Late last week, I wrote a piece where I said that there are a number of people at our club who are determined to modernise the entire operation and take it to new heights of excellence.
I talked about how a senior official at the club had called me to discuss some of the coming priorities.
I assume by now most people realise that it was Dominic McKay.
I presumed he was calling most of the blog guys and gals and, of course, I was correct.
This was a charm offensive, and I realised that.
But it was a welcome one, a nice little touch of class from the guy, a move that for all his savvy in certain areas that Lawwell would never have made. It puts a human face on the operation at Celtic Park for the first time in an age, and I was impressed by it although I’m cynical enough to know that was the intention.
But I wouldn’t have written so fulsomely about the people like him at Celtic if I hadn’t believed it.
There are people at Celtic who do want to modernise us.
I’ve listened to and spoken to many of them these past few months.
I am convinced of their good intentions, but those need the right environment in which to thrive.
This morning, the papers were full of talk that Gordon Strachan was set to return to the club in one of the leading roles, making him Postecoglou’s boss and confirming that his two sons will remain on the payroll.
That would have been as far from excellence as you could get.
I found the prospect of Strachan returning to Parkhead in any professional capacity absolutely ghastly and it infuriated me that it would even be considered.
Today sources at Celtic have told the media that there is no truth in the story.
Yet someone briefed The Sun to this effect, someone inside Parkhead.
So what exactly is going on here?
This might be what happens when you have a ship with two captains.
Fortunately, there are only 11 more days of that to go.
Strachan returning to the club in any capacity would be Celtic, run the way the SFA used to be; as an old boy’s network, a wee private members club of mates run on the basis of who you know rather than on merit.
It would be nepotism and cronyism, from a board which had learned absolutely nothing, a board that didn’t care how it looked to the fans it’s meant to represent, a board that lacked even a spark of imagination and actually dreaded new ideas and innovations.
And if such a thing happened, I would have had genuine fears for those at our club who do want to progress things and bring those kind of ideas to the fore.
Appointing someone like Strachan, after a global search, would have raised questions about our competence, professionalism and the squandering of resources.
Aside from being a disastrous step in the wrong direction, welding us to the past, locking us in to failed ideas, it would have put the club on another collision course with the shareholders, who would have been fully entitled to demand an explanation into what processes were followed for the board to arrive at such a decision.
Strachan’s two sons are at Celtic Park already and I don’t know a single fan who thinks either of them deserves to keep a job there.
How ridiculous would it have been to make their daddy theirs, and the manager’s, boss?
This type of appointment would simply have added to the impression that everything at Celtic is done on the cuff, that there is no forward thinking, that there is no long-term plan. Only ideas tossed around the boardroom table, based on who people know in the game.
I am delighted that someone at Parkhead has moved swiftly to quash this suggestion.
We do need a director of football, but not this aged relic, not this man who has spent months gaslighting the supporters, not this guy who once claimed that genetics – the ginger gene maybe – played a role in Scotland’s failure to qualify for major tournaments. This is surely the worst excuse that a failed manager has ever attempted to fob the world off with.
Neil Lennon wouldn’t even have tried to hide behind that.
Celtic’s modernisers have enough to do without having to combat this kind of retrograde ideology inside the club.
Now that this story is dead and buried we can continue waiting for the actual announcement with something like enthusiasm again.
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