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The Many Reasons Lawwell Has To Go

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The other day, I posted an article called The Many Reasons Deila Has To Go.

You can consider this Part Two of that article if you wish, or as a standalone piece, but I consider the problems at Celtic Park to be linked to both offices and it was my intention to make these articles point and counterpoint.

You cannot solve this problem by sacking Ronny alone.

Peter Lawwell has been at Celtic for over a decade now. I have not always thought of him in the way I do at the moment. In August 2014 I wrote a lengthy article for On Fields Of Green laying out the history he has with the club, and the success of the early part of his tenure, but ultimately concluding that he was leading us in the wrong direction.

(That article can be read clicking here.)

There are now few Celtic fans who would argue that he’s a negative presence at Celtic Park. His remit has expanded in line with his salary. Things at the club haven’t improved as a result. In fact, we’ve gone backwards at a rapid, and frightening, rate.

These are the areas where he has failed. These are the reasons that he must depart with Ronny Deila. Without it, there’s little point in us sacking the Norwegian because all we’ll get is another Yes man and more of the same mediocrity.

Fan Engagement Has Been Woeful

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A couple of years ago, Peter Lawwell instigated a policy that caused much sniggering amongst myself and some of my cohorts.

He started invited select groups of fans to come to Celtic Park for “tea and biscuits”.

I’m sure it made a lot of folk feel special, and valued, and made it look like he was paying attention to what the fans thought.

But the real objective was pretty easy to wrap the brain around.

Lawwell was trying to play favourites. He was trying to keep certain people “on message”, first by identifying who was and wasn’t pliable, and by extension making it easier to brand the rest of us as malcontented rabble rousers, or people incapable of understanding how his world worked.

It’s an insulting suggestion, but it got traction amongst the support.

Every criticism from any quarter was dressed up as an attack on Celtic as a whole.

We were “doing the media’s job for them” or pursuing agendas of our own.

It was not simple scrutiny of his position and his job performance … it was personal.

What absolute bullshit.

But for a while he got away with it.

And what was the consequence? The wholly intended consequence? Division. One group of fans who wanted answers and another group telling us to sit down and shut up. Those fault lines still exist today, making any kind of co-ordinated effort by the fans difficult at best … and this, of course, was the plan all along.

In the time since various proposals have been mooted, many springing from his tea and biscuits meetings, including one to set up a “Celtic Membership Scheme”, the simple objective of which is to get more money from the supporters in exchange for … nothing. No authority, no influence, but perhaps the creation of a talking shop which he and the board can control, and if they can’t do that they can at least ignore.

The other consequence, of course, again intended, is that it will create a two-tier support; those who buy in, and therefore are considered “real fans” and those who don’t … who can be ignored even more completely, whether they’re season ticket holders or not.

Now even that plan seems to have gone by the boards, especially as it’s been met with a barrage of questions and demands from those who’ve been asked what they think that the Membership comes with actual clout. Which is the last thing Lawwell wants.

The appointment of a Supporter Liaison Officer seemed, on the surface, to be a positive step and I have yet to meet a single person who doesn’t think John Paul Taylor is a class act and an excellent guy. His own efforts have to be applauded, because he bends over backwards for the fans and always tries to answer their concerns.

But he’s also pretty clearly being used as a human shield, a buffer between the fans and those who no longer believe they need to answer questions themselves.

Which is why JP had to field so many questions in the last few days to which he didn’t have answers.

Now we get our information from leaks to the press and, occasionally, those websites which are still on board with the Moneyball nonsense.

Overall, it stinks to high heaven.

We get told only what the club wants us to know.

Tough questions don’t get answers.

Difficult decisions aren’t explained to us.

We’re given the bare minimum of information about the club’s long-term planning, probably because everything’s been done on a short term basis.

All of this, of course, has contributed to the growing number of fans who no longer think the club belongs to them.

This, of course, affects the number who still go to games.

Overall Ticket Sales Are On A Downward Trajectory

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When Celtic Park is packed, everyone’s a hero. The Strategy gets credited with full houses and swelling bank accounts.

The manger and his players are secondary to the real geniuses, those in the boardroom.

That’s how it’s spun anyway.

But if this triumph is the province of only a small number, then disaster belongs to us all.

Never before have I seen a more clear demonstration of flipping an old aphorism on its head.

It’s failure that has a thousand fathers at Celtic Park.

Success belongs to Peter.

That failure is best manifest in the number of empty seats, and the reasons for that are, allegedly, so numerous that no one person can be blamed or held accountable. Everything from the absence of a team called Rangers, to the absence of a challenge, to the general malaise of Scottish football, even the unrealistic demands of supporters and the economic downturn … nowhere is there a recognition that fans are just fed up with a lack of ambition at the club.

Oddly enough, none of these things appears to bother the supporters of other teams.

Aberdeen and Hearts are packing them in, despite not realistically believing they can win things. Sevco has been playing in front of full houses almost every week since being formed in 2012, even whilst clawing its way up from the bottom tier. The absence of a challenger for four out of five years hasn’t affected them one bit. The general malaise of Scottish football? Hell, they were playing against part time teams for the most part, teams without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.

How is it that other clubs appear to be on the up and up whilst the biggest in the land stagnates?

Why can they fill their stadiums whilst we’re closing parts of the stand?

Even some of our European nights have been played in front of empty seats … when did you ever know that to happen?

What was the cause?

No team called Rangers in our Europa League group?

The question as to why so many of our fans are voting with their feet is one our board appears completely unwilling to answer. When the CEO speaks about it in public he offers variations on the above themes. When he talks about in private, it’s alleged that he thinks the “return of the Old Firm” will solve all these problems and re-fill Celtic Park.

Such arrogance and complacency is what got us a half empty stadium in the first place.

What’s the magic number below which our season ticket sales have to drop before those above Lawwell start questioning exactly what it is he’s presiding over?

20,000? 10,000? Unrealistic, you might say … but those empty seats don’t lie, and this season a whole lot of them were already bought and paid for before fans started finding better things to do with their weekend afternoons.

You think it’s not dawned on some of them that they could continue doing those things, only with an extra £500 in their pockets, plus change?

Those empty seats are all potential non-renewals.

That should be scaring people at Celtic Park a lot more than it seems to be, and the man responsible for coming up with a strategy to fill those seats appears to believe that all he has to do is wait until the blue half of Glasgow can field a team to challenge us.

Doesn’t it make you want to rush out and hand over your dosh?

No, me neither.

He’s One Of The People Keeping Neil Doncaster In A Job

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Neil Doncaster is one of the most hated, distrusted, people in Scottish football.

I can write that with no equivocation at all because I know for a fact I am right.

There is barely a supporter at any club in the land who rates him or thinks a word he says can be relied upon.

It is my contention that he is personally responsible for destroying the commercial viability of the leagues in 2012, that he with-held key information from the member clubs when getting them to sign the last TV deal, that he was a willing and knowing participant in Craig Whyte’s debt dumping plan for Rangers, that he is the co-author of the Five Way Agreement and the source of both the Survival and Victim Myth’s who’s toxic legacy still haunts our game today.

In any other corporate culture that man, so scandalously unfit for office, a moral bankrupt and a coward, would be out on his arse.

Why isn’t he?

Because he has friends.

Because those friends have stood by his side, and at times even in front of him, taking the flak on his behalf.

Because for reasons that are unclear and will forever remain unexplained to we plebs, they think he’s doing something right.

I can only conclude, having sifted the evidence, that his key ally is none other than our own CEO, Peter Lawwell.

And that is as good a reason for binning him as any.

Not only has Lawwell been by his side for several key contract negotiations, but it’s pretty clear that as the most powerful individual in football in Scotland he would have been able to remove the SPFL CEO at a stroke had he wanted it that way.

It’s also clear that Rob Petrie and Lawwell are at the apex of a much larger group, which looks to them for guidance.

Getting the votes would have been no trouble at all.

Equally, they could probably block any move to force Doncaster to quit.

That these men have kept Doncaster in a job can hardly be in dispute, even though some the Englishman’s public statements have been so inflammatory and potentially disastrous – such as when he claimed there was no difference between a CVA and liquidation, and that creditors should be of no concern to football administrators – that his sacking should have been virtually automatic. Yet he stayed. He stays to this day, and as he’s continued in post Lawwell’s influence at the SPFL has grown dramatically at the same time.

One can only conclude that these things are connected.

He Has Failed (Or Didn’t Even Try) To Reform The SFA

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One of the things that irks Celtic fans most as we watch our team rot from the inside is that we have an absentee landlord and, lately, a part time CEO.

Lawwell has spent as long on “official business” with the SPFL, the SFA and the European Club Association as he has doing the actual nuts and bolts work he’s meant to at Celtic, and this is clearly not good enough.

He’s paid a £1 million plus salary.

Is it too much to suggest he actually focus his attention on doing his actual damned day job instead of working for all these other people?

The only way in which it would be remotely acceptable is if he was actually doing some good in these organisations, both for the game and for Celtic itself.

The simple fact is that in two of them he’s not.

At the ECA we’ve done well to have a voice on their Executive, especially at a time when certain greedy clubs are pushing for poisonous reforms. Outside of that, Doncaster remains at the helm of the SPFL, protected and coddled by Lawwell and others and at the SFA, where the greatest and most wide ranging reforms are needed, it’s business as usual.

What do we know of the SFA in his time on their key boards?

Campbell Ogilvie was re-elected president unopposed.

Read that again. Unopposed. Unanimously.

Mr Conflicted himself.

But no conflict on the part of the member clubs it seems, ours included.

The Pinset Mason scandal was allowed, wherein the SFA allowed Charles Green’s relationship with Craig Whyte to be “investigated” internally at Ibrox.

What was the result of that?

No relationship was found, of course.

Except for the one later uncovered by the Fraud Squad and which is currently in court.

Sevco are currently ineligible for a European football licence, and should they win the Scottish Cup there should be no question of letting them take a place in the Europa League. Watch and see what happens there. Their getting it is assured.

Where are the regulations on Financial Fair Play?

Where are the tougher sanctions for teams who go into administration?

Where is the confirmation, in the regulations, that teams who are liquidated can’t simply reform, having dumped debts, unless it’s in the bottom tier?

Why hasn’t this “retention of history” cobblers, which means any club can do this and carry on as before, not been clarified, made public and the Survival Myth destroyed?

I could go on and on and on … because for all the benefit we’re supposed to attain from having Peter Lawwell in the upper echelons of the governing bodies, what actual change can he boast of? What measures has he pushed through to protect the integrity of our game?

What reforms has he enacted?

What good has he actually done?

His Decisions On Managers Have Been Deplorable

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Peter Lawwell was appointed Managing Director when Gordon Strachan was still at Celtic.

Over the course, he failed to keep the wee man interested in the job and when the downsizing started for real Gordon saw the writing on the wall, got sick of it, and left.

So the second best manager we’ve had in two decades … and Lawwell wasn’t able to retain his services by giving him the proper level of support.

Lawwell has appointed three bosses in his tenure.

Two have ended disastrously.

The other was a disgraceful choice where he actually lucked out and got someone competent and, occasionally, even brilliant.

Yet even that ended in tears.

First up was the appointment of Tony Mowbray. I agreed with it at the time because I thought he would bring exciting football to Celtic Park. But it was clear almost immediately that Tony was just too nice a guy for the Celtic job, which requires, amongst other things, a certain ruthlessness which isn’t always recognised.

I wasn’t placed to do real research on Tony at the time; he appeared to have done wonders with West Brom in the Championship, but I’ve since come to believe it’s the most unpredictable league in Europe, where sometimes teams flare for no apparent reason and can fade just as quickly. Mowbray’s time there seems to have been a happy one but a fortuitous one in that nothing catastrophic went wrong with it. In another year it might have.

The worst thing about the Mowbray appointment is that a lot of Celtic fans predicted, rightly, and from the start, what a disaster it would be. My own view that it was the right appointment was predicated too much on that single honour, that win in the Championship. Other guys, those who had watched West Brom play and knew more about what we were getting, were scathing right from the first. His team had, after all, just been relegated from the EPL, which, in hindsight, should have been a warning light for all of us who supported the move.

It was apparent pretty quick that he and Celtic weren’t a good fit.

Domestically, we were poor enough, but his record in Europe was astonishingly bad, and would be beaten only by Deila this season as the worst in our history.

He lasted nine months.

Deila’s fate is a malefic and terrible echo to what happened with Mowbray; not only was the appointment itself a dreadful mistake, but people at Celtic Park seemed almost unwilling to acknowledge it until it could no longer be ignored.

His was another contract that should have been terminated in December, when it was clear to all but the most blinkered that it was all going horribly wrong. Many of the same people who urged us to keep faith with Deila this time around were using identical language then, right down to the point where they were arguing that we should off any criticism whilst we were still chasing domestic honours.

But we’d gone out of the League Cup in October. In January, when the sacking him was so clearly necessary only a blind man could have missed it, we won two games out of seven, yet he finished the month with many of us now screaming for his dismissal.

February saw him win two out of five, with a defeat against Rangers at Ibrox bookending his start to the year draw with them at Parkhead. March saw a 2-0 win away at Falkirk, followed by a 3-0 win at home against St Johnstone.

Then came the game in Paisley, where the regression could no longer be denied even from those who’d wanted to. We were still in the Scottish Cup, but the league campaign was over.

The appointment of Neil Lennon as interim boss was perfectly logical; the decision to appoint him manager on a full time basis was ridiculous, representing not only a cheap option but a gamble that was stunning to many fans. We’d been promised a “thorough search” for someone to fill the post. That this was the best they could come up with a devastating shock, and the point where any logical defence for The Strategy began to break down.

It took Neil time to find himself in the role – perfectly predictable as he’d never managed a football club in his life. But when he did and things began to click there were times when it was a joy to watch us play. That night against Barcelona was the stunning high point, a night which will live in our memories forever, treasured, and so will what came after it.

I have never, in all my life watching football, witnessed anything quite like the dismantling of that team over the course of the Champions League qualifiers the following year. It is the textbook example of self-sabotage; if Lawwell was deliberately trying to undercut his manager and harm the team then I don’t think he could have could have done it better.

Victor Wanyama was first, being sold before we played Clintonville, making us weaker than we’d been before the draw. On 23 July Gary Hooper played in the qualifying game against the Irish team. Three days later, he too was gone. We faced Elfsborg without him, and went through in spite of a 0-0 draw in the second leg where, you know, a good striker might have got us a win. With a much tougher draw certain, we then sold Kelvin Wilson to go into the Shakhter Karagandy tie having weakened the team for the third consecutive round.

Miracle of miracles, Lennon’s team rose above it all and a 2-0 defeat away from home was overturned on an electric night at Celtic Park, with a 3-0 win courtesy of my namesake’s last minute winner. A glorious moment, on an otherwise downward spiral.

That qualifying campaign was, and it remains, scandalous and unprecedented. Not only were the sales themselves dire examples of how little ambition we had, and the timing of them horrendous when there was no earthly reason we couldn’t have retained all three until our place in the Groups was secure, but Lennon got virtually none of the extra money to spend, in spite of his success of the previous year and the enormity of the sums involved; £12 million for Wanyama, £4.5 million for Hooper and £2.6 million for Wilson as well as the glittering pot of gold for qualifying for the Champions League groups for the second straight year.

No manager in Celtic history has ever been so clearly, obviously, and publicly undercut and betrayed by those above him.

That falls on Lawwell. That falls on The Strategy.

The Champions League run was every bit as disastrous as one could have foreseen. With nothing resembling like for like replacements for those who’d gone – Virgil Van Dijk being the only notable example, and look what happened there – the trajectory was obvious. We clocked up our worst ever single season European display, finishing with 3 points and 5 defeats.

Ronny Deila’s Europa League performance this season saw the same points total achieved with three draws … but then he wasn’t up against AC Milan and Barcelona, although the two managers did have to contend with the silky skills of Ajax.

It’s no wonder Lennon left at the end of that season. No manager could have been asked to stomach that, and with it clear some of the signings we did make – Pukki and Balde most notable amongst them – were guys he didn’t fancy at all, you started wonder just how much interference from above he was having to tolerate on top of the sales.

Lawwell, of course, was hailed as some kind of genius for all this and his swagger became sickening to see so many of us knew it had been achieved in spite of him. He vanished from public view when the hammerings started being handed out. To this day, some still praise him for his “stewardship” of Celtic during Lennon’s tenure. It’s a despicable fraud, and only the stupidest person can be seriously arguing that he’s some kind of guru when the consequences were so apparent.

Ronny Deila, of course, had to live with being undercut too. Fraser Forster was sold from under him and replaced with a freebie. Virgil Van Dijk went for more big money and he barely saw a penny of it. Considering his signings that might not be such a disaster as it seems … but so many of them have to be questioned as well, including filling the squad with loanees in Deila’s first season when the manager had publicly said he was against the idea.

So who changed his mind? Lawwell did, the guy who forced John Collins and Craig Gordon on him at his very first press conference.

When the European campaign ended in disaster and shame this time around the decision should have been taken to replace Ronny in January. The risk of keeping him on was enormous; we paid for it in full. We exited the League Cup in early February and last weekend the double dream went by the boards when we were knocked out by Sevco.

All of this was predictable. The board’s decision to keep Deila on past Christmas has cost us two domestic cups and may yet prove disastrous in the league.

Make no mistake about it, Lawwell owns this disaster.

The crucial decisions here, those which contributed most to how this has gone, they lie at his door. It’s his third managerial appointment and the third one that’s ended in questionable circumstances. Deila is his fourth manager in 13 years; two couldn’t stomach the downsizing and the others had to be relieved of their duties.

When does Lawwell himself take some responsibility?

When does someone above him start holding him to account?

Will it take managerial disaster number three? Or four? Or five?

Our “Financial Stability” Has Come From Asset Stripping The Squad

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Peter Lawwell is not a financial genius. In any other business environment, where he’d be judged by how much custom he brings through the door, by how innovative he is in finding new revenue sources and in introducing fresh ideas he’d have been out on his arse a good five years ago, if not longer.

Thirteen years at Celtic now, and what he’s introduced has been year on year downsizing of the squad.

That has actually cost us money in those years when we’ve not made the Champions League group stages.

The Strategy comes at a terrible price.

At most clubs the role of the general manager and his team is to find ways to support the football operations.

That’s their role.

At Celtic Park that has been turned completely and shamefully on its head. We’re now a football club supporting a business, with the general manager only meeting financial targets by selling our best players as soon as their values are met.

This isn’t squad building or development by any manner of means … this is creating uncertainty year on year, by denying our managers a solid foundation to build on. Even those who accept some of the precepts of The Strategy cannot deny that one of the consequences of it is permanent change and uncertainty, allowing nobody any semblance of forward planning.

But this strategy has sprung from Lawwell’s inability to crack open other markets or to innovate.

The terrible thing is that he used to be great at it; when we signed, Nakamura, for example, that opened up the Asian markets.

There’s talk we’re trying to exploit the US markets now with an NASL franchise; why wasn’t that done ten years ago?

In truth, he’s stumbled on an easy way to make money for the club and to meet his own bonus targets, and Hell mend what it does to the playing squad or the manager. This, in a nutshell, is the key reason Lawwell has to go.

This idea of him as some kind of genius is an absolutely mirage.

The constant selling of players is the reason it looks rosy, and they are only necessary because he’s presided over frequent failures to qualify for the Champions League.

The years when we showed ambition were, not coincidently, the years when we posted our highest income; £75 million at our height, an incredible figure for a team in Scotland. When we’ve cut, the consequences have been obvious in everything from failed European campaigns to the empty seats around Celtic Park at the moment.

Conclusion: Overpaid, Overpowerful, But Underachieving. It’s Time For Him To Go

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Peter Lawwell’s annual salary is three times the national average for a Scottish business chief executive, and many of those in that pay bracket are in charge of businesses with budgets in the hundreds of millions and oversee tens of thousands of staff members.

Few, I would imagine, can afford a heated driveway.

None of them would be allowed to turn their job into a part-time one whilst they schmoozed their way around the social circuit and tried to climb the corporate ladder at other organisations. It simply would not be allowed.

There are bosses who’ve made their reputations asset-stripping to maintain profits. They’ve built their careers telling those under them that the name of the game is to “do more with less.” Few think of them as geniuses; most call them exactly what they are. Leeches. Wreckers. Soulless charlatans.

The idea that any of them does what they do “out of love” would be laughed out of any boardroom, anywhere in the world.

He was appointed as managing director.

He’s moved to become CEO.

In that time his remit inside and outside Celtic Park have expanded beyond belief. He’s no longer a mere backroom player; like a guy who’s played too much Football Manager he now considers himself an expert on everything from scouting to squad building.

His arrogance and ego have expanded too.

He still receives laudatory coverage in some of the media and he’s still hero-worshiped by fans who have given him cool nicknames and far more credit than he deserves. Celtic enters a summer of crisis and transition – our third in the space of five years – because this guy is an utter disaster but one with good PR.

But the people who matter most – the fans – are no longer buying it.

Whilst at Hearts a CEO has fired enthusiasm and is selling season tickets, and a crook has convinced the Sevco fans that he walks on water and has them playing in front of full houses, and at Hibs there’s optimism despite being stuck in the Championship another year, and Aberdeen are building a new stadium, on the crest of a wave, despite an underachieving boss, at Celtic Park we’re shutting tiers of our stands and playing even top games in front of empty seats.

Ronny Deila has paid the price for his own failings, but some of those failings are shared with the man above him, and Lawwell’s made a share of his own mistakes too.

Everyone at Celtic Park is accountable to this guy.

Who’s he accountable to?

He’s accountable to us.

If we hold him to it.

And we must.

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