The old maxim, as first used by Napoleon, is “never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake.”
We hear it a lot, but without actually considering what it means, on the deepest level.
Letting the enemy get on with the job of screwing himself up is often thought of as a tactic.
It’s not. It is a strategy.
I often like to read up on both to remind myself of the difference, not just in the terminology but also how it looks in practice.
Put simply, tactics win battles. Strategies win wars.
Tactics are how we secured a win at Ibrox with ten men.
Strategy is about working to make sure the manager has a player like Odsonne Edouard at his disposal to bring off the bench in the first place.
Brendan Rodgers thinks both strategically and tactically. When people look at the size of our squad and wonder why the Hell we have so many players in it, it’s because Brendan’s strategy involves having the tools at hand to utilise a number of different tactical approaches. And that wins titles.
Other people at Celtic Park focus on nothing but strategy.
Their job is to look at the big picture, and to take a long term view.
Tactics are used to win narrow advantages, not to achieve overarching goals.
A tactical reversal can impact on the strategy, but good strategy allows for flexibility and improvisation.
Good strategists are rarer than tacticians, and that goes without saying. You can teach anyone the basics of chess and give them an insight as to how fundamental tactics work, but good players think about strategies and plan several moves ahead.
Grand masters can see the board and plan twenty moves ahead; that’s strategy all right.
Why do I say that letting King get on with his ranting and raving is strategy and not tactics? Well, if Celtic was thinking tactically – and in this case, reactively – we might, for example, release a statement slamming King for alluding to our “control” over the game and branding him a conspiracy nut. But what, actually, would that achieve? It would up the ante. It would escalate the affair, and before too long we would be in a mud-slinging contest.
We would probably win, because we’d go into it with clean hands. The stuff that’s already on King’s won’t wash off with all the soap and water in the world. But it would end up as a “plague on both our houses” and ultimately would let the press re-frame the whole Scottish football reform agenda as a battle between the two clubs.
Nothing would hurt it more.
So what does silence provide that speaking up won’t?
For a start, it leaves King standing on the stage alone. And the more he rants and raves up there the more the watching world learns about him and about his club. Remember, Gerrard’s appointment has sparked some temporary interest in them south of the border; best to leave King warbling on about conspiracies and other assorted nonsense, sounding more and more like a bigoted yahoo, whilst that light is shining. It makes them look pitifully insular and small-minded. It makes them look unprofessional, even a little unhinged. And that’s all to the good as far as the outside world is concerned.
It also makes King enemies in Scotland, because those people who worked with Gary Hughes know that he’s a professional and someone worthy of respect. They know that King is neither of these things and see what happened there as being agenda driven. Even worse is his attack on Murdoch McLennan, where King took aim not only at the man himself but at the professionalism of the whole board. That has gone down like a lead weight.
Reports that Rob Petrie is said to be manoeuvring to gain King’s support is another piece of good news. Those who are watching that carefully see that as a grossly self-serving act and one that reveals Petrie to be entirely focussed on his own personal advancement, even if it’s to the detriment of the game as a whole.
As Paul Brennan pointed out today, Petrie is caught in the web of the 2011 Rangers licence issue. It may yet end his chances of being President, and climbing into bed with Dave King, of all people, is the worst way to protect himself.
The fact that no other club has spoken up in favour of King is equally telling. That, alone, leaves him isolated and Sevco in a weak position. They can no longer rely on old friends … only, it seems, the narrowly focussed (tactical) support of an alleged sworn enemy. Think on the post-cup final statements of 2016. Can you even imagine how King and Petrie would go about spinning an alliance of convenience to their own fans?
King’s most grievous error, and the one Celtic must be counting on paying off in spades down the line, is in demanding inquiries and calling for transparency. No wonder we haven’t responded. It is a mistake of monumental proportions, one that I cannot believe, and which I’m sure Peter Lawwell cannot believe, that the Sevco chairman has actually made.
The other incredible thing about all this is that Gary Hughes was the SFA board member who Regan pushed into the public eye specially because he was a Celtic fan to lend legitimacy to the corrupt decision not to hold the inquiry we were asking for.
In a development no writer of fiction would ever have dared to script King has campaigned for – and secured – the removal of one of the key components of the SFA’s stonewalling strategy and he’s done this whilst bolstering the case for the inquiry itself. Who told this man he could play the game? King is the worst chess player there has ever been.
Sevconia is enraptured today by the resignation of Gary Hughes, and I cannot imagine why.
They believe they’ve taken a scalp, but actually Hughes’ decision to go gracefully casts an even harsher light on some former SFA members and even some still there. He knew the gig was up. He knew he no longer had the credibility an independent director needs to have, and he walked.
The contrast between him and even more “conflicted” persons does not need to be pointed out.
Celtic has been criticised in some quarters for allowing all this to go on. But there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ve gotten it spot on with our approach. These aren’t minor errors that King has made here, these are whopping game-changing balls ups that a man in his position couldn’t afford. Everything at Ibrox right now is tactical. It’s all designed to get them through tomorrow. The day after that, well they have no plan for what happens then.
Celtic, on the other hand, always thinks ahead.
We’re so far in front of this lot we can’t even see them in the rear-view mirror any longer.