Keith Jackson Is An Idiot And A Hypocrite Accusing Celtic Fans Of Entitlement.

Today, one of the stupidest men in sports journalism has sneered at Celtic fan anger and called us “malcontents” and suggested that we feel entitled to success.

What a guy Keith Jackson is; when his nose isn’t jammed halfway up the posterior of whoever is in the Ibrox hot-seat it’s poking around the ample buttocks of our current chairman.

A few years ago, Graham Speirs uttered the infamous phrase that “the succulent lamb was being served on both sides of the city.” Lawwell has long been seen by some in our press corps as some kind of totemic figure and a lot of us have been arguing for just as long that in fact, he’s not much more than a competent pen-pusher and number cruncher.

He cannot build coalitions. He cannot rally support behind things.

To the best of my knowledge, he has never brought forth a reform suggestion or pushed for a major change in corporate governance at the SFA … and if he has, if he’s ever been capable of making such a proposal, it hasn’t passed because he doesn’t know how to successfully lobby or canvas for votes.

He is utterly lacking in imagination when it comes to management candidates and he has presided over a decade of closed thinking that has turned Celtic into a family run corner shop.

Lawwell is like The Wizard Of Oz; impressive if you’re easily seduced by reputation, appearances and intimidated by bluster.

But in my time as a political activist, I met too many people with real gravitas and real power, and who knew how to wield it, and in my time as a writer of more than just football stuff I’ve met other people of influence, who combined charismatic leadership with genuine force of personality.

I respect Lawwell without being awed by him. I know what the real thing looks like.

Too many people in our media get star-struck. The idea that their job involves telling “truth to power” is an alien concept to them, and Jackson is one of the worst when it comes to that.

But he’s certainly not alone amongst those who are under some misapprehension about what it is that a CEO does at a football club. He doesn’t pick the team, or the tactics. He doesn’t know how to spot or develop players. That’s what other people get paid for.

I wrote before the AGM that this should be The Last Dance for Lawwell and some of the others on our board. That was a reference to the Netflix hit documentary about the Chicago Bulls, and I paid particular attention to the notorious statement from the Bulls CEO Jerry Krause which kicked that infamous season off; “Players and coaches don’t win championships, organisations do.”

The Last Dance was also the Bull’s last national title, so in sacking his manager and breaking up that team Krause only went out and proved how wrong he was.

Jackson thinks that it’s a small number of Celtic fans who have an issue with Lawwell and this arrogant and stupid idea promoted by a media which is way too enamoured with this guy’s big claims about himself. But in fact, disquiet about Lawwell is actually spread throughout the support and has been for many years.

And what it comes down to is this; Celtic fans aren’t nearly as stupid or as one dimensional as many people in our media seem to think.

We can look at the desiccated football landscape in Scotland and recognise that although it’s good to be out in front, Lawwell was in charge of easily the biggest and richest club in the country, and that we have enjoyed nothing more than the sort of success one automatically would expect from the biggest and richest club in the country, and particularly when they didn’t have a domestic rival to beat for ages.

The constant refrain from the board and its defenders is that we do not want to end up like Rangers did, and that if we somehow extended our ambitions that we might.

It’s rubbish, and it always has been and as far as I’m concerned not running your company into the ground should be the minimum that is expected of a board of directors and not trumpeted as a triumph. And most Celtic fans are smart enough that they understand that too.

We’ve gone backwards in Europe, in spite of several different managers who have all managed domestic success; so what’s holding us back on that front? Ambition. Whose fault is that?

I don’t think Celtic fans are “entitled” because they are asking, finally, hard questions about how we’re being run. Jackson’s pathetic defence of Lawwell actually stands in stark contrast to almost everything that he’s written about Celtic these past few years.

According to this joker, Celtic has never had a real challenge because subsequent Ibrox management teams have been a shambles. According to him, it’s not because we’re particularly brilliant, it’s because the boards over there have been particularly bad.

So he’s never bought into the narrative about Lawwell, not all the way … not until it suits him to prop these people up. But people like me have been writing about Lawwell and his incompetence for years, and have been vocal in wanting shot of him even when we’ve been winning.

I said his return to the club was a travesty which reeked of cronyism.

I said the hiring of his son was an unpardonable disgrace and reeked of nepotism.

Nobody in the media bothered to examine whether Mark Lawwell was actually qualified.

That was left to the bloggers all over again.

Whilst we were writing those things, Celtic was out of sight in Scottish football. Our concern was that we wouldn’t stay that way for much longer once La Familia had its claws deeply in the club all over again.

And this was the concern of many, many more Celtic fans than just a few bloggers.

We know the truth about how Celtic is run, I posted my lengthy piece on Lawwell this morning in which his full record was laid out for all to see, in context, in chronological order.

Jackson is a lazy excuse for a reporter, and an article like that, which does seek to expose Lawwell’s record in full, is certainly beyond his limited skill-set, but this suggestion that we’re like spoiled children when, in fact, we understand that domestic success is not the full measure of how well our club is run actually echoes some of the things he’s written about our European campaigns, and he know it is, so he should spare us the condescending guff.

Fans know more than this joker thinks.

All of us certainly know more about Celtic and how Celtic is run than he does.