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Dermot Desmond: Time To End The “Conflict Of Loyalties” And Be A Leader Again

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In football, as in other fields of endeavour, partnerships are important and they don’t just matter on the pitch, where they can be the difference between success and failure. They matter off the pitch too. Trust is important in those relationships and so is faith.

When Ronny Deila was denied the chance to appoint his own assistant, and was forced to accept John Collins, that was the first bad sign that this was an experiment doomed to fail.

Throwing him together with a guy he’d never met … that was the sign of a serious disconnect upstairs, and an indication that someone didn’t trust Ronny’s appointment.

That day, at his very first press conference, that lack of trust and faith was telegraphed to us all, and the manager was essentially put on notice that he was getting a babysitter.

Our current problems stem, in part, from there, but the answers might lie in that too.

Someone at Celtic Park was over-ruled. Someone had doubts about Ronny and those doubts were ignored or at least put to one side. He was appointed anyway, but whoever got their way had to make a concession to those who had the doubts and what we got was a hopeless fudge that now threatens to end in disaster.

Yesterday, many of us retained the belief that this team would still win the title come what may; after last night, who could assert that with confidence? When the Celtic manager himself tells the press, with genuine fear in his voice, that he thinks we could lose the league then anyone who says this isn’t the time for discussing the manager’s future has to take a reality check.

There is significant doubt as to whether the manager himself believes in his own abilities; if that’s the case, how can the players get behind them?

Today the manager held “clear the air talks” with his players. What does that suggest to you, except that faith in the dressing room has been lost too.

Why should the rest of us trust Ronny if even the players no longer do?

Last night, and not for the first time, the supporters watched Celtic revert to a long ball game as if we were some kind of third tier team battling for its survival.

It’s just over three years since we beat Barcelona at Celtic Park to head into the last 16 of the Champions League. I don’t think there was a single Celtic fan who did not feel enormous optimism after that evening.

Neil Lennon had “brought back the thunder” and our squad had a core of great players, experience and youth blended perfectly.

We seemed to be on the way to something, but The Strategy killed any chance of that. Within months the core of the team was gone. The manager went. The guy who had been tabbed as his assistant was appointed boss … and the decline accelerated.

This season’s European campaign was a disaster, the worst in the history of the club.

The fall has been staggering, and depressing. Morale in the stands has plummeted. We all know that if a genuine threat existed in Scotland we might even be behind in the title race right now, as we head into the home straight. That’s a terrifying thought.

I write a lot about politics, and Thatcher, to me, is one of the most awful human beings this country has the misfortune of being cursed with in high office. The crisis that precipitated her downfall was the resignation of her Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, who had served her faithfully and loyally for years but who’s final speech in her government was devastating and effectively called on the rest of the party to act and remove her.

The crucial part of the speech was an open entreaty to Michael Heseltine and others to “stab her in the front” by acting for the good of the party ahead of self.

“The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties, with which I myself have wrestled for perhaps too long,” he said.

The “tragic conflict of loyalties” at Celtic Park is the one Dermot Desmond feels towards Peter Lawwell. I cannot believe that Desmond still has confidence in the direction of travel; he is a world class entrepreneur and those people aren’t known for accepting decline or standing still.

I understand why he would be conflicted; the partnership between him and Lawwell once looked as if it would pay huge dividends. It hasn’t.

For all his defenders might praise him, a cool and dispassionate view clearly reveals Peter Lawwell to be little more than a bog standard mid-level executive who is amongst the most over-paid CEO’s in the UK.

I don’t know how he justifies the huge salary he gets for achieving “financial results” which are more and more dependent on the constant weakening of “football operations” and the lowering of standards and ambition to the present level.

A lot of time, effort and money has been spent on “the Celtic brand” and if you didn’t understand football you might be awed by the way the club looks on the outside at the moment. Our fabulous frontage celebrates a glorious history; right now what’s going on inside the ground is a pale shadow of those past triumphs. Our majority shareholder has to know it. Where are the next generation of Celtic greats coming from?

If our next epoch is to defined, what will it be defined by? 

What is the organising principle that drives us forward?

Is our future really as a Manchester City feeder club, or worse, as part of a toxic local rivalry which holds us back as a football team and forever dooms us as a social institution separate from the bigotry and sectarianism which drags other clubs down?

A future like that is no future at all.

The last four years have been squandered.

Our chance to put “clear blue water” between us and the rest has been blown in spectacular fashion. We now appear to be sleepwalking towards an abyss, and there’s a widespread belief that the CEO is betting everything on big ticket sales next season due to having a team from Ibrox in the top flight.

If that’s the plan then there is no plan at all … our club is chaining itself to a doomed enterprise already heading towards the same fate as the one that swalloed Rangers. It is the ultimate proof of failure, the final, and most horrific, manifestation of where we’ve gone wrong.

We once talked about being one of the biggest clubs in Europe; now there are prominent voices within our club and the support who tell us we should be glad simply to be the biggest club in Scotland and who, you get the impression, would be nonchalant about a time when even that was merely an aspiration and not something we’re entitled to expect as our minimum acceptable standard.

This season we’ll probably manage it … but is it really enough?

Our majority shareholder ought to be mortified at how far we’ve fallen from a place where he was able to entice men like JP McManus to buy shares. How does Christopher Trainer, our second biggest individual shareholder, feel about the mess we’re in?

Those empty seats from last night were their own shocking verdict on where fans believe our club is headed.

Over at Ibrox, a fraudster with no business plan at all has energised fans so much that they’re playing in front of full houses in the second tier; that’s only partially a statement on the gullibility of their supporters.

These people believe there’s something good going on … and whilst reality is going to hit them like a hammer on an anvil that belief sells tickets.

Last night the supporters who were at Celtic Park, those who actually paid their money and gave up their time to attend, booed the team off the pitch at half time and full time … and today a lot of people have the brass neck to slate them for lack of commitment.

Those are the last people who need to be lectured or made to feel disloyal. If they go, how the Hell is the club going to win back the multitudes who’ve already voted with their feet?

Does anyone really believe these people are simply waiting for Sevco?

God help us if that’s true.

If the board is right to bet everything on that, we’re already screwed because that strategy is as doomed as the Ibrox NewCo itself because if Celtic is constructing its business plan based on that rivalry, what the Hell are those inside our club going to do when Sevco goes the same way as Rangers? Would we fight to maintain them next time?

If we’ve chained our future to theirs then we’d pretty much have to.

Anyone who buys into that is monumentally screwing us.

Celtic’s long term future could be decided in the next few months.

If we continue on the present road then the decline will become more, not less, pronounced. The idea that we are a special club will be eroded until it’s gone and the decision to present a smart frontage outside will be revealed as nothing more than putting a silk hat on a pig.

We’ll be reduced to the European level of Notts Forest; a club unable to sustain a brand built on its past glories because it has no ambition to use them as a foundation stone for the future.

Are the people who really make the decisions at our club blind to all that?

They don’t strike me as the sort to live with decline, with a permanent lowering of standards, with a football club that supports a business rather than the other way around.

We have a cast of thousands in the backroom; commercial directors presiding over revenues in free fall and international development departments who are watching as our global brand awareness shrinks to virtually zero.

And we have a CEO part-stripping the playing squad to maintain profits.

To Hell with our signing 20 strikers in the past half dozen years and getting no return; is it the “business” that’s more bloated than the playing squad?

What “return” do we get from these people?

Are they really offering more value for money than the Pukki’s and Balde’s and Coles?

Where is the strategy for our future coming from?

When was the last time we had a strategic review?

We’ve wage capped the squad because we have to “adapt” to playing in Scotland; why, then, do we have a CEO on more than three times the average salary for a similarly employed person in another field?

Why has his job remit swelled to include telling the manager who his assistant should be, and directing the scouting teams on what the needs of the team are?

Who the Hell is leading Celtic Football Club right now?

Not Ian Bankier, the grossly offensive charlatan masquerading as a chairman, who has about as much understanding of Celtic and its supporters as the average football fan has about particle physics.

We have one man capable of altering this, by acting as if he still cares; Dermot Desmond is his name.

But does he want to take responsibility for fixing this unfolding calamity, and changing course?

Dermott Demond, it’s time to offer this club leadership or accept that you, too, are out of ideas and nothing more than a busted flush.

Show us something, end this farcical and disastrous “experiment” and the ludicrous strategy it sprung from … or pass the torch to someone who does have a plan.

And above all, consider your response to the tragic conflict of loyalty with which you’ve struggled for perhaps too long.

I know someone important on the board didn’t support the appointment of Ronny Deila.

I believe that someone was you.

If I’m right you’ve been vindicated.

Now do us all a favour and act accordingly.

This club has never been more in need of a leader.

It’s time you took back control and showed us what you’ve got.

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