John Kennedy was asked yesterday what’s happening with Celtic’s recruitment for next season and he gave an answer which shows that our club is still being run like those of those banana republics where everyone in the government is just away doing his own thing.
We are in this mess because people at Celtic Park were working at cross purposes. Kennedy said that the recruitment work is “ongoing” and that Hammond and his team were still busying away and putting together lists.
But nobody expects Hammond still to be at Celtic when the restructuring ends.
Every list he’s working on, every single thing he’s putting together, could be null and void the minute the next manager is appointed or the new director of football comes to the club.
I understand contingencies.
But this is just a continuation of the way we’ve been doing things for the last couple of years.
Kennedy is talking about attacking players; who in God’s name is running this operation if we’re looking primarily at attackers when we have an entire back line to rebuild?
Who are these targets being identified for?
If the club is really concerned with the recruitment process for the next campaign then they have a responsibility to fix that problem by appointing the next manager as soon as possible, and preferably before more money has been squandered. Yet we know they would have been perfectly happy to leave Neil Lennon in the job until the summer.
Are these people capable of doing joined up thinking?
Are they capable of putting in place a structure that works because the people in it trust each other?
If they were I’d suggest to you that we would not be in the state we’re currently in.
This is the problem with leaving Lawwell to clean up his own mess; we should have moved him on and let McKay come in with a sweeping remit, to clean house and get things on a more structured basis. Instead those who have already failed continue to have control over the operation.
Hammond is carrying on as if nothing has happened.
The club is scouting players the incoming manager might not even want, and we’re already making moves to sign some on pre-contracts. The absolutely failed system of foisting onto a manager players he didn’t ask for looks like continuing even when there’s no manager in the dugout. The club is supposed to be changing the way it operates … you don’t do that if the present way of operating is just fine. But at a critical juncture we’re carrying on with the same failed policies.
This is why you end up with an over-bloated squad, sucking money out of the club, and managers who are frustrated at having a hundred options in one part of the pitch and none in another.
It’s farcical.
I’m just glad that we only have three more months of it … but look below … that’s the real problem.
Because we really don’t have the luxury of those three months. Every day this farce continues wastes yet more time. The clock is ticking, and unless we’ve got something big lined up we’re setting ourselves up for trouble.
[snack-countdown title=”Celtic’s Countdown To Champions League Disaster” date=”06/20/2021″ time=”00:00:00″ colour=”#000″ textColour=”#FFF”]