Ange Postecoglou is, as we all know, a super smart guy, the kind of man we were hoping for in the manager’s office but probably never expected to get when the Howe deal collapsed. Nobody I’ve spoken to on this thinks Howe would have been a better bet.
It is one of the most fortuitous episodes in our recent history.
It is also one of the strangest. Our board will get away with it, as they got away with the Ronny Deila appointment, but they shouldn’t even if the gamble pays off, which I think it almost certainly will.
The more you hear about the way Ange was hired the more you realise that this board had no idea of the sort of man he was, that they barely knew the sort of boss he was, and they had imagined that they were getting someone who would take what he was given and not rock the boat. How little they understood the amiable, but hard as nails, Aussie.
How, then, did we end up here?
Well, shortly before the Eddie Howe deal collapsed I spoke to the Endless Celt podcast guys and I wondered where we’d go if that deal wasn’t gotten over the line. I worried that we would make some left-field appointment and mess everything up.
And that’s exactly what I reckon we did. We plucked numbers at random and it came up on the lottery. Like throwing darts at a board wearing a blindfold, you will sometimes score.
Ange was part of the Manchester City family, where Lawwell’s son works. Where Ronny Deila is also a coach. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this was a panic appointment and that the board were utterly clueless about what they had.
There have been so many competing narratives.
Lawwell was involved, then he wasn’t.
McKay took it fully on his own shoulders before that was tossed aside.
Then Nicholson was given credit for it, operating behind the scenes.
Now we’re back to Lawwell again, with one blogger aggressively pushing that line yesterday that we have uncle Peter to thank.
Whatever the truth, Ange himself when speaking to the Aussie media last week blew out of the water any suggestion that this was some kind of long-term pursuit. It’s the same lie, by the way, which Ibrox is telling just now about Van Bronckhorst.
They want to appear as if they knew their man and went after him at once. Bollocks. They were lucky he was still unemployed or they would have been flapping. They needed a name who would keep the fans onside.
But the Celtic lie, that Ange was the end result of much consideration, is frankly ridiculous.
Our board could have interviewed half the managers in Europe before they arrived at the big guy, had they had that kind of time. But Howe meant we were all out of that, and Ange himself admits that Celtic approached him out of the blue and then offered him the job the next day. There was no due diligence here, there was no lengthy process.
He was a panic appointment, which is what accounts for my staggeringly furious reaction at the time when his name broke in the media. I could not believe that my worst fears had come true.
But in point of fact, they haven’t because we have been fortunate.
Ange was not the first choice but he has turned out to be the correct one, and what’s incredible about it is how he has already bent the club to his will. I listened very carefully to what he and Nicholson had to say about a director of football and it seems perfectly clear to me that Ange has vetoed that and the club has had no choice but to go along with it.
He doesn’t want, or need, a babysitter. He wants to reshape the club into his image, not according to some plan hatched by somebody else who isn’t dealing with the players and the coaching staff every day.
Perhaps Celtic wanted to hire some empty suit and that was where Ange drew the line.
Whatever the issue, it appears that the idea of rebuilding the structure in that way died the minute he walked through the door. Ange is his own man with his own plan.
Tomorrow our new leader will take us into a cup semi-final.
The entire support is united behind the man and that endeavour.
It is nothing but good fortune that we got here, and whilst I’ll enjoy it I will not forget that we arrived here by blind luck … this board cannot claim a shred of credit for what this man and his team may be on the brink of achieving.
You can’t bring Sevco into this one. They lost their manager in unexpected circumstances and replaced him less than a fortnight later.
Sure they were fortunate that it happened during an international break and GVB was available but they got ther man before another ball was kicked.
Compare that to how Lennon was a) appointed and b) replaced. This is where we do agree. It was bloody shambolic.
I am 100% with you on the competency levels in our boardroom.
However when you bang on about the huns being on another downward spiral, the fact is they won the League at our expense. If they win it again this year they automatically get a large sum of money which will eat into a significant chunk of their debt.
That seems to be their game plan. Speculate to accumulate. They aren’t the first club to come up with that idea. And at least it is a game plan.
Ours was, as you have pointed out many times in the past, do the bare minimum to keep the status quo.
The board have pissed their pants. They have to go because last season was unforgivable. We are far from being in a position to say it won’t happen again this season, next season or the season after next. And even if we do win the League thanks to (as you say) our excellent manager, I wouldn’t put it past our board to piss him off to the extent that he leaves for a club that do share his vision.
I don’t know, I have a horrible feeling Ange will walk. There is a lot of turmoil in our board. At the moment this is still Dermot Desmond FC until we change that we have to keep our expectations low. The two signs that Ange is really in charge will be;
1. We sign Jota and Carter Vickers permanently although I have huge doubts about that. The board have mucked up so many deals in the past Toney and McGinn are just two.
2. We don’t keep seeing random players signed who never seem to play. I have no doubt someone other than the manager signs players ofr the club and that’s why so many players have been signed over the years and have not played.
Luck?
The way out board have gone about things in the last couple of seasons I would be inclined to think luck had nothing to do with it, maybe Ange was handpicked to fail? Give Sevco one more season to guarantee CL money for survival?
He fails so he’s moved on once Sevco have their cash and then a “proper” candidate put in place..Nothing would surprise me, but then, I would be presuming the board can plan ahead that far which they have proved they can’t.
The whole saga around Howe, immediately followed up with the mention of a manager most had never heard of, just summed up the Board’s incompetence.
Does the Board not do succession planning then?
Did nobody learn anything – at all – from the wholly inadequate recruitment process around Rodger’s successor?
The Board is collectively stupid. 🙁
I never wanted Howe and don’t really know why our support and board did, I just couldn’t see the hyped fuss about a man that got his beloved club relegated. So all of you that said he was what we needed were wrong then. Again. Too much negative noise about our club going on. Ange was selected by the club for the manager’s role, however much you like to speculate about how it happened, it happened. Try toning it down a touch plz and let’s get on with some positivity and support us in winning the league
I agree James. The board are a band of supercilious prcks and Ange’s appointment was lucky, at least from the fans’ perspective.
He could be a thorn in the side of these sell-outs-to-the-Engurlish-overlords.
It’s my firm belief that Scottish football has been, since 2003, deliberately kept down and trivialised with the subtext of the glorification of the EPL.
The real motive is, in my belief, that to maintain order amongst the English masses in the face of severe oppression (given how many people’s very sense of self is defined by their footballing allegiance) the English have to be given the illusion of superiority over the rest of the British isles to prevent them from eating each other and, more specifically, their leaders.
The Roman leadership used gladiators as a tool to becalm the oppressed masses This is an identical scenario. The Celtic leaders are nothing more than puppets in a much wider and nefarious Punch n Judy show. And so are almost all politicians.
You might find this recent article about Ange in the Sydney Morning Herald interesting
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/forget-the-frenzy-postecoglou-loving-it-in-the-celtic-cauldron-20211120-p59ak8.html