Today’s Daily Mail story is the kind I’d like to say I’d take with a pinch of salt.
The “plan” it outlines is so ridiculous and wasteful that I can barely believe it.
Except that I do believe it. Because this is Celtic 2020-21.
According to the report, the club fully intends to keep Lennon in place until May, at which point there will be a “restructuring” of the football operation.
Incredibly, the report doesn’t even say whether Lennon will be told he’s not part of those plans.
It seems that Lawwell was going to do a nice wee video updating us on this before he realised that the last one had gone down like a dose of strychnine. He should be glad for that last video and the apparent lesson he drew from it.
Had he gone through with his proposed little stunt the backlash would have been enormous.
As it is, the backlash is going to be enormous anyway if this turns out to be the “plan.”
Do nothing until May, and then review again.
As if the league table and the points gap, the League Cup exit and the abysmal, outrageous European results aren’t making the course of action clear.
This is only going to get worse.
The volume of the anger amongst the fans is only going to get louder.
The pressure on all at Celtic Park is only going to increase.
Yet they believe that they should gut this out, that we should do nothing as they bluff their way through the season, trying to buy people off with vague talk of some summer “rebuild”.
I cannot express enough my belief that this move would be a disaster of epic proportions.
As long as Lennon continues as manager the club is setting us up for multiple detonations across the course of what’s left of this campaign. They are locking us into a toxic cycle of frustration swelling to anger.
There will be more Parkhead protests.
The demands for Lennon’s sacking will continue to be made.
By the time he departs his reputation will be in the toilet.
You think about the all-too-apparent consequences of this course of action and the mind reels … you wonder how anyone at Celtic can think, for one second, that this can possibly be a good idea.
Then you remember the way this campaign has revealed the men at the helm of our club to be lacking in any sort of strategic outlook.
Yes, this is almost certainly the course Celtic wants to chart for the next four months.
The people “running” our club are perfectly willing to put us through another sixteen weeks of this with no guarantee that it ends even then.
Peter Lawwell really was getting ready to do his wee video trying to sell us on this “plan” which reveals nothing but the lack of a plan.
I can’t even muster anger over this kind of nonsense right now.
I know a lot of people were looking at the January review as some kind of end point, but I half suspected it would end in a fudge; “Oh we agree Lennon can’t stay as manager, but we’re leaving him there for now.”
That it endangers next season hardly needs pointing out.
Those who claim Lennon “earned this” are talking out of their backsides; the good of Celtic has now been subordinated to the needs of one man, a man who should never have had the job in the first place.
Our club is in its deepest crisis since 1994.
It is time we stopped even kididng ourselves about the nature of our “leaders.”
Not one of them deserves to remain after this.