Someone From Celtic Needs To Face The Fans And The Media And Talk About The Future.

Celtic’s Dominic McKay announcement had to have been in the works for a while. There was a statement to agree to, compensation figures to reach, details to be ironed out over what he could and couldn’t say upon his departure. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.

That means that Celtic held off on the announcement.

They timed it deliberately, for a Friday, knowing that nobody reads the papers at the weekend, that with a game to go and watch most fans would put it to the back of their minds, and that the press would not be able to do a proper analysis of the story until today at the earliest.

It doesn’t seem to me as if a proper analysis is being done yet.

The press is largely going what people inside Celtic Park have told them, and that’s not good enough. Anonymous briefings are a cowardly way to go about business, and it lets rumour run riot.

I wrote about this earlier, and then I read two separate articles in mainstream titles which could have been written by those running the club. One writer referred to a “rabid anti-Lawwell faction” amongst the Celtic fans, as though he had someone’s hand up his backside operating him like a glove puppet. Not one word outlines any sort of plan.

You’d think, from the dead silence from Parkhead today, that replacing your CEO after just over two months was a perfectly normal thing for an organisation to do.

You’d think that briefing against him in the media when there’s a clear need to hire a replacement was smart.

The people running Celtic lost their benefit of the doubt a while back … to fire the CEO (and it seems clear that they did exactly that) is untenable without someone stepping forward in front of the press (and the fans) to answer some questions.

There is no hiding from the fact that this is a shambles. Even if you give the club some benefit of the doubt here, in the scenario where they’ve done the right thing you’d like some acknowledgement that hiring McKay in the first place was a massive mistake.

Who, ultimately, will pay for that mistake? Or will the same people who made it be allowed to simply do a promotion from within without any questions being asked? People have a right to know how McKay was identified as a candidate.

What due diligence did we do? What was the criteria for choosing him, and what criteria will be used to pick his successor?

We cannot trust a process which takes place without proper scrutiny.

We cannot trust these people to make correct decisions when no-one is held accountable for the bad ones we’ve already witnessed. Those running things at Celtic need to put themselves in front of those who are paid to ask questions, so that the fans can be satisfied that there is some sort of plan.

Today the PR department offered fan media a chance to interview Cameron Carter Vickers.

As nice as the invite is, I’ve turned it down as I’ve turned down every player interview this summer because, frankly, asking the guy how glad he is to be here, how much he enjoyed his debut or whether he sees his future at the club beyond his loan deal might generate mildly interesting stories but there are much bigger issues at Parkhead right now and I won’t legitimise the club’s “version” of giving us access any further.

If it’s limited to this, it’s a sham.

This club has lacked a coherent strategy for years.

It’s what McKay was brought in to provide.

Was his plan unpalatable to those on the board? If so, fine, as long as they have a plan of their own. If we’re basically stumbling about making it up as we go along then that’s a mess and a scandalous way for a club this size to be run. Real change needs to happen.

Where does this board see our club in the next decade? What are our goals? How do we intend to regain our position in Scotland and cope with the massive changes which have come to football in Europe?

This club had to do a massive rebuild of the playing side as well as the executive side this summer, on their watch, which is a dreadful indictment on them.

The rebuild off the field is back to square one, and maybe that’s part of the problem.

I’ll discuss that in more detail tomorrow

. But for tonight it seems vital to myself and to most of the other bloggers that one of the “decision makers” at Celtic Park takes the decision to get out in front of this thing and talk to the press and the fans and articulate some kind of vision.

We are hopelessly stuck in the mud right now. That cannot continue. All fans want are signs of life, signs that the people running this operation understand the gravity of this moment and the need for real reforms. They have to tell us what the plan is.