SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

Canny beat a bit of Gerry Rafferty over the morning cornflakes,eh?

MAHE and family are hitting the trail for both the Easter weekend and wee Fionnuala’s third birthday,so I’m afraid you are stuck with me for the weekend article. And at a time of major flux at the club,there isn’t very much actually happening for us to discuss!

Or is there?

Yesterday gave us rumours of an imminent white smoke moment,the announcement of a new manager. Our own version of a Good Friday Agreement,though that may be in bad taste given recent disputes on the site. As I write this,no announcement has been made officially,and in truth I didn’t expect one to be,not based on that rumour. As far as I am aware,it is against Covid regulations to travel for interview as Eddie Howe is alleged to have done,and Celtic more than any other club have good reason to stay within both the spirit and the letter of those.

So,no. I didn’t believe those rumours at the time of his appearance at Celtic Park,negotiations can easily be done by phone or Zoom,etc,and the finer details can easily be thrashed out then too,or via e-mail. That doesn’t alter the fact,of course,that I don’t think that we should be considering the appointment of a manager until he has been up to the ground,the training pitch,maybe met a delegation of the players and staff just to get a feel of the place. I don’t think I’m the only person to have walked into a workplace for the first time and got a heavy hit of the Moriarty Negative Waves,and that’s why I finally got wise about it and asked for a wee tour of my workplace before I ever took a new job.

Trust me,that is not possible under current restrictions,and the last thing I would want from a new manager is for him to walk into his new workplace and think-this isnae for me! Due diligence works both ways,we have to get the right man for the job,while the new man has to know that the job is for him. Think back to the “I am the CEO of Bobo Balde” comment,and this appointment is crucial to us,and has to be a perfect fit for both the club and any new manager.

But will that new manager be Eddie Howe,as the dogs on the street are telling us? Well,it certainly seems so. I have long been fascinated by his career,where-aside from an impossible few months at Burnley-he took a minnow from the brink of relegation from The English League to the upper parts of The Premier League inside a decade,from the unlikely age of 32yo. I thought his side were desperately unlucky to be relegated last season,there were plenty of times during the last game of the season where they were in 16^th or 17^th place but at the end of the ninety minutes,they were in the bottom three,down and out.

And Eddie Howe fell on his sword,42yo with a young family and probably thought that it was the right time to take a break,recharge the batteries. Picked a bad bloody time for it though! Of the big clubs,only Chelsea have changed their manager this year,and I’m pretty sure that they only did so because their preferred candidate had recently become available. No coincidence for me that Lampard got the elbow as soon as Tuchel became available. So Howe was never in the running for that job,and the others quite simply haven’t opened up for him. The Tottenham job will probably be available soon enough,but when? And he is hardly a shoe-in for that. The big four in the North West look stable under their current regimes,and Arsenal appear to be doubling down on Arteta. Few of the other teams are attractive either,and the potential suitors there like Leeds,Wolves,Villa,Newcastle are unlikely to bin the boss under current circumstances.

I don’t think he ever wants to see the A666 to Burnley again,and so the only option for a manager that I genuinely hold in high regard is Crystal Palace!

I am being won over by the argument that Eddie Howe will be our new manager,and as I have said,I hold him in high esteem for the miracle that he created at Bournemouth. Our club seem to have learned a number of lessons from the dying days of the Lawwell era,and that it is dangerous to leave one man with so much control over every aspect of a football club. I believe that he is an outstanding young coach,and if he is allowed to do his job while other people provide the assistance for him that is in their job description,we will have a man who can match the achievements of a Martin O’Neill or Brendan Rodgers.

We should move heaven and earth to make it happen,but I don’t think we will have broken covid restrictions yesterday to shift things along!!!

Above article by BMCUWP