Dominic McKay sat down with the Celtic Fans Forum yesterday, and from the reports so far he made quite the impression. Apart from the season ticket issue, which is a whole different debate for a whole different article, the thing that comes across most was his talk of modernisation, and the need for it in every area of the club.
This is a guy with a wholly new outlook. He said a lot of the right things.
He appears to understand that he’s inheriting one Hell of a job.
I wonder if, in the course of being “shown the ropes” it’s crossed his mind that the job would be less intense and less difficult if the guy doing the handover had been a little bit better at his?
I’m sure McKay has not failed to notice that Lawwell is leaving a mess behind.
Even the most cursory examination of Celtic reveals so much unexplored potential.
Even when Lawwell has gotten it broadly right, in terms of sponsorships and stuff, you can’t help thinking that we’re still not making the most of what we’ve got.
Where was the link-up with a US sports franchise which was talked about but never done?
We made brief forays into the Far East markets but then quit as soon as our Asian players left the building.
Why, as a global club, can we not do better than the “traditional” British football shirt sponsors of betting and booze?
The club announced a bunch of big infrastructure projects; instead of those we got disco lights.
Which is to say nothing for the state of the football department.
Look at the state of the hunt for the manager.
As long as that’s taken it looks like we might even name him before we have a director of football, a search that started sooner and for which we hired some heavy duty consultants.
Why isn’t that complete?
Why does it take us an eternity to do anything?
Other clubs have started rebuilding already, we’re stuck in the mud.
So much of the Parkhead operation resembles something built decades ago, and presided over by tired old men who don’t have the imagination to move it forward.
We posted an £80 million plus turnover for the first time under Martin O’Neill; that was 20 years ago.
We’ve barely moved forward a notch in overall terms, although there’s more money in the game than ever before.
Where’s our share of it?
Every department at the club needs rebuilt, although some of it was only constructed last year.
Everywhere there is evidence of Lawwell’s misjudgements, from the way player recruitment bears his mark to the way that the fans feel totally disregarded on a communications front. McKay has one of the largest and most complicated rebuilding jobs in our history.
Only Fergus has faced anything even comparable to this, and we ran a board out of town on a rail for the state they’d left the club in.
Instead, Lawwell is lauded in many circles.
His “admirers” in the media and amongst our support continue to promote his cause, with some even suggesting that he should remain at the club as some kind of consultant.
Well, if we ever need advice on standing still or moving backwards Dominic McKay can just pick up the phone, can’t he?
There are those who think Lawwell’s experience is critical to us because of the “influence” he wields at the SFA and UEFA: I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that any of it has done us the least bit of good and we badly require new thinking on those fronts.
Even his one “legacy” act – the colt teams measure – is a grotesque embarrassment to us, a violation of sporting integrity and not even a lasting change; it’s set to last just a year and he had to bribe the Lowland League into accepting it … it’s a shocking indictment of his inability to forge consensus and build coalitions except with his chums over at Ibrox.
McKay will be earning the big bucks and so these are his decisions to make now, and I think he should be left to get on with things. If we ever get around to hiring a director of football and a manager key areas of the club will be taken off his plate – a CEO has no need to get involved with those things in the first place, and we’ll run better because of it.
I am glad McKay is talking this language, the language of modernisation. It’s one of the mantras this site has been banging on about over and over again. This is the advantage of fresh thinking, the sort you get when you replace a guy who’s been in a role for 17 years. Things around Celtic can only get better from here on in.