Celtic is riding higher at the moment than at any time in our recent memory. We have a treble winning team, we’re playing some outstanding football and we have guaranteed Champions League Group Stages to look forward to in the next campaign. The next Celtic boss is taking over a Rolls Royce football club which is perfectly poised to continue being successful.
There is, at present, no external threat to our standing. The Ibrox club is trying to do a squad rebuild with the equivalent of the money at the back of the sofa. If they are following a coherent plan I cannot tell you what it is. Some of their signing targets are barmy and they still have to nickel and dime for them. Celtic, in contrast, has a winning squad and plenty to spend.
All this club has to do right now is to keep it simple. Appoint a proven winner and we can look forward to the next campaign with the confidence of champions. Appoint some novice on the back of a nod and a wink from “Pepe” and some rancid “link-up” with the City Group and we are risking it all. There is a reason that people think Guardiola’s opinion carries weight here; if it wasn’t for that there would be nothing whatsoever to credit our interest in Maresca.
I cannot understand why the enormity of this risk is not obvious. He has virtually no experience at all in the manager’s role and what little he has got has put other clubs off hiring him. That he needs Guardiola to vouch for him is telling; do you think Potter, or Knutsen, or Rodgers needs such a recommend? No, because they are experienced bosses who have charted their own course.
We might as well just call it quits and give this job to John Kennedy. That’s what we’re talking about here and if that fact hasn’t sunk in then let it start to. All this talk of how much he must have learned working with Guardiola is the same shtick that fans of various clubs in England had to listen to over the years as virtually every one of Alex Ferguson’s coaching staff took the step into management; only Steve McLaren accomplished anything of note, winning a Dutch title.
Football is full off managers of talent and vision and experience who have done enough to merit being on the shortlist for Celtic. Apparently working at City trumps all of it. Is that really something that we should be expected to accept?
At a time like this, when our club is as strong as its been for years? What is the issue here with going out and appointing someone who has a career history to fall back on, who has done things that we can, if you’ll permit me an analogy, see and hold in our hands?
This is the wrong time to being taking a stupid, unnecessary risk. This club is acting from a position of strength and all it has to do is build on that. An experienced manager, with a history of success, and with our resources to hand, should have more than enough about him to see off The Mooch and his two bob rebuild, and we are entitled, now, to expect progress in Europe.
For God’s sake Celtic, stop this flirting with disaster. Give us an experienced winner and give him the tools and the time and space to work, and we can enjoy the rest of the summer.
P.S. This City Group are not a benevolent football entity, they’re an Agency, serving their own interests. When I think of all the managers with good prospects all over Europe and beyond, it’s a mystery as to why Maresca is a contender.
There is no way that we should even be contemplating appointing a rookie manager. If the club were to be stupid enough to go down this path then surely Kennedy would be the choice, at least he knows the club and players well.
There are plenty of experienced managers out there who would love to manage a club like Celtic.
This is Celtic we’re talking about, not Winchburgh Albion mark you (as Archie Macpherson would have said). Over the past 20 years, after Celtic got too big for their boots and beat two English teams on the way to Seville, “Operation Hatchetjob” was unleashed on the Scottish game and, by extension, the whole Scottish people.
Now, large numbers of us see ourselves as inherently second rate and the inevitable losers when England comes calling for whatever reason, football being just one of the avenues in which our learned inferiority complex is constantly reinforced.