Celtic’s Rivals Are Talking About “Rebuild 2.0” What Planet Do These Peepul Live On?

I was astonished this morning to read a headline in the papers touting what the media is calling “Rebuild 2.0” at Ibrox. Seriously? Are these people crazy or what? What planet are they living on that they expect something like that?

Honestly, they inhabit a separate universe to the rest of us. A new manager comes in, yes he will want to do things his own way, but if he’s not going to be able to work with the players he has to some extent then what is the point in hiring him in the first place? Just give the other guy more money to spend, but take a firmer hand on how he does it.

If you throw enough money at a football problem there are very few of them that you cannot solve. The thing is, you need to have that money in the first place an they have pissed so much against the wall that I find it hard to believe that there’s much left.

Whoever they appoint, that person will have to wheel and deal in the transfer market to have anything to spend at all. The idea that they will simply pump money at him is frankly ridiculous and their fans are mad to expect it and the board would be insane to promise it. They already have a bloated squad. How much more can they add to it?

The news today that their key managerial target, Philip Clemente – a more interesting name than I thought they were capable of appointing – “doesn’t do recruitment” is highly interesting as well. Because not a single person at Ibrox outside of the coaching team knows the first thing about spotting footballers, and if this guy doesn’t do it then who exactly is it who’ll be handling this so-called “rebuild 2.0” on their behalf?

Celtic’s stability comes from having a coherent system. It might not be a system everyone approves of – even the manager must get frustrated with it – but they are now talking about bringing in a manager and stripping away from him any say in who signs players? And this before they have someone inside the club who can? Madness.

And all of this increases the risk they are taking. Instead of one rushed appointment, are they on the brink of actually making two? Of bringing in a director of football/sporting director at the same time as a manager? Are people expected to believe that was the plan just 10 days ago? This is a club more and more which is making it up as it goes along.

Celtic fans should be watching all of it with great interest and even amusement. That club has no idea at all what it is doing. There’s no obvious long-term strategy here, just a short term panic which is going to end disastrously.

You can see the signs already.

What they are proposing is to bring a continental style management setup to Scotland; it’s bold, I’ll give them that.

But with their scouting department cuts, their reliance on analytics only (a system, by the way, which isn’t near to be up and running and will take time to perfect) and the manager being told what his needs are rather than choosing them for himself it’s not hard to see how this is going to go.

I hope this is really what they’re doing. It sounds ridiculous. What’s absolutely certain though is that Rebuild 2.0 is going to be done in a hurry, with limited scouting and on the cheap.

Just what you need when you are guaranteeing an incoming box a four year deal to be paid up in full if you sack him, at a club where the shelf life of a manager is measured in months.

What could possibly go wrong there, eah?