Yesterday The Celtic Chairman Took On An Unwelcome Role. Low Grade Comedian.

One of my favourite films of all time is Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone’s absolutely bonkers story about the Miami Sharks, an American football team in disarray.

The movie tries to explore so many themes and issues, and from so many different angles, it is an exhausting watch which never lets up for you to catch your breath. It is exhilarating. In spite of being nearly three hours long it remains the only movie I’ve ever watched four times in one day.

The most exhausted person in that movie is Al Pacino’s character, Tony D’Amato, the team’s head coach who is living off his past reputation and past glories. He goes through the entire film, until right at the end, with the dead eyes and worn out look of a man who is barely holding together the fragments of his life.

In one crucial scene, as he tries to get through to the team’s emerging star, Willie Beaman, played perfectly by a never cooler Jamie Foxx, he realises to his dismay that the old magic is gone.

He is no longer capable of summoning the fire. He has nothing new left to say to those he’s trying to inspire and motivate. They’ve heard it all before.

It must be hard when the old crowd pleasers no longer please the crowd.

Peter Lawwell sat in front of the Celtic fans yesterday and tried some old tricks and threw them some familiar red meat. Some lapped it up. But those who have heard it all before and mark these things in their minds for future reference weren’t impressed in the slightest.

Joe McHugh accused him and the other directors of laughing at those in the room. It was exactly how I felt reading the transcripts of the event. I thought that’s exactly what they did, and Lawwell in particular, falling back on a familiar role; that of a low-rent, end of pier comedian telling the same crap jokes and trying for the same old laugh lines.

But those laugh lines are no longer funny, if they ever were.

When he sniggered over a question about VAR he must have thought it sounded smart to make a crack about Ibrox last conceding a penalty when John Grieg was in the team; some of us cringed.

That’s either the chairman of our club openly mocking us for our legitimate concerns or its someone who thinks the whole thing is a big joke anyway. A lot of people are kidding themselves that it was some sort of “nod and wink to the wise.” It was nothing of the sort. He treated the questioner with contempt.

Nor does he take corporate governance seriously.

His crack about never having read the Five Way Agreement and never intending to also raised a laugh. I’ll tell you right now, those who put their heart and soul into exploring that document and its implications don’t find that kind of casual dismissal the least bit funny.

He was asked a direct question relating to his conduct whilst CEO.

The allegation is that he lied to a prior AGM, an extremely serious charge. He doesn’t take that any more seriously than he does the scandalous refereeing we deal with.

And he should take that seriously, because if he’s telling the truth and he didn’t read that document then for some of us that’s just as bad as lying about it.

That document is the most consequential in Scottish football in the last 20 years.

As far as I’m concerned, he abrogated his responsibilities to our club and to every single one of its supporters if he didn’t go over every line of it with a microscope.

I have read two different drafts of the Five Way Agreement.

I did that because it was obvious that it would have an immense impact on Celtic.

If the man who was the CEO of Celtic really didn’t read it then he had no business being in that job. If he still hasn’t read it then he’s got no business being in the role he has right now.

I don’t think that’s a laughing matter.

I don’t see either scenario as being in the least bit funny.

Nor was I amused by his wise-crack when asked to defend the remuneration of the directors and he said that “you get what you pay for.”

No harm to Michael Nicholson, who I think has done an outstanding job so far, but we could have had a perfectly good CEO for a fraction of the £750,000 he was paid for the last tax year.

And we have no way of knowing what the KPI’s for that are; they certainly don’t relate to progress in Europe and if they’re based on profits then that’s outrageous and there can’t be many football teams which operate like that. No wonder we can’t make tangible progress on the European stage.

If profits come first that explains everything.

I don’t think we do “get what we pay for.”

Not in terms of value.

Not in terms of progress in the areas where we want to see it.

This club hasn’t really taken a big step forward in terms of turnover in years.

Years like the one just past owe everything to Champions League qualification and a major player sale; I’m not saying it doesn’t work, or it’s not effective, or that we’re badly run, but to pretend that we’re making giant strides is a nonsense because anyone can see we’re not.

Ordinary fans only get one chance a year to speak to those who run this club and hold it to account.

They deserve a hell of a lot more respect than they got from that three-ring circus yesterday.

The guy in the chairman’s role played the role of class clown to perfection, but I don’t want the class clown at the head of this football club.

No wonder some of us doubt that we’re in the hands of serious people with a serious plan. They certainly didn’t bother to articulate one in between the crap jokes yesterday.