IT DOESNT TAKE A JEDI MASTER TO FIX WHAT'S WRONG AT CELTIC
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
There’s been a lot to unpack over the past 24 hours since the conflicting and yet equally compelling statements from the Celtic Board and the Celtic Fan Collective were made public.
However, one line from the Celtic Fans Collective’s statement, and which was confirmed in the club’s own statement stood out to me:
“There are thresholds where the Board of Directors must authorize increased transfer payments”
Celtic’s Football Operations Shouldn’t be at the Mercy of Number Crunchers and Financial Suits
While not named specifically, the assumption is that this refers to non-executive chairman Peter Lawwell and Celtic’s largest shareholder (though not a majority shareholder, and certainly not our "owner") Dermot Desmond.
Both of these men have a proven track record of success and financial astuteness. But neither of them, to the best of my knowledge have ever played for Celtic, or been employed in any football playing, coaching or management capacity anywhere
In other words, they are number crunchers, wealth managers, not football men. They are in no position to judge the worth of a footballer to a team, let alone a team as widely supported or as supposedly ambitious as Celtic.
That they have any kind of direct input into transfers at all, let alone the seeming power of veto is a damning indictment on just how dysfunctional Celtic’s current management structure is.
There is a very simple, common-sense solution to this, but I highly doubt the Celtic Board would go for it. After all, to quote another man who, like both Desmond and Lawwell, stayed in power longer than he should have, Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars: “All who gain power are afraid to lose it”.
And we definitely aren’t dealing with Jedi level intellects here when it comes to the Celtic Board!
A budget needs to be agreed for player recruitment each transfer window, and the manager, Brendan Rodgers for the time being, and his recruitment team, need to be given the authority and the trust of the Celtic Board to spend that budget wisely.
Increased fiscal authority, of course, brings with it more responsibility, and Rodgers, or indeed anyone who follows him into the Celtic hotseat in the future, should be held directly accountable for any failings on the park, in the event they are granted such autonomy.
At the moment, we have a team underperforming, out of the Champions League, and yet we are unsure how much of the blame for this rests with the manager and how much rests with those in the boardroom who financially throttled him in the summer.
Most Celtic fans seem to think the bulk of the blame lies with the latter rather than the former, and I’m inclined to agree.
However, the lack of transparency in this regard only adds to the confusion and frustration of the support.
Football decisions should only be made by football people. It’s that simple. No coach with any semblance of self-respect will want to work with Celtic in the future, and Rodgers definitely won’t extend his current contract, unless this point is urgently addressed.
And as I’ve said, it’s not hard. It just needs a few very powerful men to set their pride and their egos aside, and see the bigger picture.
