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Board Apologists Can’t Gaslight The Celtic Fans Or The Manager For Another Summer.

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Yesterday I released the second blog podcast – Episode 1, as I’m calling it, as the first was one of the Specials – and one of the key subjects I discussed was the signing policy last summer and our needs for this one.

Even as I was recording it, the gaslighting of those who have expressed concerns already was well underway.

Look, there are some people who are under the misguided view that they are better Celtic fans than other people, and that they are smarter than the rest of us.

The truth is they are no different than we are except that I would never accuse them of not loving the club, or not understanding the club, or being too stupid to understand the mechanics by which the club is run; I don’t have their egotism for one, and I don’t question their dedication or passion for Celtic.

I respect their views. I just won’t let them ram them down my throat.

Those of us who have expressed concerns have good reasons for them, and I defy even the most hardened, cynical board apologist to claim otherwise.

We only need to peer into last summer and the mess the club made of that to understand why those concerns persist.

The predictable disaster of having a Lawwell in the chairman’s seat and giving another a job as the head of recruitment, when one Lawwell is enough for most people to stomach, came back to haunt us in a big, big way, and especially those of us who have memories longer than the last five minutes.

Here’s the thing that has always struck me as critical here; if last summer’s anger had been confined to a handful of bloggers that would have been one thing. But Brendan Rodgers was just as unhappy as some of the fans were, and not only did he make that plain in his statements but he made it increasingly clear in his team selections.

And it’s to his credit that he was still able to succeed in spite of all this.

What happened last summer can’t happen again.

When it comes to the board there’s no “benefit of the doubt” here; people can just forget about that. That ship sailed a while ago, and it won’t put back into port for a long, long time, and only then on the back of a lot of winning hearts and minds.

The moment chairman Lawwell took his seat they flogged that, and when they not only failed to back the manager properly in the summer but then again in January it was destructive and damaging for the very reason Joe Biden’s debate performance was – because it played into a perception that already existed, and a lot of us told them that the risks of that were very real.

Well, now the confidence of the fans has to be earned, it’s just as simple as that.

We can all see that the league was won in spite of the board and not because of them.

The credit belongs to the boss and to the players he was able to work with, and when I was told yesterday that some folks were sniping at him on social media because he didn’t play more of the projects, I thought they were just embarrassing themselves.

That man’s job and his reputation were on the line. If those players had been up to it, they’d have been in the team, this wasn’t a guy leaving talent on the sidelines just to make some stupid point and anyone who thinks so is a complete moron.

At the same time, giving him stick because these are expensive assets he’s deemed to have wasted is equally ridiculous. He didn’t ask for these guys, he very evidently did not want them, so the blame lies with the people who purchased them in direct opposition to his needs.

I can’t put it more simply than that.

It’s the blind-spot that our board never seems to see past … they can dump as much second-rate junk on the boss that they like. He is under no obligation to use any of it, though, and thus is in no way responsible for any perceived waste.

One of the things their fanboys do over and over again is defend the strategy on account of the silverware it has delivered.

This is the craziest claim of them all. It was the men in the dugout who delivered that silverware. The best and smartest thing this club has done in recent years is in hiring the best people it could get to sit in that dugout. I give credit where it’s due; even when they made a panic appointment, in Ange, they did the one thing that was crucial to his success. They let him do it his way, for the first year at least.

We only have a high value squad right now because of the first two transfer windows he oversaw. I can count on my one hand who the bankable assets were after we pivoted back to letting the bean-counters have a say in the signings; Alastair Johnston … and I still have four fingers left.

This notion that our signing policy needs to be based solely on the signing of projects is so manifestly absurd it barely needs to be subjected to a critique. Those who think the value of the playing squad is in what it could earn us in transfer fees … what do they think Celtic is?

A business that runs a football club or a football club which operates a business?

Every top-class team – every single one – that you watch these days signs players who are over 25. The “value” of these players is not what they would be worth if you sold them on but in what they can do out on the football pitch, or am I watching a different sport?

This suggestion that from now until The Rapture that we should be signing only players 23 and under … it’s absolutely ridiculous, and it betrays not only a complete misunderstanding of how football clubs achieve success but a fundamental lack of knowledge about the wide and deep pool of players who are out there.

As I said in the podcast, Copenhagen, a side with a fraction of our income, went through to the second stages of the Champions League last season from a tough group, a year after winning the double, precisely because they went out and strengthened key areas of the team not with project footballers but with experienced ones.

This nonsense about signing only projects flies in the face of everything those of us who watch the game properly recognise about how teams are built.

And some people are still at this today, praising Ibrox’s strategic pivot (born of being skint) and actually openly expressing their hope that we don’t start signing experience. I wonder what planet some of these folks are living on. Not the same one as the rest of us.

As I write this, the team has been weakened further. Rodgers now has to work with even less than he finished the last campaign. There is no question that we will make signings, and there is no question that we will spend money. But this time the manager must get exactly what he needs, exactly what the team needs, and it will be easy to tell if he does.

If he doesn’t, he’s not going to hide his displeasure.

If he expresses it we’re all going to recognise it clearly, and if that happens we’re going to speak up on it. If people want to stand up for the directors and continue to defend them, they’ll be doing it flying in the face of the vast majority of the fan media and the vast majority of the support as a whole.

They got away with it last season because the manager had the skillset to get us through the campaign. There would have been a real reckoning otherwise, and I do not doubt that for one second. They did not get the credit, but they certainly would have gotten the blame and they’d have deserved it.

Another summer of that will not be tolerated. It is not what the fans want. It is not what the team needs. More importantly – and this is where the board’s apologists better start seeing the writing on the wall – it is not what the manager needs or wants.

And this summer, this club has to deliver for him and if they don’t, no amount of gaslighting “angry bloggers” and other “malcontents” will change the mood.

Podcast episode one is out now … you can listen to it below.

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21 comments

  • Gordon Raeburn says:

    It is difficult to comprehend that Lawwell and his cronies still have apologists wh back them. They must be using the same dealers as the Peepul for their Deludamol. The fact that we have no-one signed yet is a disgrace and a major concern. This has Lawwell’s fingerprints all over it. He MUST be hounded out before he can do any more damage to the club.

  • brian cavanagh says:

    Hi James

    you make some powerful points -though I think you are too charitable to many of the board. I think they see Celtic first and foremost as an asset to extract from -they have a residual interest in winning soccer trophies – but they behave in a classic short term capitalist way – to extract maximum value from the club – otherwise why would you build a policy of project players and under 23s only ? That turns Celtic into a nursery club- for the benefit of the shareholders at expense of the real shareholders those who go every week and buy every piece of celtic merch in their desire to support the club. These are perennial issues around how the club operates. So my question to you is what are the chances of a counterweight on the board to the deadwood? And would a supporter rep on th board help?

  • Alex Ferrie says:

    I find myself increasingly concerned as the transfer window rolls on that we have failed to sign a single player for any of the extremely urgent positions we need filled.
    In any competently run club I would have expected the replacement for Joe Hart to have been identified in the weeks following his retirement announcement, but instead we find ourselves sitting looking at runour after rumour with no actual player in place.
    What is going on at our club?

  • Matt says:

    I sometimes wonder if the Paul67 character is Lawells’ love child. Every lunchtime there seems to be another nugget of cr@p to munch down on

  • Stephen malone says:

    Everything you said is true as lifelong fans why during close season do we have to go through the torture of checking out for celtic news to improve the sqad while we are on top and going into Europe again all new signings should be in place for preseason training

  • Chris says:

    The article today from Paul Brennan on CQN is an embarrassment.
    He’s claiming that a strategy that has seen our last 14 matches in Europe as W1 D3 L10 as the way to continue is pathetic.
    Brennan is a joke figure among nearly everyone I know who reads his nonsense.
    I take on board what you say about Celtic fans with different viewpoints, James, but ask yourself this, can we really call someone who praises our strategy as a success, knowing how horrendous our European record is, a Celtic ‘fan’?
    Would the truth of the matter not be that he is a fan of the PLC first and how it goes about its business, and his support of the club comes down the line after it?

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    Good article yet again James…

    But it looks very much like Brendan is the boss this summer –

    Time will tell of course it will on that one for sure…

    But it wasn’t very nice for Lawwell (Daddy) at that Hearts game last December (although I believe he was a million miles away on a sunshine holiday)…

    But Lord Lucan-Nicholson must’ve heard it all loud and clear…

    Don’t let a repeat happen please…

    But then – They have previous so they do !

  • billy johnson says:

    Agree completely. The transfer window has been open for weeks, and zilch!
    It’s starting to have copies of previous seasons, when we will be chasing our backsides and making signings for the sake of it. Eg MC,,Carthy etc

    Guy who’s a free agent just now, is screaming out for Celtic to make an approach. It would cost no transfer fee, plus he’s an international who done well at euros. Scott McKenna. Surely the Irish guy from Burnley isn’t any better or worse, but difference is he has a £7 million fee hanging over his head
    The board needs to give the fans something, while “construction” work across the city, will go on indefinitely….if rumours are to be believed

  • Bob (original) says:

    As with the Eddie Howe shambles,

    nobody took responsibility for the appointment of Lawwell junior.

    Now, would be a good time for Lawwell senior to walk away.

    That would be the strongest signal to the support that the club

    was indeed serious about ‘making progress in Europe’.

  • Tony B says:

    I don’t visit the site much any more but I looked in to Codgers Quick News yesterday to see the gaslighting piece by the Lawwell flunkey Paui 67 and your response to it.

    I have to say I agree fully with your position on this, and it obviously rattled some cages, given the immediate attack on you by one of the usual suspects over there, ( interestingly also going under a psuedonym with a number attached to it – coincidence? )

    To be fair, there now appear to be growing number of anti Lawwell posters on CQN, which I believe is much more representative of the mainstream view of the Celtic support.

  • Woodyiom says:

    I’ve got to say the summer window is seriously starting to worry me. I have no doubts we will ultimately spend money and (in Scottish terms anyway) probably a significant sum BUT I’m not confident at all that we’ll be stronger than last season or that the majority of the signings will be immediate first team players. Our first pre-season game is THREE days away and our North American tour is only two and half weeks away and we haven’t signed ANYONE!!! The fact we haven’t even signed a new goalkeeper is seriously telling The Euros still being on is now a red herring as the majority of the teams left are the usual big nations whose players are out with our reach anyway. The Board are doing what they have always historically done – stretching purchases to the last minute as it saves money (less weeks of paying the player wages). Even if if we spend say £10million on Idah and Bernardo that isn’t strengthening us that’s simply standing still in the middle of the park leaving us to find a better goalkeeper than Hart to be able to say we are stronger and that’s long before we deal with the hugely glaring weaknesses at LB, LCB and both wings !!

    I hate to sound like Private Frazer but I think we’re doomed when it comes to thinking our Board have ANY intention of pushing the boat out re transfers.

  • Magua says:

    Good article, James. No doubt Pete The Cheat will be front and centre, when the league flag is raised…as if HE had anything to do with recent successes. Quite the reverse, in point of fact. Lawwell, Wilson, Riley etc. GTF.

    Hail Hail.

  • Darren Kerr says:

    They will sign a decent keeper level wise and then a forward and a midfielder from no name FC both 20 year old, then a couple of loan signings with view to buy. Get it in all your heads, the Board doesn’t spend it gambles.

  • TicToc says:

    Absolutely terrific article with brilliant comments too.
    When I read “in spite of”, that we won a double in spite of the Board I just couldn’t stop nodding my head and greedily looked for more. And there was more and it all made perfect sense.
    It’s surely impossible for Lawwell not to know the level of ill-feeling towards him and it may even make Desmond get involved as he must know too.
    Both of the above are typical, tory, leeching bastards with never a thought of anything except themselves. On the other hand we have possibly the best supporters on the planet and an amazing amount of strength therein. I, for one, just hope that Brendan gets what he wants and needs this summer and if he doesn’t that Desmond, Lawwell and the rest of the Board get what they deserve.

  • Mark says:

    I have been contacting the club constantly since the time of the Hearts defeat at Parkhead. There is no appetite it seems to protests, I would be all for it. I booed Santa on trophy day it was a scandal, that’s when our voice would have been heard. We embarrass them into action. I don’t care about the feelings of Santa, he was a symbol of the board, he was collateral damage. I am looking at a banner plane for flag day. I want to make them uncomfortable. I don’t hold any hope I make a difference. For me it’s not about who we sign this summer, the way the club is run by these people isn’t good enough. I am buying my strips and training gear elsewhere, rightly or wrongly. We protest injustice in Palestine. Rightly. We have to get our own house in order instead of being distracted by a league win like a dog with a treat.

    I don’t know how to mobilise but I am willing to be as disruptive as possible in a just stop oil type way (no violence) to get my message to these people. We can make a point within the law.

    • TicToc says:

      Great comment Mark, you clearly feel what 10s of thousands of us do but don’t know how to “mobilise”. It’s just so bloody frustrating watching these clowns, Lawwell in particular, tread all over us and be untouchable. It’s just not right. We need a ‘hub’ connecting Celtic supporters in every way possible so that we can deliver our grievances in a truly powerful manner. There are so many Celtic-themed sites online but not sure how many are genuine Tims. If only the genuine Tim sites could drop any personal differences and unify for the sake of creating a single ‘voice’ so that those huge numbers of us who feel, e.g. cheated by the Board (Desmond and Lawwell in particular but ALL of them) can make our feelings absolutely clear. But how do we do this? I don’t know, just now. I was in touch with a very well-known Tim (Res 12 etc) a while ago with this type of thing in mind but unfortunately nothing concrete came of it.
      But I always live in hope that one day……………

      • Mark McKenna says:

        Hi TicToc,

        Thanks for response and I also agree with you.
        I am all for a group of folk meeting for a coffee, or whatever and have an open discussion.

        We cannot just say ‘oh we signed a gk and an lb all good’. This is more than signings, people need to be honest with that. The club isn’t matching our ambition.

        I am telling you now, who or we don’t sign this summer is secondary to me.
        I want change. I will support the team always, but I will be making my voice heard and if I get abuse for it on match days then so be it. I’m sick of the way we are treated. I am open to ideas if any one does want to discuss it more

        Keep the faith
        Mark

  • TicToc says:

    Cheers Mark. I only have opinion to offer and that I keep doing whilst at the same time calling out Lawwell & Co for their treachery. Unless and until someone ‘with some clout’ takes heed and organises something of a get together I’ll just keep plugging away.
    There MUST be a fairly simple way of unifying CSCs, Bloggers, The Celtic Trust, shareholders et cetera in this day of technology and creating that single ‘voice’ (backed by numbers) but I don’t know how!! With most things in life there are egos involved and I’m guessing that’s a factor. I’m just hopeful that, one day, the interests of Celtic supporters globally will be considered and we get the current Board and anything of their ilk subsequently removed from CP PERMANENTLY and have a Celtic FC run by supporters of Celtic FC and not fucking leeches like Desmond, Lawwell and all.
    HH
    PS I live quite a distance from Glasgow but I’d happily come up but only if there was a genuine probability of effecting some manner of positive change.
    I’d also make some small contribution singly or monthly to that virtuous end.

  • Darren Kerr says:

    I live in Coventry and am quite willing to travel up and do whatever it takes to rid us of this Board. WE are Celtic not them. What would Jock think, what would Tommy think of this lot? I understand we need bean counters at the club but we have the ability and tools to be so much more and drive the club to greater achievements on and off the park.

    • TicToc says:

      Totally agree Darren, all of it.
      The problem is there’s no hub, no central point to communicate and unify and with all our separate entities like bloggers, websites, CSCs and all the rest of it it’s like we’ve divided ourselves for the good of the Board and to let them piss all over us.
      There MUST be ways to sort this out and unify going forward but I just don’t know how!
      It’ll come and I hope I’m still active when it does.
      HH
      PS As new comments are added and new posts, this will just get lost unless someone steps in with a solution and it NEEDS to be someone with verifiable credentials as scammers probably love ‘opportunities’ like this could be!

  • Mark says:

    I don’t necessarily think it’s even about fundraising or having to be some sort of professional protesters.

    Last season after Hearts that opportunity was the chance to embarrass the board into some discomfort, take responsibility and treat us how we should be treated. Celtic is us, not them. They don’t represent me. We are the lifeblood.

    My view – when they brought Santa out I harassed and booed. It didn’t feel good but I done it. I didn’t find it funny. I don’t care how he felt. He’s the problem, he’s a shill. We cannot pick and chose how and when to protest.

    If other fans don’t like the message – too bad
    If the police don’t – too bad
    If the club don’t – that’s the aim

    Consistency is needed. Win lose or draw. We cannot complain about the club not holding the SFA to account for the cheating of last seasons refs and then not hold the board to that standard ourselves.

    I pay my way at Celtic, we all do in one way or other. They do not.

    It will sicken me to protest even when times seem ‘good’ but that’s the whole point. The board are the target. If nothing changes nothing changes. I will protest and harass them week in week out a don’t care about ticket office staff feelings, jp Taylor’s, or the tea lady. Everyone of them are collateral damage.

    Look at the protests we are seeing all over the world today, people standing up for their beliefs and risking career life and limb.

    We don’t have to be extreme but Man U fans got the glazers out they protested for years, why can’t we.

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