Egotism Run Riot At Celtic Has Brought Us Here. That Can’t Happen Again.

There are obviously going to be widespread repercussions on the back of the news today that Mark Lawwell has left his role at Celtic.

Although he’s on “gardening leave” at the moment, our scouting department is effectively without a central figure. That needs to be resolved, and it needs to be resolved soon with us bringing in a quality replacement.

What else might be happening behind the scenes at Celtic?

Well, that this has happened now and not at the end of the season suggests that a lot of people are circling the wagons, but it also suggests that there are major changes on the way.

We all know that Lawwell Jnr had virtually no chance of surviving the calamities of the summer and the January windows if the club expected to sell season tickets, but the swiftness of this has surprised most of us, and it seems obvious there’s a bit more going on.

Whilst there’s no definitive information on what else may be underway, I think it’s safe to say that Rodgers has claimed back some of the power he gave up during the summer, and which this site and others warned him against conceding.

If Brendan Rodgers has put down his foot and insisted on more control over transfers. that’s all to the good. That makes Lawwell and Sons the unhappy victims of what amounts to a coup.

If there’s been a power struggle here then obviously the manager has won it.

Now, it has to be said that this is not without risks.

If Rodgers has been ceded some control over the strategy the board has taken a brave decision because if the manager cannot deliver this title, then a lot of people are going to insist that he be fired for that, and it would not take much to convince those on the fence about it.

That shakes things up further.

But they would have needed shaken up anyway.

Lawwell’s failures are so egregious that it’s impossible to imagine any other manager working with the system he put in place. Anybody who we tried to convince to come here and run the team in the summer would have balked at the idea of letting this guy run the transfer policy with such a dismal record behind him.

Still, giving Rodgers a say means that he will have to work with others to put at least some of the summer plans together, and if fate dictates that he’s not going to have a job by then we’re essentially at square one in terms of what those plans will be.

News of internal bickering is never good news, but that stuff has stalked us the whole of this season so far and now we’ve got a change which on the surface of it is wholly positive and removes some of the taint of nepotism around the club.

It must only be the start of the changes.

Think of the arrogance it took from some people at Celtic to think an appointment like this would ever fly in the first place. Right from the start, it hamstrung the whole club. It was a triumph not only of nepotism but egotism because they really did believe they could brass neck this out and rely on the manager to fix whatever went wrong.

That egotism has brought us to the brink of disaster this season, and people had to pay for that. The man hired now has. Those who hired him may not be far behind him in heading out the door. If the manager has triumphed here, they’ve been cut off at the knees.

It’s important now Lawwell Snr departs as soon as possible.

He’s got nothing left to offer us but division and further strife.

The manager must be allowed a say in how this club is restructured around not only a new head of recruitment but an entirely new football department … the trouble is, we’re in a situation where that might not be possible in the midst of this title race.

But nor should anyone think that Rodgers can be entirely excluded from that process whilst there is a chance that he’ll be the manager who has to work with whatever they build.

The next thing this club needs to do is hire a director of football, someone with deep roots in the game, and give that person the authority to re-structure scouting, medical, coaching and analytics with the input of the manager the first and foremost consideration.

Another internal appointment won’t wash. Another page out of the City Group contacts book will not suffice. This time we have to get this right, because to be frank the job is too important to get wrong, and we see the dire consequences of doing so when we look at the league table.

This doesn’t solve every problem.

It doesn’t fix everything that’s gotten broken.

But if Rodgers has flexed his muscle and gotten his way this is a major event in our recent history and the effects of it will still be felt way down the line whoever is in the manager’s chair, or whoever is in the chairman’s job for that matter.

Because this whole thing is a consequence of what happens when the senior people at a club are working at cross purposes … and that can’t be allowed to happen again, and so lessons had better be learned and some checks and balances installed to make sure that it doesn’t.