100 days, folks. 100 days and still counting.
That’s how long it has been since Neil Lennon left the building, and to even start the clock then is to do the club a favour it doesn’t deserve because it was clear long before that point that Lennon would have to go.
What kind of football club is still without a manager after a 100-day search?
The same sort of football club that has had even longer to find a director of football and hasn’t made that appointment either.
The same type of club which would knowingly allow more than a dozen players from the first-team set-up, including the captain, to leave in a single window as if that’s normal.
This is a dire situation, made no better by some of the spin people are trying to distract us with.
No other club in Europe has gone so long between the sacking of one manager and the appointment of another. It is not a complicated task although this board has made it into one.
Dominic McKay, who is watching all this, must be embarrassed.
What’s worse is that Lawwell leaves his post in exactly 27 days. On 1 July this mess belongs to McKay himself, and we might not have someone qualified to sit in the dugout by the time that comes around.
He must think he’s wandered onto the set of the wrong movie; he thought this was a family adventure picture.
Instead, it’s a slasher film.
The news – three days old but there you go – that we’ve applied to UEFA for a “recognition of competence” for the manger leads me to wonder how the board would get on if we could have their own competence assessed. I’d guess not very well.
The worst of it is, we are now locked in to an appointment which even without the searching look at his record, which has alarm bells ringing everywhere, is looming as a disaster.
Sensible clubs would pull out of this whilst they still can … I fear that Celtic has now fully committed to it because we made the momentous mistake of trying to cover the embarrassment of the Howe collapse by leaking the name of the target to the press.
The moment we did that there was no going back. I think people inside Parkhead left themselves no retreat.
It was do or die, no matter how stupid all this gets.
Not only will Kennedy take training, but I think it’s a sure-fire certainty that he’ll now take at least some of the pre-season games as well.
The club goes away for its pre-season camp in Wales on 5 July; the idea that the Aussie might not be able to make that trip sounds utterly mad, but that’s where we are and there’s a very great likelihood that this will prove to be the case.
Don’t spend time waiting for an imminent unveiling; we might be a month away from being able to do it. Can you even imagine what the mood of our supporters will be if this deal isn’t done in another week? Or a fortnight? Or three weeks?
Well, fasten your seatbelts.
I spelled this out last night; even on the most optimistic timeline, we won’t see this guy at Celtic Park next week, there’s just no chance of it whatsoever. Even if everything was settled now, and we announced the deal today or tomorrow, the earlier his unveiling could take place is a week on Monday and that’s just because of quarentine without taking into account the other complicating factors here of which there are loads from the UEFA licenses to the work permit to uprooting his entire family from what’s their home for the past three years, and moving to another continent.
Even just taking into account the quarentine, that takes us to within three days of pre-season.
In the meantime, he has no coaching team.
There are no new signings.
Players we know are leaving are still at the club, and will probably now have to play a role in the Champions League qualification games … these are the guys who didn’t want to be here last season, being asked to play a critical role in getting us off to a good start for the coming one.
I mean that’s preposterous, but it’s where the mismanagement of this whole affair has left us.
We are a laughing stock today, and the club’s response is stone silence except for marketing tweets about the new strip.
It’s disgraceful.