His Decisions On Managers Have Been Deplorable
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?
