There are three reasons why Celtic needs to get a move on in its quest to appoint the next manager of the club. The first is simple; that ticking clock at the bottom of every one of these articles.
It’s the countdown clock to our first Champions League qualifier.
The second reason is that the new manager should be able to come in now, before Lawwell does any more damage to the team, and decide who he wants to keep and who he wants to go; also, to veto any transfer decisions the CEO might want to make.
The third reasons is this; every day we delay, we generate more and more negative and stupid headlines. In a normal year that would be par for the course and something we’d all probably accept as “the cost of being Celtic.” This year it’s different.
This year there’s a need to avoid any more disastrous PR.
Season tickets for the next campaign will be going on sale soon and fans need to have some idea what they are being asked to buy into.
It seems highly unlikely that we’re going to have fans in the grounds by then; that’s a reality which I think all of us have to start getting cosy with.
So we cannot have two more months of this toing and froing and media speculation running amuck.
They are playing an old, familiar, game right now, one that I would recognise anywhere; linking us to people we’re not remotely interested in, asking them loaded questions and then slapping “snubbed” stories all over the place.
David Moyes was a case in point. He wasn’t going to be offered it, but the media made sure there were stories about how he’d “snubbed Celtic” anyway. It’s a little like if I put out a press release saying I had no interest in Julia Stiles or Sophie Turner; would that count as me “snubbing them”? How would these women even sleep at night?
Yesterday it was Steve Clarke who “snubbed” us; except look at his comments properly and you’ll see he was very deliberate and careful and went out of his way not to say anything that committed him one way or the other. Paul Lambert has allegedly “snubbed” us, but he had just as little chance of getting the job as I have with Stiles or Turner and wouldn’t even have been considered for it, if there is a fraction of common sense in our boardroom.
Over and over again, the media is going to line these stories up just so they can play whack-a-mole at our expense. Managerial straw-men from all across the continent will be built so they can be torn down. In the meantime, the negativity it all generates will be sapping at the confidence of all involved in the process. This is why they are doing it.
The idea is to create the impression of Celtic as an ungovernable shambles which no manager in his right mind would want to take on; we recognise it clearly, but there’s really only one way to combat it and that’s to bring someone in pronto.
The longer it takes, the worse this is going to get.
We know who the best candidates are. We know what we have to do to entice one of them. This is just like anything else, if we’re willing to match their requirements we’ll get our man, whoever that may be. A lot of these guys are without clubs; that should make it easier. Frankly, the writing has been on the wall, over Lennon, since November.
If we didn’t have a shortlist of candidates months ago, we really are the shambles the press would make us out to be.
Time to get moving on this.
[snack-countdown title=”Celtic’s Countdown To Champions League Disaster” date=”06/20/2021″ time=”00:00:00″ colour=”#000″ textColour=”#FFF”]