Let’s Please Nip This “Lawwell And His Trophies At Celtic” Nonsense In The Bud.

If there is one part of the narrative of Peter Lawwell that continues to annoy me and offend me above and beyond everything else it is this talk about the success “he” has brought to the club. And that’s how it’s always framed. As his success.

But Lawwell was a bean counter.

A CEO. Albiet one who interfered in the football department.

This right here is the issue at play. Lawwell has always wanted to be at the centre of whatever the team achieved, and he has never taken kindly to the sun shining more brightly on others.

For years he and his acolytes have pushed this line that somehow he is the eternal winner, the reason for all the years of glory. The truth is, with no domestic opposition for six of them we should have done a lot better than we did.

If I have one big concern which over-rides everything else it’s that I do not believe that Lawwell will be content with some emeritus role, some hands-off job … he still thinks he’s the smartest guy in every room and his ego still thirsts for recognition and glory.

Too many people have bought into this wholly bogus narrative of Peter Lawwell in some way being responsible for Celtic’s successes.

But he has never picked a team, never formed a tactic, never made a substitution, never blocked a runner, never made a tackle, never took a free kick and never scored a goal.

His job was to give the manager certain tools and in that we all know that Lawwell had as many failures as he had successes and we saw subsequent bosses become increasingly pissed off with his parsimony, his second guessing and his interference.

More and more though you hear people listing the honours as if he did it all, as if he was the sole reason instead of being a backroom guy who poked his nose in where it did not belong.

It insults the managers who did mastermind those triumphs, and it insults the players who played their part in them. There is a reason neither CEO’s nor chairmen get a statue in the car-park and I know that’s long been his dream and one he thinks he’ll accomplish.

But it’s never, ever going to happen. Because CEO’s do not win titles. Managers and players do and people need to stop trotting out this tired old bullshit, and giving him vastly more credit than he deserves. Those titles and trophies and triumphs are not his to boast about. His actual legacy is a colossal list of failures of strategy and vision.

Everything else is just spin and it should offend those who actually did the heavy lifting.