Peter Lawwell spoke to a meeting of the Celtic Supporters Association the other day, and I can tell you that very little of genuine value came out of that sit-down at all.
It was all full of the usual claptrap and self-justifications as we’ve read in the official statements.
According to the minutes, there were only two pieces of information that would be of interest to most fans.
The first was that Lawwell said there were things that he couldn’t talk about in public but which were going on in private – a reference so vague you can spin it whatever way you want – and the second was a piece of transfer news, which isn’t exactly a huge surprise.
He confirmed that the club will try again in January to secure a loan deal from Fraser Forster.
Many fans will be undoubtedly happy at that.
Regular readers know that I’m not going to be amongst them. It shows a shocking lack of imagination.
Why would we go for a player who rejected us in the summer and who, it has to be said, messed the manager about in a big way? It is desperate stuff and makes me wonder about this much vaunted “lists” of players we’re alleged to have stashed away somewhere.
And what does it say for Barkas, who we’ll be effectively writing off completely?
Why aren’t people inside the club being brought to book over that signing if it’s such a disaster?
Who scouted this guy?
Who sanctioned the deal? Is it possible that we’ve got nothing for our money; there’s a kid playing in goal right now, a youth team player.
I’d much rather we kept him there than go back to Forster with the begging bowl.
We’ve already handed this guy a shot at career rehab after he’d left once.
Why we’d do it again really does baffle me.
Lennon spent much of the last two months telling us that we were in a perilous state due to players at the club who wished they were somewhere else; Forster could have been a Celtic player right now if he’d wanted to be one … and he didn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised now to see us go back in for Roberts; this is exactly the kind of short-term, narrow focus thinking that has put us in crisis mode.
Now, I guess it’s possible that Lawwell was playing to the gallery a wee bit and trying to tell his audience what they wanted to hear.
After all, he told the Trust that nobody at the club briefed the press that the fans were “entitled” but he allows the newspapers who said that someone did to have continued access to our media conferences … so you never know with this guy.
But I rather suspect that this one is true, in the same way I think it’s probably accurate that we’re going for Rakeem Harper on loan from West Brom as one newspaper suggested today.
He was on our transfer target list last summer and based on much that we’ve seen already we don’t seem to stray far from the players we’ve looked at – and even signed – before.
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