This morning, The Sun posted one of its most ridiculous Celtic related articles in many a year, when they claimed that Celtic’s stand-in boss John Kennedy was in the running for the director of football/sporting director role.
It’s a moon-howler’s suggestion.
Not even our current board with their propensity for making daft appointments would ever countenance anything so plainly self-destructive.
The author of this morning’s dreck was Derek McGregor, not Alan Nixon who does appear to have the ear of certain people at the club. It reeks either of a hastily slapped together piece of “morning after the night before” filler or simple mischief making.
Andrew Smith at The Scotsman is one of a number of hacks who apparently believes there is some credibility in this story, which I’m guessing is why no-one reads his paper.
“Kennedy’s credentials for the post would appear undeniable,” he writes, and then goes on to talk about how well he’s done as interim manager, a contention that on its own is pretty idiotic and has nothing whatsoever to do with the job being talked about.
What are these “credentials” that Kennedy has?
In spite of claiming that they are “undeniable” Smith can’t list a single one of them in the piece.
That is such sub-par “journalism” that it makes your eyes bleed just to read it.
This is a story with so many gaps in it that it makes the average house of cards look substantial.
Celtic invested a lot of time and money in the hunt for a director of football.
We brought in a top management consultancy to do the search.
In the course of our interviews, we spoke to David Webb and Fergal Harkin, both highly qualified. The job has interested top people from around Europe. Richard Hughes, who’s Howe’s preferred candidate, has done the identical job at Bournemouth.
John Kennedy is an ex-player who’s now a coach.
And he’s failing at that.
So what qualifications does he have for the job?
Not, as one website hilariously suggested today, “decades of knowledge of Scottish football”; that criteria would quality you and me for the job. I mean actual qualifications?
Experience at running the back end of a major business and sporting institution?
It’s a highly technical role, requiring a key set of attributes which you don’t pick up on the training pitch.
Where did John Kennedy learn this diverse range of skills?
Was he attending business school on his days off?
Was he getting management training or a grounding in other key competencies?
And even if he’s somehow morphed into Stringer Bell behind the scenes, why does anyone who was involved in this catastrophe, this car-crash campaign, deserve to be promoted anyway?
Of course, that all pales into insignificance when you consider the key point, which is in the headline; promoting John Kennedy to the role of director of football would make him the next manager’s boss.
McGregor actually says that Howe is comfortable with that idea.
Who in their right mind believes that?
Who in their right mind could possibly believe that?
Eddie Howe wouldn’t come near Celtic Park in those circumstances and nobody else worth appointing would do so either.
It’s a suggestion of mind-bending absurdity and at the risk of sounding foolish I am going to go out on a limb and say there is no chance of this whatsoever.
Because the idea that we have conducted a “global search” and devoted so much time and effort and money to just end up at Lennoxtown, and an appointment that would be met only with disbelief and derision and cost us any halfway decent managerial candidate, is simply laughable and could only be taken seriously by our incredibly bad press corps.
This is one of the worst articles I’ve read on these matters since we announced that we were rebuilding the football department.
It is unthinkable. It is preposterous.