SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

It’s been quite the eventful week already,and it’s only Wednesday! Of course,all the action of note has taken place off the pitch,with Celtic releasing their interim financials to the end of December 2020 and the huns declining to comment on reports of their players breaking lockdown over the weekend-an event which incredibly saw Celtic being dragged into things as the usual political whipping Bhoys.

Not a whimper,natch,from our board about the latter. That is where we are nowadays,everyone’s easy target,everyone’s favourite punchbag. Go on,have a freebie-we don’t mind,happy to have been of service. Worse was the response from our chairman contained within our interim results where he simply told us that if we weren’t such a wonderfully well run club,we would be in the grubber-and that we should be grateful that our marvellous world-beating board have us in second place in a one-horse race. If we were expecting some humble pie from the board,Bankier was quite happy to remind us of how the term originated,and that we serfs should be grateful for the scraps we are thrown. (Including a reference to the last decade,when results should be about the reporting period,and the future to come.)

Ten years we have had to put up with this tosser,and I can’t think of one thing of note he has done during that time-except of course to insult the fans every chance he gets.

Which brings me to the main point of this article. The massive task facing Dominic McKay when he takes over as CEO on July 1st. On the face of it,he is replacing the previous CEO,but it is not as simple as that,not when you consider that Lawwell ran the club as his own personal fiefdom,with dominion and total control over every department of the club. The people responsible for that are guilty of a dereliction of duty,and might indeed have breached guidance and regulation regarding board oversight. That is a different matter,one which I would like to see investigated-as nobody should have that level of control in a Plc-but it proves that the current board,most of whom have been in place for far too long anyway,have to follow Lawwell out of the door,and by the next AGM at the latest.

DMcK has to be allowed to do his job-but he needs to know that he has a board who will allow him to do that,but more importantly will let him know when his decisions are wrong! And what a job it is,even apart from the cull in the boardroom. Because he needs to apply that same approach right throughout the club,he needs to restructure every area of impact on performance.

I spoke recently about the need for things on the pitch to be 100% up to winning the title in 2022/23,due in the main to the changes in the Champions League format the following year. We face a double churn of playing personnel this summer,with players who had planned to leave this year joining those who wanted to leave last year. Additionally,we need to restructure the football management side with the appointment of a Director of Football to replace the outgoing Lawwell,and bring in a new manager along with his own coaching and technical team.

None of these can be done on the cheap,and nor can replacing the departing players be done on the cheap. And to be honest,it would be unfair to expect a miraculous return to immediate domestic supremacy or European respect. But he has to do this on top of a groundswell of discontent and anger towards the club from the fans on a number of fronts. There are so many issues that the club should have dealt with long ago-but didn’t. And to gain the trust of the fans,to get us all back on board for the difficult days ahead,he really has to make a big start on them.

There’s the issue of the huns and their 55,as mentioned the other day by Phil Mac Giolle Bhain and AULDHEID; the referees and their predisposition to all things hunnery; the 5WA and other issues of governance at the SFA,not to mention our portrayal in the media-just for starters! There’s the continuing financial implications from the pandemic,which are likely to see season ticket sales slump,even before we consider the potential for a fans boycott of them in protest at so many aspects of the operation of the club. I could go on,but I don’t want him looking through his contract for a get-out clause!

Quite simply,Lawwell’s way of running the club had one glaring deficiency-even had it been successful! And that is the lack of succession planning. The new man was always going to come into a company which needed rebuilt. That the football operation also needs rebuilt is a further disaster for which he bears responsibility,and the same goes for the disconnect between the club and the fans. Dominic McKay has a mountain to climb,and he doesn’t have a lot of time to get the important things right. He probably has less time to show some real progress on them,in fact. Because although it would be downright foolish for anyone to expect a miraculous overnight transformation,it is not unfair to say that we will expect to see green shoots in the early days.

He has a helluva job in front of him,and we wish him every success. The fans will support him all the way,but only if he earns our trust and respect in a way that his predecessor never did. Get stuck into the problems you have inherited,Dom-but don’t take us for granted while you are doing it. And if you want some advice on how to do things right,to make right things that currently aren’t?

Do the bloody opposite of the man who left them that way in the first place!

Above article by BMCUWP