Peter Lawwell is on the brink of a return to the SPFL board of directors in place of Stewart Robertson.
This is not a straightforward election, as it should be, but the latest instalment in a grubby backroom deal which sees us swap turns with Sevco for places on that body.
This ought to be the last time this happens. It’s about time we ended this practice, because it is corrupt and during this summer allowed Robertson and his club to slander fellow board members and indulge their paranoia to the maximum without consequences.
Neither of Glasgow’s clubs should be “guaranteed” a place on any committee which runs football in this country and it is outrageous, even scandalous, that it is allowed to happen as if by right. One of the reasons Robertson has been allowed to hang on is that it’s generally accepted that he will “rotate” off the board and be replaced by the Celtic man.
Why does Scottish football still let this happen?
What’s wrong with having these men stand for election like everyone else, instead of this entitlement?
Why does our club participate in such a bent practice when the only actual outcomes are that it gives Sevco an inflated sense of its own importance which it in no way earns, and allows the mediocrities and, to be frank, lunatics who run things over there to appear in any way credible?
If Lawwell or any other member of the Celtic board ran for one of those positions in a straightforward way does anyone doubt they would be elected? We are the most professionally run club in the whole country, and almost everyone at the club knows the game and business as a whole inside out.
If these elections were held on merit, we would have nothing to fear.
But instead we do this, and all it does is elevate some of Sevco’s directors above their capabilities.
This practice must end … and we should be the ones who propose ending it.
Stewart Robertson should never be eligible to stand for executive election in Scottish football again; what are the odds that he will be right back on the SPFL board a year from now when Lawwell steps back and re-joins the one at the SFA, which is how this works?
It is beyond scandalous.
It appals me to see our club take part in this sort of grubby carve up. It continues to perpetuate the notion that Scottish football is built around the Glasgow axis, a toxic idea which this sport should be trying to move beyond in whichever way it can.
Lawwell is a professional and at the top of his class.
He belongs on the boards at the SPFL and the SFA and nobody could be in the slightest doubt about that, nor question it.
No-one except Keith Jackson, apparently, and certain people at another club … believe me, I will be covering this later on. Jackson’s article this morning is absolutely scandalous and as I’ll discuss within it, it offers yet another reason why this shabby practice cannot continue.
Jackson’s article actually misses the point quite spectacularly … or it chooses to distort it. One of the reasons we’ll never build a reform coalition in this country is that Celtic is still seen as a major obstacle to those reforms because we so often align ourselves to Ibrox.
It is high time we ended the perception that we work hand in hand with that club, on anything, and started to behave in a way that demonstrates real leadership.
God knows this game needs some of that right now, and as we go forward.
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