Memories of the “second worst thing to hit Hiroshima” attempt to undermine Wim Jansen on his arrival as Celtic manager from Japanese football in 1997 remain vivid. With no internet, we knew little of Wim. His short stints as assistant with the Saudi national team and as manager of Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the four years since leaving Feyenoord did nothing to enhance his reputation.
Ange Postecoglou is an easier man for the support to make their own minds up about. He has a record of developing talent, improving teams and winning titles. By any reasonable measure, his CV is spotless. None of his success happened in Europe and there is nowhere as acutely intense in the football roster as Glasgow, so there are hurdles to overcome.
I like that he is an established winner and that he has not relied on the chequebook to become so. I also hear great things about his strength of character, he has old school authority, as well as a technocrats brain.
Eddie Howe went to the top of the candidate list around two months ago. The time since has been lost, although Postecoglou was not in serious contention that far back. We are now three weeks from preseason training. If Ange is to be appointed, he faces a two week isolation period before being able to visit Celtic Park or Lennoxtown. He might just make it.
Before any of that, he needs to exit Japan and his contractual arrangements with City Football Group’s Yokohama F Marinos, pack his family and belongings up and fly to the opposite end of the globe. There is a lot of work for him to just sit at the Celtic manager’s desk.
At Howe’s request, we were prepared to recruit his entire football infrastructure. He would have endorsed the appointment of coaches, scouts and director of football. Celtic signed up for this but when you let them bring their encourage with them, the successful ones inevitably take the same faces (and more) back out the door with them when they go.
With Ange it will be different, although he may be familiar with some of the faces from City Football Group. This infrastructure is equally as important as the managerial appointment. Celtic need to rebuild a team ahead of a season that offers automatic Champions League qualification for the Scottish Premiership winners. Much of that burden will fall on the manager’s supporting cast. Lots to do, not a lot of time to do it in……
A quick word on Newco’s £6.75m public share offering, announced this morning. Newco have returned an operating loss every year of their existence and have been unable to trade players to meet the shortfall. The burden has thus far fallen on directors. Turning to the fans may indicate a possibility the directors’ largess has dried up. It could also imply no fresh investor has been found.
Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules mean any fresh equity investment cannot be spent on most operational costs, like football or support staff. Competing against a team that runs a persistent eight figure annual deficit has its drawbacks, but we have seen this movie before. We are back at the roulette table with all the chips on Champions League money.
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GARNGAD TO CROY on 1ST JUNE 2021 1:21 PM
Credit to Celtic for trying to recruit the best manager available at the time in Howe but the reality is no decent manager wants the Job.
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You have been conditioned by Lawwell into believing that.
JK and his merry band of jobs for the bhoys coaching brigade should be nowhere near Celtic Park never mind Lennoxtown
Large sections of the media seem to think Everton will have Nuno lined up as a replacement for Ancelotti. Not sure where that would leave Eddie Howe. I think him rejecting us will hurt both him and Celtic as he gets a lesser job and we get a lesser coaching staff.
I’m still slightly concerned about the delay of the DoF. That seems to have been overshadowed by the managerial circus. Get a DoF in and we can get the ball rolling regarding targets, signings etc.
JHB on 1ST JUNE 2021 2:35 PM
SQUIRE DANAHER on 1ST JUNE 2021 1:03 PM
Do you not think we can and should take steps to have it challenged by officialdom (which would mean challenging officialdom)?
Or is that a boat we don’t rock?
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You raise the 64,000 dollar question – what can we do ?
First of all let me say that I am totally in favour of ‘rocking the boat’, if we have clear evidence that laws, whether civil, or, football, have been broken, and there is a clear path to justice.
However, we have seen how long the Rangers FC liquidation has dragged on, now almost ten years – we’ve also seen how the supposedly ‘slam-dunk’ cases that Ashley has brought, being stuck in the ‘long-grass’ for such a long time and still dribbling along.
Frankly to challenge everything from Res 12, which would involve the SFA too, to the way they currently run their business, would be a full time job involving teams of lawyers & QCs, with no guarantee of success.
We are a football club, a proud club with a standing in the world, although that is wilting a bit in light of almost zero European success for so long. Do we really want to be seen primarily as a club hell-bent on putting their biggest(only) rival out of business? How would that play with sponsors like Adidas & Dafabet? How would the TV companies react?
I would like all the wrongs righted – e.g. honours won under EBTs stricken from the record-books, but realistically it’s not going to happen.
For a lot of reasons we are now ‘chasing the game’. Ibrox is the “top dog’ and it could easily cement that position if it reaches the CL groups this coming season, and we don’t. I know their financial methodology is mind-boggling, but the way to put them under pressure is to beat the on the pitch.
There is no administration/liquidation on the horizon – we just have get our act together again.
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Hiyya Peter.
More boardroom bile as the lead.
Roll up roll and be shafted…
JHB – beyond parody … Nothing could be done. You don’t want to upset sponsors…. unreal. Celtic board hate celtic fans Hate their opinions and want ‘RANGERS’ to win trophies. That is obvious from their comments. Complete liars who go along with 5 way agreement. let them finace themselves by who knows where. Let them claimm to be the same club. Stand up for their behaviour ..not against it. While telling Celtic fans that they don’t care about them. Only way to get rid of DD is to stop giving him money.
JHB on 1ST JUNE 2021 2:53 PM
MARSPAPA on 1ST JUNE 2021 1:02 PM
We will never get the Truth…… Why didn’t we offer the world to BR to stay for the ten.
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My views on why EH declined are well known – his backroom team said no, changed their minds(for imo, obvious reasons) – so all bets are then off.
Regarding Brendan – he was always going to go in 2019 – we got £9m for him leaving in February, rather than May – good business with everything almost won and the team on ‘automatic pilot”.
Brendan has a very high opinion of himself, he wants to be at the very top for the next twenty years. Winning everything he touched at Celtic was the ideal springboard to the EPL and the Leicester job…..just as two top-five finishes and the FA Cup will be a bigger springboard to a bigger job.
Brendan outgrew Celtic very quickly, he knew it and so did Celtic – there was no financial inducement that would have stopped his Leicester move.
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Briefing behind his back to the BBC on the night before a massive CL match would have speeded it up, along with haggling over £500,000 for 2 months over John McGinn after posting over 100 million turnover, plus signing players the manager didn’t want.
Honestly, I’m a little flabbergasted by that question if I’m being truthful.
Celtic is about to appoint this guy, a guy who’s record doesn’t stand up, with a ticking clock in the background, with the largest rebuilding job in decades in front of him, and Champions League qualifiers coming up in a matter of weeks. We have wasted months on the pursuit of one candidate and we are facing a minimum delay of weeks to sort out the issues with the licenses.
I cannot believe you think that’s information nobody should have been looking for. I cannot believe you think it is in the best interests of either Celtic or our fans that this be kept quiet in the hope that nobody will notice it.
If your argument is that I should have simply accepting the obvious nonsense being promoted in the press and that I should have been content in obvious ignorance … I don’t agree with that at all. It’s ridiculous.
A little read back and see that with friends like these, who needs enemies…
Prob is our Board has totally depleted the faith, trust and goodwill tank – so NOTHING they do will be right atm.
Dermott may want to clean house, sacrifice a lamb or make some other blood offering to wipe the slate clean.
Cos for many it’s not being aggrieved, disappointed or justifiable anger – it’s more a pathological personal hate.
If Coldfoot Ed had taken it and arsed up Europe – where he had zero creds btw – it’d be thems fault anaw.
While everyone’s doing the best they can, sometimes that’s not good enough – clearly. But we’ll go again.
Bedtime, and hope to awake to a new don…
MARADOMINIC on 1ST JUNE 2021 3:02 PM
You misrepresent all that I say – best that we agree to differ.
JHB on 1ST JUNE 2021 2:53 PM
MARSPAPA on 1ST JUNE 2021 1:02 PM
JHB with respect ,who are you connected to at Celtic …..(BOARD room)
never heard so much Assertive/definitve replys to questions…….and all other scenarios are tosh.
Brendans high opinion was backed up by Domestic results ……the fact he suffered in Europe was in my opinion letting the board know he didnt have the quality of player to play the same way we did in domestic competitions thus him not changing his style of play .
Had he got the players he desired who knows if he would have stayed , in any case we / the new man at the helm has a hellova climb to get us back up the cliff face .
Anyhoo , need to go , Grandkids coming in from school .
Take care .
Not been on for a while but I have been lurking. I have to say I think this is all a bit of a shambles. EH should have been offered the job, given a week maybe two to come back with a decision, not two months when there is so much work required on the squad. I also think the absent landlord doesn’t help, it is patently obvious DD makes all the decisions and the CEO implements them. God only knows what the other directors do. We are Celtic ffs, why are we waiting months on the ex Bournemouth manager?? It’s not as if he is Koop or Pep. I think the guy on Twitter got it correct when he said this makes the Kelly’s and the Whites look competent!! Apologies guys , rant over. It’s only because I care. HH
Klopp
Paul67’s clearly been drinking the KoolAid with this one. Let’s go through it:
He’ll be lucky to be here in time for pre-season;
His CV is far from “spotless” – most of his success is from a decade or more ago.
In his current job, in his full 3 years he’s won 1 Japanese title, with 9th and 12th place finishes either side of that. He’s currently third, some 16 points behind the leaders (albeit has 3 games in hand, but his points per game indicates that’ll reduce the gap to 9 points).
He didn’t overachieve with Australia – they should qualify for the World Cup from their group – their only notable win was South Korea in the final of the Asian Games in 2015 (6 years ago). Even if you consider his Australian tenure a success, it appears to have gone to sh*t at the end, with him walking out on the eve of the World Cup and the players seemingly glad to see the back of him!
It’s true he’s not a chequebook manager – of the 123 players he’s signed over his career only 5 seem to have cost any money in transfer fee terms. Let’s go through them and see what we can gather:
1. Goran Lozanovski was his first “money” buy back in 1999 for the princely sum of 100,000Euros. He spent two seasons with Melbourne before departing to the Bundesliga side Aachen for a 38k profit;
2. Kota Watanabe cost Euro 360k from Tokyo Verde in the Japanese second division in August 2019. He’s played 96 games in his near two years with Yokohama, though as a number 10 you’d probably expect more than 4 goals and 11 assists in that time;
3. Dusan Cvetinovic cost Euro450k I. July 2019, arriving from Lens in France. He played 28 games for YFM over an 18 month period before leaving on a free transfer;
4. Theerathon Bunmathan – cost 1m Euros from Muangthong United in Thailand in January 2020. He’s a left back who has played 76 games for them over the last 17 months or so. Strangely (and not a great indicator of Watanabe’s talents) he has more or less the same goal contributions with 4 goals and 9 assists; and
5. Thiago Martins – cost Euro 1.85m from Palmeiras in Feb 2020, he’s played 99 games for them and seems to be a standout for YFM.
As you can see his “money” buys are generally more recent and reflect the relative purchasing power of clubs he’s been at – Australian teams tend not to spend much money and Japanese teams are a bit more cash rich! His signings seem to have “done a job” at the teams he’s been at. Scouting seems to be decent with reach across Asia, Europe and South America, though none of them would get a work permit to join us.
His turnover is crazy – he seems to bring in around 15 players per season and lose the same number, which may explain his inability to win more than one title. He’s only sold 3 players for cash – all to other Japanese teams – for a grand total of 2.5m Euros.
Given the size of our rebuild, he’s definitely going to be able to manage a large influx of players – he’s used to it! Scouting and recruitment remain a concern – the worst player in our first team squad (Ralston?) would walk into his current side – and we don’t have the infrastructure to support that, so we can look forward to a load of stop-gap signings. If it’s now not to be Harkin, we’re less able to look to Man City to help with that.
I’d also question whether he has a track record of developing players – he’s not sold much outside of Japan and realistically national team managers play a very limited part in player development. He was previously youth coach for Australia but by the time the fruits of his labour arrived in the first team he was there too and that Oz team was, by common consensus, one of the poorest in quality terms in recent times.
This, in combination with his success being limited in the past decade, his absence of a scouting/recruitment expertise or a support infrastructure (The clubs fault more than his), his falling out with the FFA, and the fact he’s touch and go to be able to start pre-season training, makes him the wrong choice at the wrong time! And I haven’t even mentioned his reported “dodgy defence” set-ups.
Given where we are, I’d be content to take him as a number 2 with a view to him taking over in the longer-term (maybe next season) with an experienced manager to get us back on track this year – given our rush, perhaps Roy Hodgson might take the gig for a year before moving into a scouting-type role? Roy could work on building a team to win this year – one with a solid structure, who can defend, and win, while Ange works on the attacking side as a Plan B. With entry to CL next season, we could transition Plan B to Plan A, with Hodgson’s usual number 2 (Ray Lewington) doing the defensive structure as our new Plan B. Not ideal, but we’ve buggered around so much we’re looking at “least bad” options now!
Wed June 9th the transfer window opens for 12 weeks – what’s the panic? Loads of time before we get our loan deals sorted on 31st August.
FFS Paul, will you just grow set and tell the truth. This man is a nobody, a cheap option and an opportunity to keep the sneaky coaching staff we already have.You used to be believable and someone who challenged the truth.Now your just another apologist .An all time low in the many all time lows we’ve experienced..
Please stand in front of the mirror and find the man who truly gave us this wonderful site
LAMBERT14 on 1ST JUNE 2021 3:03 PM
Brendan will spend no more than another year at Leicester – his project is on course. Those things you highlight were merely incidental – he was leaving in 2019 – as he said “a decision of the head, rather than the heart”….of course maybe that was just to ‘soften the blow’…..for us!
LAMBERT14 on 1ST JUNE 2021 3:03 PM
JHB on 1ST JUNE 2021 2:53 PM
MARSPAPA on 1ST JUNE 2021 1:02 PM
We will never get the Truth…… Why didn’t we offer the world to BR to stay for the ten.
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My views on why EH declined are well known – his backroom team said no, changed their minds(for imo, obvious reasons) – so all bets are then off.
Regarding Brendan – he was always going to go in 2019 – we got £9m for him leaving in February, rather than May – good business with everything almost won and the team on ‘automatic pilot”.
Brendan has a very high opinion of himself, he wants to be at the very top for the next twenty years. Winning everything he touched at Celtic was the ideal springboard to the EPL and the Leicester job…..just as two top-five finishes and the FA Cup will be a bigger springboard to a bigger job.
Brendan outgrew Celtic very quickly, he knew it and so did Celtic – there was no financial inducement that would have stopped his Leicester move.
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Briefing behind his back to the BBC on the night before a massive CL match would have speeded it up, along with haggling over £500,000 for 2 months over John McGinn after posting over 100 million turnover, plus signing players the manager didn’t want.
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Give Lawwell his due though, after the McGinn fiasco he brought in an unemployed footballer in Mulumbu for Rodgers to compete with the worlds best players in the CL.
Didn’t quite a few of our team have to quarantine after julien contracted covid? Shouldn’t the same apply to the Scottish team? In fact, thinking about it, didn’t McGregor have to isolate after Tierney contracted it when both were with Scotland?
SPIDEY101 on 1ST JUNE 2021 3:10 PM
Roy Hodgson has retired from management and at 74, the last thing he needs is the goldfish bowl of Glasgow. No chance he’ll be our next manager.
JHB on 1ST JUNE 2021 2:35 PM
Cheers for your considered response.
I guess it’s a bit like The Hare And The Tortoise. You can’t just expect to kick on when you feel like it.
I like watching the NFL and tennis. In both sports, momentum is a significant factor and I have seen matches turn on a single snap or a single point. And when it turns, it turns.
I think it’s difficult to say definitively when it turned regarding Celtic.
Rodgers leaving, Lennon being appointed must be up there, 2019 LCF when That Shower lost their fear of us, their win at CP in October 2020.
Very difficult to see it changing back in the short term given their ‘carte blanche’ to do what they like.
Aesop’sFables CSC
Maradominic, I was born in 1966. I was up the cemetery yesterday. I would imagine my tombstone would read died 296 years of age, if there were to be a level playing field in my lifetime with regards the Huns, financial fair play, rules of any type. It doesn’t matter 2 jots what the Celtic Support, Celtic think or do. They could crash and burn again. They’ll come back again. You’ve read the papers, you’ve heard Salmond, the polis and you’ve seen Square Heid’s actions.
Let’s assume for a moment we buy the argument that this is an unfounded gem ready to take us forward and he genuinely is the guy to do so. The Japanese season started on 26 February 2021, 2 days after Lenny left.
We all know that Lennon ought to have gone earlier than that and, given this guy apparently needs time for his ideas to take effect, the time to go for him was January (any word on the January review?) – less disruptive to his current team, less issues for us around self-isolation, and gives him time (and a bye) to get his ideas across and understand the squad.
A club with proper strategic thinking would have done that, rather than scrabbling around at the last minute to bring him in (probably after pre-season had started).
Celtic helped them stay alive(in their eyes) . They could have stopped them by just standing up to them in SFA. Calling in UeFA even if just for Res12 which they refused to do. They don’t just ignore all the rule breaking cheating they back it. And denounce their own fans. They want Ibrox club to thrive. and feed their repulsive fans. who bring violence into streets. …To encourage this is disgraceful.
But seems too be thats the way it has always been.. second class is good enough for us
F**k sake even Walter noname wished the new club all the best!
9th in the J League in Japan last season….wow…looks like we’re really lucky to get this guy…..
will PL pick up a bonus/golden handshake when he leaves? It will probably be bigger than our transfer budget.
Who bought players over last few years? apart from a couple when you could see the manager knew them … and Israeli agents stable. Or Man city players… or crazy loans. Who buys them? assume they will be leaving with lawell !
After the recent news that James Forrest broke about Postecoglou, with the club just a few weeks away from CL matches with no chief scout, no sports science, massive change required in playing staff and no director of football and taking into account the size of the club, finance etc, is Peter Lawwell, the guy who worked against his own club in favour of it’s main rival, the worst CEO of all time in world football?
The Express suggesting Everton might look at Slippy.
Very unlikely for obvious reasons but it’d be one of the most explosive appointments in recent times.
GeeBee – I do t think he’s officially retired – I think it’s more that he’s “not actively looking” for a new role. But our offer may interest him – a year gig to rebuild with him going out on the high of a league win is a decent offer to dangle before him.
Anyway, it needn’t be Hodgson as such – just pointing out that if we’re determined to go with Ange we should de-risk it with an interim manager of sorts – one who is experienced and can make us hard to beat and get us back to winning ways quickly.
After Howe’s knock back, we seem to be panicking into an appointment that Lawell probably wanted to make in 2018 (before the “just give it to Lenny”/showers scenario) and spinning it as planning for the future/creating an identity/philosophy/blah, blah, blah. That’s all well and good if it’s properly planned but we’ve a 3 week window before a load of the players return and a 6 week window before playing CL qualifiers. We don’t have time for it and there’s a £30m prize at the end of this season up for grabs – for context that’s almost a 50% increase in turnover!
Them across the city are not unbeatable- they won’t be as good as last year and we were appalling – a good manager will overhaul them. A £10m spend on management team and £20m on players will pay for itself this season, and that excludes income on player sales! Not the year to be messing around with a guy who may be in quarantine when our first match rolls around (I doubt he’ll be here by the end of the week given he’ll need to try for a work permit on appeal).
Phil MacG used to post a cartoon occasionally. It was aimed at sevco fans.
2 booths were side by side.
The first was headed up ‘comforting lies’ the other ‘unpleasant truths’. The former having a huge queue of people, the latter gathering dust.
I never thought good CQN posters would be publicly calling for such an approach for Celtic news.
We truly live in remarkable times
GEEBEE1978 on 1ST JUNE 2021 3:52 PM
The Express suggesting Everton might look at Slippy.
Very unlikely for obvious reasons but it’d be one of the most explosive appointments in recent times.
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Was it not the case that he only stayed at Liverpool having been the subject of death threats when Mourinho wanted to buy him for Chelsea???
We all realise that in current footballing terms were nowhere near where we think we should be, as supporters (regular European group stage team, taking the occasional “big”scalp etc) my question would be, are we playing the handwe’ve been dealt properly ?
I don’t buy PL has the best interests at heart, he does his masters bidding first and foremost, so the real problem (if you believe there is one, and I most certainly do) is DD. To me he seems to have a knack of ballsing up appointments and purchases etc, how many is too many for some, personally I think they’re more interested in their seat at the table than the actual football results.
His biggest crime, and it is a betrayal if nothing is what he did with Res 12 and the 5 way agreement, so whether your his pal or not, or you choose to ignore, PL is a bit of a pariah in the eyes of a fair chunk of the support, and I for one Hope that Dom is a far better appointment than PL was.
The latest recruitment fiasco merely reminds us of what we’re going to miss when he’s gone.
Anyone else heard SLIPPY G to EVERTON.
I am only the messenger.
With Ancellotti back to Real I suspect today we’ve seen why Howe was ‘unable’ to assemble a back room team.
While we’re on back room teams, any goodwill towards Ange’s appointment will go out the window should last season’s failures be kept in post. Kennedy and Strachan should be removed.
Failure to do so will demonstrate that this hapless board of incompetents are completely unable to learn from their mistakes and stop giving out jobs for the boys.
As regards Rangers and their share issue – I’m sure our board wish we were as gullible and as easily separated from our cash.
Slippy G to Everton would be hilarious if he gazumped Howe to the job – wonder if Howe’s reps would reach out to us again if that happened?
On the minus side, they would probably bring in a replacement which makes our managerial recruitment look more of a shambles than it currently does…