I have no doubt this morning’s press reports on Celtic’s plans for the months ahead are correct. We are told the club “is planning an overhaul of their football operations in the summer that would see significant changes to their set-up.” There is a great deal you can surmise from that statement.
“Overhaul… of football operations”, “significant changes”, leaves zero doubt Neil Lennon will be moving on and suggests wider changes are likely. It is also safe to assume Neil is on-board with this and has agreed to remain in charge until the end of the season, or a suitable replacement arrives.
Neil would not go through this torture were it not out of a sense of responsibility towards the players, several of whom he personally convinced to stay for this ‘important season’. Malicious talk of holding out for a payoff is well wide of the mark.
What is also clear is that Celtic are not happy to appoint any manager who is prepared to come to the club right now. This precludes those out of work, or those who are not prepared to ‘Do a Brendan’ and leave their current project with trophies still to be won and lost.
The new industry is not always as helpful. Last night reports that betting was suspended on Eddie Howe getting the job received plenty of clicks. Eddie has his eyes on a different target and will almost certainly pick up an English Premiership job this year. He is as likely to come to Celtic as another fantasy appointment, Mauricio Pochettino, was, before choosing Paris when he could have made his home in Glasgow. If only it was that easy.
If we take the ‘Get real’ suggestions off the table, I know the photo fit you are working with. Someone who has over-performed in a different environment, who is technically razor sharp and can bring knowledge of a value market.
They will have a successful track record, one that is short enough that they have not already moved up the food chain, but one longer than Ronny Deila’s mercurial rise at Stromsgodset. We now know that the skills required to achieve one season of spectacular success is Norway does not automatically equip a manager for what on paper looks an easier task. The Goldilocks candidate, enough of a spectacular record, but not too much that they have already got their move.
The quick fix if Neil leaves is John Kennedy as interim or someone, like Ronny, who cannot believe he’s been offered the Celtic job. Or let Neil complete the season and attempt to add the Scottish Cup and leave his second term trophy report reading 6 out of 8. I am not recommending either option, it’s too complicated to sit on the outside and suggest a fix with any conviction – not matter how convinced this is an easy one, it’s not.
If Neil remains until the end of the season it will not be because he needs the money, or because he deserves the respect of a Celtic hero (although he does), it is because the business of succession has to be settled. My preference would be to spend these months doing reconnaissance; better to do it right than to do it early, but the galleries have loved a blood letting since the Colosseum, we know how it works.
1,034 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- ...
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- ...
- 28
- »
Some months back, Ernie posted that Celtic essentially had 3 options.
One of which was ‘do nothing and hope for the best ‘.
We’re now being sold this inactivity as part of some master plan. The correct thing to do. A sign of strength (we won’t do this and we won’t do that)
What utter nonsense.
Doing nothing wasn’t the correct course of action last year – it’s even less so now.
Do nothing and hope for the best? Well it certainly worked for Father Ted, or rather it didn’t.
God is not going to sort this out by morning.
Craggy Island CFC.
Long one this guys … article without the link.
———-
It is difficult to overstate the danger we are in right now.
The disconnect between the club and the fans hasn’t been this acute since the 90’s.
The medium term risk is the greatest we’ve faced since then.
There is a brutal truth that I see played out in the world around me over and over again; it takes a long time to build something, but you can break anything much more quickly.
If the Celtic board takes pride in the club as it stood prior to this season kicking off, then someone needs to clue them in to the damage they can inflict on it in the next few months.
The club looks set to put off a final decision on Lennon until the summer.
It is unpardonable folly to do this.
The potential for a domino effect is obvious, but apparently not to those within our own boardroom.
There is a very real risk of a total meltdown.
The whole idea depends on a faulty – and I would argue even fraudulent – premise; that we have a better chance of attracting the right manager in the summer than we do right now.
It presupposes that in four months’ time we’ll be faced with a situation that is materially better than it presently is, and that’s something nobody can predict with any certainty.
Are we supposed to simply have faith that the board which has failed on every level to present us with a vision is suddenly going to conjure something up in May, with a month to the Champions League qualifiers?
These are the same people who tried for a Charlton player in the summer, failed to get him and told us not to worry, we’ll get him in January on a free.
Today, Alfie Doughty, a long-time target, signed for Stoke.
I wouldn’t trust these people to run a car boot sale.
To expect us to trust them to get this right when they can’t even sack a failed manager is ridiculous.
Let’s start with the obvious point, about how this decision impacts on season ticket renewals.
The forms for those will be sent out well before this season ends.
The club already faces enormous challenges in selling those season tickets.
There are two reasons why.
Firstly, the Rodgers Effect wore off the second he left the club.
The impact having his presence in the dugout had on season ticket sales was clearly real.
That magic was gone on his departure.
The reason we sold out season tickets last season was the nine in a row effect.
That gave way to ten which is why we were able to sell out completely in a year when no fans were going to be inside the ground.
Rodgers is gone. Nine is the past. Ten ended in failure.
A drop off was inevitable unless we were selling a brand new vision of Celtic to the supporters.
The second reason is the bug itself and the twin impacts of that.
The first of those is on median earnings amongst our supporters.
It’s too much to ask fans to fork out massive sums of money for a non-ten chasing campaign with so much uncertainty about jobs and livelihoods.
The second impact will come from the material uncertainty about whether fans will actually be able to attend games.
That’s in the deepest of doubt as any look at the news will reveal.
So even in perfect conditions, even if we’d secured ten in a row, I believe we’d have been facing an uphill battle to sell our full quota of season tickets for the next campaign.
Only an inspiring plan with the right public face on it might have gotten us over the line.
There is zero chance of us avoiding a major collapse in sales numbers under the present conditions.
It hardly needs pointing out that supporter anger is at a level we haven’t seen in decades, and that this extends far beyond the performance of the team on the park.
The fans need a clear plan, and even with the best will in the world you cannot argue that “wait until the summer and we’ll start making changes” is remotely credible as a strategy.
The likely collapse in season ticket numbers is not the endpoint of the disaster; it merely fires the starting gun. It’s the first domino, if you like, and as it falls and hits the next one we’re really off to the races.
The drop-off in numbers will impact on the budget.
So whatever options there are today in terms of the manager, you’re basically reducing those options on the back of the decision to wait and take the hit in season ticket sales figures.
Without a name manager that the majority of fans can believe in, the focus turns to Lawwell.
Is he still there and playing a role?
If he is, the perception will be that the club has taken a cheap option – which will almost certainly be true, and one we’ve had forced on us by the failure to act quicker – who will merely do as the CEO tells him.
There goes the managerial honeymoon, and with the worst possible scenario in front of him.
The loss of key players, which is certain, and the task of finding their replacements when footballers are at the Euros and when European qualifiers are right in front of us, a matter of weeks away, would leave any manager facing a difficult task.
That task is made harder by the inevitable budget limitations and harder again by the Brexit fiasco and the havoc it has wrought on our ability to sign footballers from the continent.
He faces challenges no Celtic boss has ever had to face before … and with the clock ticking. And of course, this all presupposes that we can wrap the search for the manager up quickly, which of course there is no guarantee of whatsoever.
It if takes longer than a few weeks he inherits the remnants of the current squad after departures and no time to craft it before those qualifiers come.
It gets even worse, of course, when you consider that the managerial appointment would be taking place after the rest of the “restructuring” had been done.
To my mind, you appoint the manager first and you let him play a role in the rest of that process, but Celtic can’t afford to do that either because then he comes in with no support structure around him.
But build it without him, and you’re asking him to come in and work under and with people he doesn’t know and might not trust.
Most top managers want some kind of say in a rebuilding job like that, but if that job has just been done before he gets in the door you’re taking a chance that all these people, new in their roles, are going to just fit together like a jigsaw.
In a matter of weeks.
Under immense pressure and public scrutiny.
Even in the scenario where you get lucky and it all fits like a glove, you wonder at the lunacy of doing it this way and the scale of the risk that’s being taken.
And of course, all of this is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain cell … which apparently rules out our entire board of directors.
It will certainly be obvious to anyone who’s being offered the job as that clock continues to tick inexorably in the background.
We are deliberately hamstringing our ability to sell this job to the kind of people we’d want to take it.
We face trying to recruit a manager, trying to rebuild a team and trying to put in place a backroom structure everyone can live with, all under the shadow of the virus and Brexit’s transfer restrictions and all on a reduced timeline.
The obvious course of action to avoid this is the one we won’t take; to sack the management team, to start looking for their replacements right now and to guarantee the new guy, before he even arrives, a free hand to rebuild the whole of this club in any way he sees fit.
If there’s to be a restructuring, the power to guide that lies in his hands.
Offer that sort of empowerment right now and we’ll get a top manager and when we do he’ll have room and time to work things out. He can articulate the vision even if other people inside Celtic can’t.
He can be the standard bearer for the club going forward and we can build the season ticket renewal campaign around him and his ideas.
We have chosen another path, it seems, and in doing so done something I thought must be impossible; to take a bigger risk with next season than they took with this one when they left Lennon in charge until the “January review.”
What a farce this has become, folks.
No game this weekend – normally that would be a cause for complaint – not this time though – quite relieved.
ROCK TREE BHOY on 22ND JANUARY 2021 7:06 PM
TBH good chance I would’ve painted the fence instead if a game was on, more interesting
JAMES FORREST on 22ND JANUARY 2021 7:06 PM
Brilliant JAMES ,mais as kennedy is the next manager most of your points are not pertinent.
I don’t believe Lennon will be here much longer, business-wise it would be crazy, players values are depreciating by the week with the bad performances and some of our big hitters will be leaving, we also have to finish second for the champions league, then we have season tickets which would take a hammering, we also like every season be taking a gamble on qualification for champions league
JF @ 7.06
Anyone coming in now and doing a half decent job will have a huge positive impact.
We are bad / very bad — to the point that anyone offering a total shambles would be an improvement.
A train wreck at every level.
The issue for me is that we had these faults for years.
BR in 2016 has been the only piece of real quality that we have managed since SN arrived in 2005.
I agree paul67 that we can’t appoint adhoc
I also agree that we have made a mess of this year
our spine was bought in a year or two too late
5 million does not guarantee the balls to succeed in the spfl
there has been a dissonance between the view of fans and the view of the board on the on field performances this season
the feedback loop into the squad has missed the crowd big fuggin time
we have miscalculated the capacity for improvement of the insolvent, cheating, ref biasing, want to stop the ten more than we want to win it hordes
I was fooled by al of the above
friday night filum offering – Sully
mon the pablo friday night music offering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOi_wxypeGc
Rock Tree Bhoy – Agreed :)
P67
Well that article went down well, eh?
I wonder why you do it.
All those years of trying to influence a “Whatever happened to the Seville money?” mindset and here we are right back at the only reason that Howe/Pochettino os Fabio Fabuloso will not come to manage us is because of PL.
Just, swallow your principles Paul and play to the audience. These times demand ranting and retribution and ritual scarifice. It is no time to try and offer honesty or calm consideration; it will just get called fake news or expectation management.
Get with the programme and give us a wee bit of fire and brimstone gallery-playing!
P.S. – sorry to see Melbourne Mick go- I will miss the updats on the missionary work being undertaken
PPS- I’m no flouncing though
I posted this on the fridge door and also wanted to post it here as well,
just ‘cos……………..
HH.
So PL is involved elsewhere
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55770710
did the same with Ivan Toney we wouldn’t pay asking price , don’t worry we will get him to sign a pre contract in jan they said , we ended up with an centre forward who did not want to play for us and West Ham wanted shot off.
Another good article Paul. Unfortunately, we have blown the big one, what’s important now, is not throwing away the next few with a poor appointment.
sftb
Why dilute or change your stance when the traffic compared to Blogger.com is rammed.
Go Figure CSC
I’ve seen some say Celtic this season are providing a masterclass in corporate leadership failure.
I say they’re just spoiled, ungrateful huns!
Or are they grateful huns?
I can’t decide.
James Forrest on 22nd January 2021 7:06 pm
Long one this guys … article without the link
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Excellent
SETTING FREE THE BEARS FOR RES. 12 & OSCAR KNOX on 22ND JANUARY 2021 7:36 PM
My thoughts exactly, how this site has changed over the years. From civilised intelligent debate, to fierce sensational at every turn.
And of course. Its all Pauls fault, for having his own views, on his own site.
Amazed certain people take great delight in over the top criticism of Paul leader… every single day.
Maybe they should start their own site and post there own views and then they wouldn’t have to waste their time on here.
“If it were done when tis done, then ’twere well done quickly’
Except that it wasn’t done, nor done quickly, nor at all.
Too late now, we missed that boat, but we didn’t miss the iceberg that was coming our way.
If not Macbeth then who amongst us now wants to be Brutus?
Or perhaps rather Marc Anthony after the deed is done,
“My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar
And I must pause till it come back to me”
Plenty contenders on here for both
CONEYBHOY on 22ND JANUARY 2021 6:13 PM
Celticforever
I renewed in March (before season called) so there was no new clauses put to me. Can’t see that being the case as people would have been up in arms in the summer. If they didn’t show new clauses then its not legal
=============================
Thanks for bringing up the issue of refunds. It reminded me that I hadn’t heard back from Celtic Ticket Office re: my request for refunds for me and WeeBGFC (he wasn’t happy) that I submitted on December 2nd.
JPT and Alexis both replied very quickly at the time that they had passed my request on to the Ticket Office – not a peep from them since.
I’ve just emailed again.
Club just seems dysfunctional at a number of levels;
Board / CEO / Manager / Coaches / Recruitment / First Team / Comms Team / PR / Ticket Office
WTF is going on????
HH
BGFC
NOTTHEBUS on 22ND JANUARY 2021 8:16 PM
—————–
Take your point re: aggressive reactions between individuals, which I also don’t like.
There was, though, some good discussion last night re: potential targets that Celtic may consider – for example Thomas Teufel / Phillipe Clement at Club Brugge.
Some good background and interesting info from scouting reports, etc.
HH
BGFC
Notthebus
A few genuine questions if I may
1. Would you want this site to be one where there is no debate? One where their is a single opinion only. 3 pages of agreement with whatever the lead article is?
2. Given the present circumstances – we are 20 points behind sevco – would you expect ect this scenario?
I’m sure Paul doesn’t care much what is said on here, he would not expect everyone to agree with him surely.
FWIW, I agree with what James Forrest says. We are suffering under Corporate ineptitude of the highest order allied to an ability to react with glacial dynamism to oncoming banana skins.
SFTB and NTB,
I was thinking of penning something of the sort myself this afternoon. I was wondering why Paul67 let these “supporters” continually insult him on his own site. Changed days from the early days, where respect for differing views was the order of the day.
There are way too many I just scroll past these days. At the very least, could they not start their own site and abuse one another to their hearts content?
P.S. could they not be at least courteous to our manager, after all he has suffered because of who he is and where he hails from? Or do they ascribe to the notion that he brings it all on himself, as the SMSM proclaimed long and loudly? (And I do believe he should go.)
JF, very good post.
If we do stick until the end of days, then there can be no doubt the board want the huns back.
None what so ever.
For anyone that cares. I stay in the north east of England. I keep telling my pals that because there really is no a lot in the area, the teams find it very difficult to attract players apart from the $ they are willing to pay.
Now a manager on the other hand should be very easy to attract if you think what Glasgow/ Scotland can offer.
Best fishing in the world only 1:30 hours away.
Best golf courses in the world 40 minutes away .
Life is about what you can offer when not working and you can bet your bottom $ if the money is right and the lifestyle sold in the correct way. We should be able to attract the best in the game.
Best atmosphere in the world, I didn’t say it, that was lionel.
Fantastic stadium.
Fantastic training facilities.
We just need to believe we can achieve or you never will.
I absolutely hate it when someone tells me we cant. Always made me determined to prove them wrong.
We have achieved an invincible season.
A 9iar
A quad treble.
But to be honest it still didn’t compare to the MON era when everyone feared coming to Celtic park and I mean everyone. The best European nights in my lifetime and this should be what we must aspire to be again.
Not just happy to be better than the huns, I couldn’t give a monkeys about them.
I lived through the 90s when the huns qualified for the CL every year and we couldn’t compete because the money it generated.
We had an opportunity when they went bust, to move into another stratosphere and the board bottled it.
Or was that always the plan. Took a long time, but back on point.
ONENIGHTINLISBON on 22ND JANUARY 2021 8:33 PM
I’m sure Paul doesn’t care much what is said on here, he would not expect everyone to agree with him surely.
I agree, surely the more traffic on the blog the better it is for Paul.
I’m sure if he was most unhappy, he would have comments moderated.
I also think that there has always been sensationalism on the site.
It wasn’t that long ago that all these fuds were Neil Lennon.
Well you know what.
I’m still Neil Lennon, bring it on
CQN stalwarts- posters should be respectful of Paul and stick to the rules
Also CQN stalwarts – opposing voices are from mineshafters, pantywetters, negatrons, tadgers and fuds.
C’mon, we’re better than this. Debate is good. Name calling is puerile.
Tackle the post, not the poster.
ADI_DASSLER NOT FOR 2ND BEST on 22ND JANUARY 2021 6:17 PM
Inexplicable collapse with league at our mercy in 2011.
Willo Flood window from position of strength
Inexplicable shambles of this season.
Common denominator a G51 club under sever financial pressure.
As our host used to say
HMMMMMMMMM……..
Squire
Not proof to me.
Sorry
Might as well stick with what we’ve got and lose the league by 40 points and be totally unprepared for next season CL qualifiers get dumped out again and lose league to a very average cheating team
Grow a pair ffs all you stick on the fence guys here
How many seasons do you want to wait until we have a well run club achieving what we have been denied for years
Surely any blog can cater for the Mr Angry’s and the Mr Smug’s of this Celtic universe, even the sanctimonious.
No one, not one has all the answers all they do is put their view across, of course it’s from their own perspective and to be honest who doesn’t like a bit of conjecture or even conspiracy.
What crime are they committing if they cannot articulate it to serve everyone.
It’s pretty clear TO ME that NL and PL are “dead men walking “ and to keep the status quo, especially if your not going to back him in the transfer window, is negligent and borders on deliberate.
ADI_DASSLER NOT FOR 2ND BEST on 22ND JANUARY 2021 9:15 PM
Squire
Not proof to me.
Sorry
——
No
I found it hard to believe
As did my associates
The penny has dropped over recent months though.
You fill your boots though.
Peter will happily relieve you of your £650 in May.
Go tell, you take that back .
I’ve got all the answers, go ask me a question, anything
😂
Pitymevin
If 17 is the answer what is the question ?
As Bart Simpson said when he was running for class president “Martin says there are no easy answers, I say he’s not looking hard enough “