There are a lot of rumours flying about right now regarding players Celtic should be trying to sign.
Some of them are good players. Some are players with a lot of promise.
I’ve not read very many names which I would be unhappy about. We need a centre back pretty badly; whilst I don’t agree that we should be going for Benkovic, I know he can play.
I know most of these guys can play. But is that the only consideration we should make?
Look, Celtic has to be more than just another football club.
We have a culture, even if not everyone is on board with it.
Our own directors frequently piss all over it.
We have an ethos, even if it’s not reflected at times in our boardroom, where they denied our staff the living wage for as long as they could get away with it, and where a former director preened and strutted after he had cast a vote in the archaic House Of Lords which deprived millions of poor people of money and services, when they had little to begin with.
I believe in the philosophy on which our club was founded.
I don’t believe that football talents alone are a good enough reason to sign a footballer; if that footballer does not fit with the overarching ideas of what Celtic is, then we should take a pass, no matter how good he is.
Declan Gallagher is 29 years old.
He has already been released by Celtic.
He is in the wrong age bracket. I’m not even sure his skill level is what we should be aiming for.
I certainly know that he has what might euphemistically be referred to as a “colourful” background.
Gallagher has done serious jail-time and for a serious offence; he and a friend of his beat up a couple in a hotel carpark with baseball bats. It was a vicious and thuggish attack.
Our sport is a morality free zone though, and he was able to find a contract with a club upon being released from prison.
In any other walk of life, that’s a career ender.
And so it should have been here.
The sport itself might have no morals to speak of, but our club is supposed to. Gallagher forfeited his right to pursue any dream he harboured of pulling on the Celtic strip again in his career on that night of violence.
Even if he possesses all the attributes we are looking for – and Motherwell’s form at the back hardly indicates that – there is no way that we should even be considering this as a club.
I keep on hearing that he’s a Celtic fan, and would walk through walls for the deal.
So what?
This bizarre fixation we have for people who “get it” is one of the reasons why this campaign has fallen apart.
There are many reasons not to do this.
We shouldn’t even be thinking about it.
Even from the standpoint of PR it would be a disastrous idea, and if we’ve not had enough negativity on that front already then perhaps the tendencies in our boardroom now extend to masochism.
It would certainly explain a few things about the campaign we’ve had so far.
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