The forums today are buzzing with the news about the UEFA licenses, and focussed on the time it’s going to take.
Time is the critical factor. Because we are running out of that, and in many ways we’ve already lost too much of it.
There are some who are ready to give this appointment a chance.
Indeed, if this guy gets the gig every one of us is going to have to give him a chance. Whether his appointment is good enough to sell season tickets is secondary to the fact we’ll all hope for the best.
Nobody in our support wants to see a Celtic manager fail, that’s a fact that shouldn’t need to be stated, but I somehow feel that it does need to be. There is no question that we will wish this guy well and want him to succeed.
But even the people who are most optimistic about this deal, those who see something that the rest of us do not, they all say the same thing, and it’s the last argument they should be making.
They all claim that he’s going to need time.
I’m afraid it’s the one thing that he isn’t going to get.
Time is a factor that’s been largely taken out of his hands, but an appointment this underwhelming was always going to rob him of it anyway. This one had to be a unifying moment and the board has guaranteed it won’t be.
If he doesn’t hit the ground running he’s in trouble.
If we fall behind early in the league and the current coaching team is working alongside him that alone will toxify the entire management team enough that the volume on the anger will already be high. He is not a former club figure, which means that he doesn’t arrive with any equivalent of the Lennon Cult. He starts with few friends. He could lose those he has quickly.
So if we’re talking about ideas which are going to take many months to bear fruit, that’s just mad.
Anyone who believes that he’s going to get that kind of leeway isn’t thinking straight.
Eddie Howe would have got time, because people would have believed in the underlying logic of the appointment.
Even those who are trying to find positives here have doubts.
The moment it’s confirmed that Kennedy and Strachan are staying the anger will jump a notch. When players start leaving and we see who’s coming in to replace them we’ll see what happens to the level of frustration.
I don’t think we’re going to enjoy the summer.
By the time the first ball is kicked I imagine the mood is going to be pretty tense and maybe even ugly. Those are not the conditions under which a manager who needs time will thrive.
Even if there weren’t serious doubts about him I think it would be a struggle.
Postecoglou seems like a decent man.
I hate to think that he’s going to be thrown into this firestorm.
I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
But the reality of this is that he is not coming in to a settled situation and a club which is unified. He is walking into an inferno and he has never dealt with anything like it in his life.
There will be no breathing space.
He has no chance of a honeymoon.