It didn’t take long for the optimism to end. For hopes that we were looking at a revolution at Parkhead to be dashed.
Those who were waiting, breathlessly, on Word From On High got it last night when our club’s CEO finally broke his media silence by giving an interview to the rag which lied for 27 years about the Hillsborough dead.
Just days after those people were honoured at Celtic Park, Peter Lawwell chose to give that newspaper a sit-down interview about his “vision” for the club.
You know what it amounted to?
Celtic fans, eat a bag of dirt.
If you’ve yet to purchase your season ticket because you were waiting on answers you’ve got them now.
The Strategy which got us here will continue. The downsizing will go on. The new manager will have to assemble a squad to qualify for the Champions League with shirt buttons rather than serious cash. Any talk of the club “meeting us in the middle” – which I suggested yesterday – has been rejected out of hand.
Things will go on as before.
The interview contained not one single fact that would inspire any supporter; instead we got his usual protestations and sickening tripe about how he “loves the club” and doesn’t stay here for the money. An easy thing to say when you earned north of £1 million last year.
Indeed, for much of the piece he wallows in self pity. It reads a lot like “poor misunderstood me … how hard my life is. But I get on with it. Somehow.”
The money helps. Obviously.
There’s no sign that he accepts an iota of responsibility for the car-crash season we’ve just had, or the disastrous managerial appointment that cost us millions in lost revenues from our Champions League failures.
He says he’s had the chance to go elsewhere and make even more money; what did I tell you when those stories broke about Sunderland’s interest in the run-up to the cup game? This was Peter getting his excuse in, so he could tell us all he stayed when he had a better offer.
He might have got away with it too, except some of us saw it coming a mile off.
It’s not that I don’t believe there was a concrete offer on the table for his services; I actually do. It’s just that it came from “an unknown agent, from an unknown club, from another universe.” If you get my drift.
Regardless of how he’s feted in the Scottish press most people south of the border realise we’re not heading in a positive direction; we’re surviving.
That’s about the best that can be said for us.
There’s no innovation, no original thinking.
The club only makes a profit at all when it can punt a top player every year.
There’s no genius to that. He’s not special. He’s a bog standard CEO with good PR skills and far too much influence at the club. Stripped of my attempt at humour, I don’t believe he’s worth his current salary and I don’t believe any other club would pay him it.
His interview today could only have come from someone of the utmost arrogance, completely divorced from the views in the stands.
In spite of suggestions in some quarters that this would be a ground-breaking announcement, which would give the fans hope, including on issues peripheral to the football side, like SFA governance and Resolution 12, the interview contained none of that at all.
Instead we got total silence on issues that matter, along with the absolute refusal to change course, the insult to many people of giving an interview to a discredited rag that lied about the Hillsborough dead, the appeal to respect him because he hasn’t left for more cash, the refusal to acknowledge mistakes or apologise, the promises of jam tomorrow, but not a lot.
If you were swithering, don’t be any longer.
You wanted answers, and you’ve got them.
Your choice is now pretty clear. Back the strategy and help him upgrade his indoor swimming pool, but know as you do that we’re hanging another manager out to dry before his feet are even under the table. No chance of proper money to spend. No changes to the structure. No difference in approach. Every mistake we’ve made thus far we’re going to continue to make into the future. At least we know now. At least it’s been spelled out to us.
If it looks like it and smells like it you surely don’t need to open your mouth and cram it in there to know what it is.
Peter’s message to Celtic fans is pretty clear; this is what’s on the menu.
Eat it or leave it.
No wonder he’s laughing in so many of the pictures.