Ange Postecoglou talks a good game.
There’s no doubt about it. Of all the Celtic managers I’ve seen, I like listening to him the most, and especially when he is verbally slapping down one of our notoriously stupid hacks.
It was a pleasure listening to him this week.
Unfortunately, all the pleasure stopped the minute the football started.
Dominic McKay talks a good game.
He has famously reached out to the blogger and the Celtic social media guys, and given us not only a hearing but allowed us to question him on the record.
I’m told there will be more opportunities like that to come, and I look forward to them. There are plenty of questions he needs to be asked right now.
But talk is cheap, and this week has offered us all a proper lesson in what our needs are. It’s also been a searing indictment of how long it takes us to get things done. We’ve now had the one thing we couldn’t afford; a bad start. Already, we’re in difficulty.
It is not enough for these two men to say all the right things; they need to start producing. Ange at least acknowledges that. I don’t know what McKay thinks of it, because he’s dropped off the radar.
But the numbers don’t lie. We’ve played three competitive games. We have won none of them. We have lost twice. We have exited one competition before August even started. That’s not a good place to be, and the midweek game is massive as a result.
It’s hard to overstate what a full-on disaster it would be if we went out of the Europa League this early. The club would be reeling from it. Our reputation in Europe has already taken a battering, this would be a devastating blow against our stature.
Let’s be honest, the glaring holes in this team which have been screaming out for fixes are still there and those above the manager’s head haven’t worked nearly hard enough to plug those gaps.
The usual pleading that this is a difficult time to make signings cuts no slack whatsoever; that excuse has had its day. This stuff is easier than people at Celtic make it sound and it always has been.
The will has to be there, and that’s where we’re lacking.
The current performances are simply not acceptable, and I don’t mean those of the players.
I mean the manager and the CEO and those above them at the club.
Nobody is going to tell me that transition or not that we didn’t have enough about us to win at least one of the three games in which we’ve already taken part.
Nobody is going to convince me that this club was incapable of adding to this squad with at least one footballer in the last two weeks.
These people need to up their game; I’d give both of them a C grade at best right now.
Because you don’t get high marks for big talk. Only for action.
Fans don’t want more talk, it’s high time we saw that the people at Celtic are serious and capable. Anything less and we’re going to be in a very bad place, very quickly.