Lawwell’s Appointment To The ECA Board Is What The Celtic Chairman Does Very Well.

There are those who wouldn’t have Peter Lawwell near Celtic Park. I personally would not have him anywhere his fingerprints are near appointments or the football department. But there is such a thing as “institutional memory” and it is why major corporations keep former chairmen and others around as long as they do, to use their knowledge and extensive contacts book and to give them heft in places where a total novice would not have any.

The news today that Peter Lawwell has been elected to the ECA board and will spend the next four years there and on a UEFA-ECA steering committee, setting policy across the continent, is important to Celtic and Scottish football and shows where his strengths lie. If he and others kept to their brief, stayed on their own turf and did these sorts of jobs, exclusively, the last two weeks would not nearly have been so fraught. This is where we are lucky to have the man.

The ECA meeting was clearly on the cards for a while.

But to give you an example of why having this man representing us at that level comes in handy, one of the subjects that was up for discussion, as revealed this morning in The Guardian, was the influx of money from Saudi Arabia and the way it has upended things for clubs. The reason for the discussion? The ECA wants UEFA to go to FIFA and bring back some cast iron guarantees that clubs who sell players to the Saudis will actually get back the cash that they are due.

That this is even being discussed and debated suggests that some of them are concerned that they won’t. Celtic appears fine in this regard; Benfica released the news just today that they brought in £7.2 million in sell-on fees for Jota … our money must be safely in the bank or the club must feel pretty damned confident that it will be.

But not all the clubs who have dealt with the Saudis seem to be convinced, and this is what the ECA does really well, and Lawwell has been there now for years, as a highly respected member. He definitely has crucial political skills and we can argue that he should have used them more often right here at home until the moon turns to cheese.

The fact is, he keeps Celtic’s flag flying high in the places where the real decisions are being made, and one of the reasons for Ibrox squealing over their summer transfer business is the changes to sustainability rules which he helped to usher in.

Eventually, the changes we want here in Scotland will flow from our club’s proximity to the decision makers. In case it’s not obvious, UEFA eyes are on Scottish football like never before.

Refereeing here is under scrutiny. VAR is under scrutiny. The funding of clubs is under scrutiny. Little by little, our national association is being subjected to pressure and forced to change. One by one a lot of the old certainties have fallen away. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the eyes in Nyon have been drawn to the Ibrox club’s “statistical anomaly”.

We should all be happy with this news, and proud that our club has someone at this level.

It might seem like a small thing but when you consider the things that go on right here on our doorstep it is good to know that someone is there at the top table. Lawwell should focus every single bit of his attention on that task, and let the genuine pros run the football operation. If he does that then not only are we in good hands, but so is the wider sport.