but it’s surely better than rejecting everyone. So nothing to worry about.
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Chairbhoy
You should apologise for your posts !
Same stuff on twice.
FYI no one I know mentioned dominance for 24 years or that MON had anything to do with the lawwell period other than his exit and blowing the league in 4/5 season.
Always clear it was Quinn strategy but had to be delivered by someone to keep alive.
Always clear MON despite overspending and need for further funding call did a great job up to 2004.
I laid out the FACTs crystal clear re trophies won over long term. These FACTS don’t lie. This has been by far our most successful domestic 20 years in our history. We also beat more top tier teams in top European competitions in this 20 year period.
FACTs not opinion or indeed lies or misrepresentation.
Where are you sitting at Tynecastle today btw ? Definitely my 2nd fav away venue to win at. Even better with our tiny allocation.
Bankiebhoy1 8.51am
Keep it Celtic that annoys them the most :-)
I don’t post Monday-Friday as I use CQN as my “weekend”
“if” we win this title it will be terrific … 3pts today just to shut the Celementy cheerleaders up
Brendan bolted but was brave enough to return as he knew it wouldn’t be accepted by many
Roll on 12pm … we need to support the Bhoys on the park … who cares about CEOs, chief scouts, or NEds it’s all about the players for me 🍀
And , and……..:) as for that nugget Warnock?
Glad his Pantomimemeeja mummerey has been found out in short-order.
He’ll find it even colder up there now.
Pair him with that dick, Campbell.
Gurning Muppet.
GFTB – hear ye fella!
Hope the Bhoys complete your weekend!
Keep-It-Lit
HH.
I never feel confident going to Tynecastle.
A foreign ref would lessen my concern.
Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, footage exists, goal down approaching sixty minutes you know what happens next?
The latest Sevco lifeline took VAR 4 minutes to find an angle that would suffice for TavPen. Things didn’t go to script and another big guy from Dublin put them to the sword.
VAR will play its part in the run in, it already helped close the gap.
Beware the VAR’s of March .
Hot Smoked
Am less confident when we are playing at home these days (Dundee apart) as I think, even though we have had terrific success in the last couple of decades being a Celtic fan = nervousness :-)
Hopefully Brendan & the bhoys know we have 10 league “cup finals” to go …
Pittodrie & Tynecastle always were great places to go although in my day we were housed behind both goals Gorgie & Beech end :-)
3pts today is the priority… a few goals would be nice, nullify Shankland and Hearts usually won’t score
Beware the IDAH’S of March.
burnley78
My thoughts on reading the 6.08 version…..
‘Aw naw… there’s two o’ them’
Seems to be a quiet confidence around today.
That’s a good way to start.
Ignore all the noise, corporate comings and goings, our rivals result.
3 points would make this a most satisfactory Sunday
THEBHOYFROMU.N.C.L.E
I’ll set them up , you hit them away
OpenChannelD CSC
Interesting article on Muhammad Ali’s visit to Scotland in 1965 in this weekend’s Morning Star.
Visited Robert Burns birthplace, sparred in Paisley, and also met the Celtic team before a home game. Must have been either versus Motherwell on Wed 18 August or Dundee Sat 21 August.
Wasn’t the only Champ to see the Bhoys, Gentleman Jim Corbett kicked off the home game against Hibs 26 May 1894. And of course Sugar Ray Robinson played drums on the team recording of ‘Celtic Celtic’ in 1964.
It is not known if Bournesouprecipe was part of the chorus….
thatstheteamformecsc
BOURNESOUPRECIPE on 3RD MARCH 2024 10:13 AM
Will do my bestist……
HH
Celtic Mac
Good Article
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FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
Men’s BoxingWhen Ali and Burns crossed paths
JOHN WIGHT tells the fascinating story behind the boxer’s unexpected interest in the poet and lyricist when he visited Scotland in 1965
Muhammad Ali, July 11, 1972
ROBERT BURNS and Muhammad Ali are not historical figures you would ever expect to see named in the same sentence, but back in 1965 their paths actually did cross.
Ali came to Scotland in August of that year to fight an exhibition bout at the old Paisley Ice Rink against his long-time friend and sparring partner Jimmy Ellis. Waiting to meet and greet him off his flight were the women of the Braemar Ladies Pipe Band from Coatbridge. Replete in highland regalia, they piped him down the steps of the aircraft onto the tarmac at what was then Renfrew Airport in Glasgow.
The year 1965 had been a turbulent one for the heavyweight world champion up to this point. In February his former mentor, friend and spiritual guide Malcolm X was assassinated at the hands of the Nation of Islam, following a deeply angry and acrimonious split. The fallout saw Ali receive death threats in advance of his May rematch against Sonny Liston in Lewiston, Maine. Ali won the rematch in controversial fashion with his now legendary “phantom punch,” with many claiming still to this day that Liston took a fall on orders from the mob, who controlled Liston’s career.
1965 was also a turbulent year for black America overall. On March 7 the civil rights movement in Alabama organised a march from Selma to Montgomery. This was in protest at the murder of a black civil rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by a white police officer. When the marchers, around 600 of them, attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, they were set upon by hundreds of waiting state troopers in an event known to the history of the black civil rights movement as Bloody Sunday.
This then was the backdrop to Muhammad Ali’s August 1965 visit to Scotland as part of a wider European tour.
Ali was by now the bete noire of the US sporting and political establishments, due to his association with the Nation and his defiance of US boxing and racial convention, which held that the world heavyweight champion should be an upstanding citizen and also be conscious, if black, of the racial sensitivities of white America.
Author and broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove, writes: “On his visit here [to Scotland], he [Ali] posed naked to the waist in a kilt, sporting a glengarry bunnet and charmed the crowds.” Cosgrove goes on: “It remains one of the greatest photos of celebrity Scotland, only rivalled by The Beatles at the ‘Haste Ye Back’ sign at the English border or Ali’s nemesis Sonny Liston, who also visited Scotland on the exhibition circuit, marching along Glasgow’s Gordon Street in full highland dress.”
Ali’s visit to Scotland saw him appear at Celtic Park, home to Celtic FC, prior to a league match. However he did not receive a warm welcome and left the pitch in the face of a chorus of boos from the terraces. Afterwards he was introduced to the Celtic team. Of the meeting, Celtic legend John “Yogi” Hughes remembered Ali as being “massive — a huge guy. I’m a big guy myself but he had a tremendous physique. He wasn’t there very long and we were a wee bit overwhelmed, to be honest.”
Despite the exhibition bout with Ellis being scheduled to take place in Paisley, Ali insisted on visiting the iconic Burns Cottage all the way out in Alloway, South Ayrshire. That this young black American fighter from Louisville, Kentucky, had even heard of Scotland’s bard, Robert Burns, is testament to his own intellectual curiosity and Burns’s international reach and fame.
When Ali arrived, he said: “Is this the place? I heard he could write poetry as well as me.” He then accosted a bust of Burns in the cottage with a light punch and said: “I am not the greatest. I believe that man Burns is better than me at poetry. But I am the second greatest.”
There’s a wonderful black and white picture of Ali sitting in the famous Burns Chair, made from the wood of the wooden press that was used to produce the classic Kilmarnock Edition of Burns’ poems in 1786. In the chair he’s surrounded by a few bewildered locals as he holds a notepad and pencil and pretends to write a poem of his own.
The exhibition bout was a four-round desultory affair, involving Ali and Ellis going through the motions until a section of the crowd in attendance began to boo them. The local newspaper reported that in response Ali turned to the crowd and said: “All booing must stop when the king is in the ring.”
Alan Muir, who wrote a play about Ali’s visit called The Greatest, told BBC Scotland: “For whatever, reason Muhammad Ali wasn’t that great.
“He was dancing around his sparring partner but neither of them were throwing many punches and folk just got fed up.”
Afterwards Ali told reporters: “Coming here to fight is just a favour. Taxes are so high. I don’t make money out of this. Very few boxing fans can afford to come to America to see me fight so I have come to them.”
When he returned to America, Muhammad Ali could never have imagined what the future would hold. In making the decision to defy the attempt by the US military to draft him to serve in Vietnam in 1967, he brought a political tsunami down upon his head that almost culminated in him being sent to prison.
Regardless, Ali stood fast and the rest is history. One wonders if he may have taken some inspiration for his refusal to back down from Scotland’s bard himself. After all, as Burns once wrote: “Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve.”
HH
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/03/henrik-larsson-i-have-106-caps-for-sweden-but-i-see-myself-as-foreign
The current board.
With 70 million in the bank.
Has left us hoping for other teams to do us favours in order to beat a pub team to a 60 million jackpot at the seasons end.
Anyone who cannot see this shitshow for what it actually is, and lays the blame where it actually lies is going through life on a double digit IQ or is shilling for those who do not seem to have the best interests of the club at hand.
The sycophants on here grovelling around on hands and knees, hoping for a nod of acknowledgement from someone in a suit, waiting from crumbs to be thrown their way from the boardroom table is fun to watch.
Their spoofery on here about ‘being in the know’ sounds very much like the spoofery we heard recently about the last transfer window.
But no amount of spoofery here or in the boardroom can take away from the fact that we are second in the table, have shat 20+ million into a hole in the ground with nothing to show for it and are hoping that others do us a favour in order to get over the line in May.
In any other line of work, the people who caused this would be sacked.
It’s time the fans who pay their money got value for their money. I’m not paying over 750 quid a year to put it towards Micheal Nicholson’s 850k salary.
I’m paying 750 quid a year to crush the opposition in the league and make a dent in Europe, something will have to give, and the board should know by now, that the fans won’t be going anywhere, time to start packing up their pens, pencils and spreadsheets and go looking for work on LinkedIn.
They have done enough damage. The league table shows this.
The England goalkeeper-in-waiting didn’t look too clever for Motherwell’s winner 😂😂😂
https://www.thenational.scot/resources/images/16470489.jpg?type=mds-article-962
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F-Bie6BWU8j1g%2FVaY-y1bze1I%2FAAAAAAAAEBM%2FDc1p4-OFypQ%2Fs1600%2FD942%252B-%252B9.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=2cca4e8a97fadf74875abc991f709c2598b7c8a583806a03b988b2eff664ddab&ipo=images
Muhammad Ali in Ireland
Katie Taylor may be ruling the world of combat sports right now, but in 1972, Ireland was obsessed with a boxer from a foreign shore when Muhammad Ali came to fight in Croke Park.
The fight was a scheme dreamed up by Kerryman native and London pubman Butty Sugrue, who first came to public notice as a strongman capable of holding up a man seated on a chair by his teeth, etc. Other publicity stunts he pulled involved burying a man alive for 61 days in his garden, and claiming that the head of Nelson’s statue would appear in his London pub after the monument was blown up in 1959.
Sugrue also brought Joe Lewis and Henry Cooper on tours to Ireland, but the Muhammad Ali gig was his most high profile endeavour. Lining up Al ‘Blue’ Lewis as an opponent also meant that the fight could not be considered a walkover for Ali. Lewis was known as a heavy hitter, and was avoided by most of the top boxers out of fear he could do damage to them. Ali accepted him as an opponent because he wanted to give him a fight, and afterwards, he continued to rank Lewis as one of the toughest boxers he’d faced.
Muhammad Ali touched down in Dublin Airport to a crowd of adoring fans a week before his fight was scheduled, and not many people believed he would appear until they saw him waving a shillelagh at RTÉ cameras. His week was full of publicity events and occasions that allowed him to mix with everyday people. He would walk up O’Connell Street to the Gresham, where his manager Harold Conrad was staying, bringing the whole street to a standstill as pedestrians and motorists stopped to flock around him.
Ali was also brought on official visits to places such as Stewarts Hospital in Palmerstown, the Oireachtas buildings where he had a sit-down with Taoiseach Jack Lynch, a veteran of Croke Park battles. Leinster House also ground to a halt that day, as TDs, Senators and service staff all fell under the spell of ‘The People’s Champion’. His interview with Cathal O’Shannon is still famous today, with clips featuring on the documentary I am Ali.
In the meantime, the organisers behind the fight were growing concerned at the slow pace of tickets sales. Sugrue tried to assure them that the venue would be swamped on the day, and that their purses were safe. He was proved right about Croke Park getting swamped on the day of the fight, but unfortunately most punters forgot to pay their entry fee as they slipped in over the walls or through unprotected gaps. The two fighters got their fees in full, but Sugrue took a huge hit to his finances as he absorbed the brunt of the losses.
Nobody in Croke Park for the fight would have looked for their money back anyway, even if they had bothered to pay. Ali never looked in danger, but he still had to manage to avoid the famous Lewis southpaw. The fight lasted until the eleventh round, when it was obvious Lewis could not take any more pounding from Ali. After Ali was declared the winner, the crowd burst into the ring to congratulate their hero in person. Souvenirs were swiped from the ring, and it took half an hour to get the boxers back to their changing rooms.
Ali left Ireland the next day, another fight done and dusted for him. However, the visit seemed to hold much greater significance for Lewis. Not only did he get a chance to box with one of the greatest, but he seemed to really enjoy his time in Ireland too. Years later, he told the sportswriter Dave Hannigan, “I do love Ireland though, they treated me like I was somebody over there. Like I was somebody.” For a former convict and a black man growing up in the racial tensions of the sixties in the US, the Irish welcome probably was a memorable occasion in his life. After all, though Ali was the star in the ring, it always takes two to rumble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B_5zC2WrBU
Calum unfit
The Blogger GM 10.28am
Totally agree Buttland and Tavpen both shocking at Casey’s winner
The England stuff is just mince … there is a reason Joe Hart has 78 caps and Butland has less than 10, just another feel good story for the Huns
CCV captain …
Think the team is the one I posted in the early hours
Bernardo O’Riley & Iwata the midfield
McGregor out
bernardo in for calmac
I forgot about bernardo….
Charles Bronson played the part of Bernardo O’Riley in The Magnificent Seven👍
CELTIC: Hart, Johnston, Carter-Vickers, Scales, Taylor, Iwata, O’Riley, Bernardo, Yang, Idah, Maeda.
Subs: Bain, Laberbielke, Palma, Kyogo, Kuhn, Holm, Kelly, Ralston, Welsh
live updates up
DAVID66
Apologies if you took my comment seriously, it was meant in jest.
II always found it funny when you showed me pictures of your wife on your phone at our meet ups.
Again i apologise, it was never my intent to offend you.
Brian