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