The longer we go without a manager, the more nonsense we’re going to read in the papers and online about what our expectations for the future ought to be.
There are two versions of expectation management being put forward right now, and neither has any basis in reality, but in their own way both are sexy and make headlines. The first piece of expectation management is that Celtic will spend, and spend big, or comparatively big anyway.
Pat Bonner wants us to spend between £20 and £30 million.
Some Celtic fans do want this.
Others, and this is expectation management from the other side, are busily telling us we can spend very little indeed.
John Collins is clearly part of the club’s own expectation management policy, busily telling us how the “wage structure” would need to be changed before we could ever sign “the finished article” again, whatever that phrase means now. Some blogs are so in sync with that view you’d swear it was co-ordinated, and they’re pointing out that transfer fees are only part of the issue; wages are, of course, the other part.
These people are preparing us for Hard Times.
A manager who doesn’t tick the boxes and a transfer net spend that will barely keep us ahead of the Scottish opposition.
These people are far more numerous than the first group, and far more influential.
In the middle are the rest of us, with reasonable expectations about what happens next. We’re not asking for £30 million to be spent on players, but nor are we willing to accept a fraction of that. Why should we? When does our club get off the floor and start acting like one with guts and ambition again?
Those who call themselves the Realists frequently slander us with talk that “our way” would bankrupt the club, and that scare tactic works on a lot of people.
But it’s not our way, and it never has been and this idea that spending a few quid to lift us out of reach of our competitors and prepare us better for Europe would drive us into ruinous, Rangers like debt is complete bullshit.
That club wasn’t brought down by a season of mad spending; it was brought down by a culture of insane over-reach that lasted two decades at least and by the end had nothing to do with conquering Europe but was simply about besting “every fiver” we spent.
Those of us who are, as a group, stuck between the two extremes know where our club plays its football.
We know what we’re up against and have no interest in seeing us even try to compete with England, where even mediocre players go for astronomical sums of money and command wages which are not far short of obscene.
Expectation management isn’t remotely necessary here; we get the concept of “value for money” and some of what gets squandered down there on third rate junk doesn’t come close to qualifying for that.
But as much as we’re absolutely not suggesting our club head towards one extreme neither are we prepared to accept a steadily inexorable slide towards the other.
Why should we accept continuing mediocrity?
We’ve seen the consequences of it this season, and if the club hasn’t learned the lessons of showing Lower Case Ambition what’s it going to take to change it?
It’s time the club met us halfway between the extremes, on the centre ground, right where we are.
I suspect season ticket sales aren’t going terribly well yet … that’s the pattern for the future unless we get this appointment right and back this guy properly.
I’ll tell you something else; no club that wants to progress should be following this wage cap garbage, which guarantees that the CEO stays the best compensated person at the club. It’s sheer drivel, and so are the defences of it, the most common of which – and transparently nonsensical – is that it would encourage those at the club to start making wage demands.
Yeah, right. Because Efe Ambrose is going to demand £10,000 a week … and why should we agree to something as stupid as that?
Those who deserve high salaries will get them, as per the market.
Those who’ve done nothing to justify them can wail outside the manager’s office all they like.
Colin Kazim-Richards does not deserve wage parity with Leigh Griffiths cause he’s not scored the goals Leigh has. It’s as simple as that and all the salary cap does is make it more likely Leigh will want to leave this club before he hits his peak. And that would be a disgrace.
I understand expectation management. People can’t think we’re going to spend £30 million and it wouldn’t be right to give anyone the idea that we could. But we’ve seen the consequences of net spend near zero too often these past few years.
Once, just once, Celtic, meet us in the middle.