DUNDEE, SCOTLAND - DECEMBER 07: Dundee United manager Jim Goodwin (L) and the fourth official remonstrate with one another during a William Hill Premiership match between Dundee United and Kilmarnock at Tannadice Park, on December 07, 2024, in Dundee, Scotland. (Photo by Paul Devlin/SNS Group via Getty Images)
If you are a senior executive at Celtic and content to run this club like a corner shop — with limited thinking, low-rent ambition, and a future of cheap punts — then Jim Goodwin is the perfect appointment as our next manager.
He would tick every box for you. A future of project players thrown together – not assembled – from all across the world. He would embody the vision of going back to the days when we traded title for title with the club across the city, a situation some people on our board actually believe was “healthy.”
That’s the future the Daily Record was sketching out today. And it’s not limited to them. I’ve seen this line floated on at least one Celtic fan site, with posters acting as if those of us criticising the board are the problem.
These folk aren’t talking in a vacuum. They are, almost certainly, speaking from some awareness of what next summer is going to look like.
I’m not saying they have insider info, although I wouldn’t be shocked if Michael Gannon had been given a little steer from inside Celtic Park when he sat down to push this drivel. Because it fits. It fits perfectly with the “plan” we’ve discussed here on the blog before: the plan to replace an elite-level manager with a structure built around analytics and data, the so-called Moneyball model.
A structure where almost anyone can sit in the dugout and “deliver success” because, allegedly, all the fundamentals are already in place.
This is nothing new. Moneyball is a concept over 20 years old, already tested in football for the past decade. It is the kind of thing clubs playing catch-up dabble in. Celtic should be looking for a modern vision and genuinely new thinking at the top, not reheating leftovers from a strategy that’s long been exposed as limited.
Take Graham Younge’s comments in the same piece as Gannon.
He actually said he sees a role for someone within Scottish football to step into Celtic’s recruitment and management set-up. With all due respect, his head is lodged so far up his own backside he can probably see daylight through his teeth. The last thing this club should do is hire anyone embedded in Scottish football from the past decade if we want to move forward.
Look at Younge’s full quote: “I think there’s a real role for someone in Scottish football to reimagine how Celtic do business. The manager is far from being immaterial, but there needs to be a new structure.”
On the surface, fine. We do need a new structure.
But not one designed by anyone in Scottish football, and certainly not Jim Goodwin. Reimagining how Celtic do business doesn’t take a technical genius. It’s simple: do business earlier, do business for a higher class of player, spend enough to guarantee quality, and put a seasoned, proven winner in the dugout to mould the team. That’s not revolutionary. Clubs across Europe manage it without breaking sweat.
He and Gannon point to Aberdeen and Dundee United’s “recruitment levels” as proof that Goodwin is the right sort of candidate.
For what? To downgrade Celtic so the Scottish Premiership feels “competitive” again?
Because where are the Champions League-quality players signed by those clubs? Where’s the evidence that their methods scale? Answer: nowhere.
Aberdeen finished outside the top six last season. That we should be aspiring to be the next Dundee Utd is more amusing than something to take seriously.
And as for Goodwin himself?
Four jobs: Alloa, St Mirren, Aberdeen, Dundee United. Aberdeen took less than a year to figure out he wasn’t their man. Sacked. What great innovations, what dazzling strategy did he deliver?
What exactly has he done that justifies the suggestion, from Gannon, that he’s a future manager of Celtic? Winning the Scottish second tier? That’s now enough to get your name floated in a serious conversation about managing the biggest club in this country? That’s a joke.
The truth is, Celtic is already limited. Badly limited.
Our board is shackled by glass-ceiling, parochial, “Scottish football” thinking.
The solution to our problems is not more of the same.
But here’s one of those problems: when the summer comes, no credible candidate may want this job. We’ve toxified ourselves. Chairmen across Europe already view Celtic as a nightmare to deal with. Agents roll their eyes because so many players have been messed around by our “leadership.” Players themselves will look at the dysfunction of this summer and conclude we’re not serious. They see a club whose sole ambition is to buy low and sell high, to turn talent into balance-sheet entries, not trophies.
And that’s how you well end up with Jim Goodwin.
That’s how you end up with a squad made of low-millions “projects,” none of them here to improve the team, just to sit on a spreadsheet as potential profit. That’s how you end up with £3 million as your “big signing” cap.
This is not speculation anymore. This is what’s known as narrative-seeding.
It’s being drip-fed into the media so supporters are slowly conditioned to accept it, not as a recipe for disaster or the raw material of nightmares, but as something “inevitable,” even desirable.
Unless we make it our mission, for the rest of this season, to demand a forward-thinking, strategic plan that looks nothing like this, then mark my words: this is what we’ll get.
And it’s coming fast.
If we don’t want it, we have to smash it now.
I said John mcglyn the other week that’s their limit
Change will come when the shareholders decide that it is necessary and not before. We can agitate and try and accelerate getting the principal shareholders to that point, but until the majority of them are there then any change will be cosmetic. So first question, do we want DD to have a “road to Damascus” conversion and do we think this is likely? Personally I would say yes I do want that but I think it highly unlikely.
If we want change then let’s look at the other principal shareholders. In round numbers I believe DD has 34%, Bank of NY 18%, Chris Trainer 11% and James Keane 6%. That totals 69% and the rest held by (presumably) mostly Celtic fans, not as an investment but as a family heirloom.
In an ideal world I would like us as Celtic fans to buy out the Bank of NY – would require somewhere in the region of £30-40m. That would bring real change. We accused the board of being asleep at the wheel (and this was undoubtedly true) but as fans we were all asleep (myself included) as DD acquired his position.
Acquiring the Bank of NY shares would put almost the majority ownership of the club (18%+31%) at 49% in our hands. Of course that doesn’t guarantee consensus on anything but I think it does guarantee that the interests of our club would be in the hands of people who would put the interests of the football club and it’s unbroken history above all other concerns.
How do we acquire the shares from the Bank of NY? Well first they need to want to sell – that could be from poor financial results (boycott the club’s revenue streams) but they would probably ride that out as a short term blip. Approach with an offer they can’t refuse – as fans we demonstrate that this isn’t an investment for us it’s more important than that. And maybe use some politics – does the Bank (and some important lobby groups in the USA) understand the support of many of our fans for the Palestinian people? That might help lead to a divestment.
With Fergus the board was the target because they were out of money and controlled the shares. This time for change we need to focus on the shareholders.
PJ
You are 100% on the right track
DD who it is becoming clear has personally intervened to screw up done deals in this transfer window and in the past has to be put in his place
He is a MINORITY shareholder NOT the owner
The board should remove him as a non exec director immediately for interfering beyond his authority
If they don’t they should all go and immediately
Who are the bank of NY? There is no record of a bank owning shares in Celtic?
Mick in the 2024 accounts the Bank of NY Nominees are listed as owning 18% – the use of Nominees shields ultimate ownership. Looking this evening, it appears that Lindsell Train Ltd have taken the place of the Bank of NY. Lindsell Train are an investment trust. So the focus should switch to questioning how happy these people are with the performance of the current board.
Do we know if the moustache/family/close friends have any shares in this mob lindsell train?….controlling%
If so then he is has enough%to control celtic ?
I would suggest that Ange is taking a years sabbatical…
Why would he come back?
Jim Goodwin is the newspapers dummy to make a Sean maloney appointment seem acceptable.
It won’t be Goodwin or Malony.
Step forward celtics new manager.
Mr Paul Tisdale
In which case we will be welcoming back young Liewell
John Kennedy is a favourite of Peter Lawwell. Kennedy being the assistant has been in the contract of the last few Managers. When Lawwell has jettisoned Brendan Rodgers he will finally get to insert his favourite. Kennedy will being grateful for the gig. Will be Lawwell’s Yes man, will take what he’s given and will be “First Team Coach” in a “new structure” ( which will be portrayed as the European model as a sop to the fans not clever enough to see through it) which will be a DOF etc. All Window Dressing. Lawwell will control the business. Mute Mike will be his human shield and Desmond will rake in his dividends. Sevco will win a cup and the league this year. The O** F*** Brand will be alive and well and Lawwell and Dermot Desmond will be laughing all the way to the bank! Business as usual!
I think we’re all at agreement about Brendan being offski at the end of the season for sure !
The only solution to get anything done about this board is empty seats especially at big televised games,it’s too late for holding back stS are all bought and paid for as is this season’s merch,the only answer is empty stadium,it may hurt the team in the short term but in the long run it will help the team and whoever we get as a manager if we can get rid of this shower charlatans.