Celtic’s new Lennoxtown facilities look Impressive, but problems remain.

Yesterday Celtic posted a video on their website showing the excellent new work at Lennoxtown. Some of it is genuinely impressive. Although I still want to ask why the facilities took so long to reach the standard you would expect of a club like ours, it is nevertheless a pleasing thing to see.

The more good work our club does, the better.

However a major issue still hangs over all of this, and we need to confront it honestly. Shiny new buildings look great, but they mean very little unless the people working in them meet the required standard.

I will go further than that.

None of this investment matters if the system itself is broken. Over the years Celtic has repeatedly shown that the system itself often needs fundamental repair. This cannot simply mean upgrading buildings or improving infrastructure. The club needs a plan. The club needs guiding principles that shape its direction.

Most importantly there have to be the right people at Celtic Park capable of implementing that plan.

Too many supporters seem willing to settle for lazy solutions. Yesterday there was even speculation that we might see Aiden McGeady brought back to the club if Shaun Maloney continues in a significant role. I struggle to understand what the basis for that appointment would be.

If the answer is simply that he is a friend of Maloney, then we might as well stop bothering with infrastructure upgrades entirely. If Celtic continues to operate on that kind of old boys network mentality, where friends look after friends, then nothing meaningful will change.

That culture has been one of the biggest problems at the club for years.

The infrastructure spending over the last couple of seasons appears substantial. Yet infrastructure alone does not create success. There has to be a coherent strategy behind it. There has to be a structured approach that links facilities, recruitment, development and coaching into a single long term vision.

Shaun Maloney now holds the role of pathways manager. To be fair, he may well have done a solid job so far. We have seen Dane Murray and Colby Donovan graduate into the first team squad and both have looked promising. Donovan in particular has caught the eye.

Those are encouraging signs.

However many supporters remain unconvinced about the broader structure inside Celtic Park. There are still too many people working within the club who appear to hold their positions for reasons other than clear merit.

If people judged appointments strictly on performance, some of those individuals would already have moved on.

Stephen McManus received a promotion last year. I still struggle to understand what justified that decision. His B team failed to win the Lowland League. This competition consists largely of part-time players. With the resources available to Celtic, success at that level should not be optional.

There is no convincing excuse for that failure.

Maloney himself may represent one of the few genuinely merit-based appointments within the club. At least he brings credible experience from outside Scottish football. Whether those credentials drove the decision to hire him, or whether the club simply leaned on his history as a former Celtic player, remains difficult to know.

I would like to believe it was the former.

Because if it was, that would suggest some people inside Celtic Park can still recognise genuine expertise when they see it. Unfortunately the suspicion persists that familiarity still drives too many decisions rather than ability.

So while the upgrade at Lennoxtown is welcome and long overdue, it does not automatically solve the deeper problems at the club.

The first team facilities look better. The players will benefit from that. However there are still serious questions about the coaching structure and the wider football philosophy.

Celtic should be embracing a more continental approach. The modern game demands it.

Beautiful facilities will achieve very little if the thinking behind them remains rooted in an outdated Scottish football mindset. Too often Celtic still behaves like a club shaped entirely by the limitations of the SPFL environment rather than by the standards of modern European football.

Everything about the club’s football operation needs to be reconsidered.

Continental coaching systems operate differently. Player development structures operate differently. The entire philosophy surrounding academy football is different.

This is not theoretical. The evidence is visible everywhere.

Scotland no longer produces certain types of footballer. We have not produced a truly elite centre back or striker in years. When our best players improve, it is often because they leave Scotland and receive higher level coaching elsewhere in Europe.

That is not coincidence.

Something fundamental within the Scottish football system is broken. For that reason Celtic should not be recruiting heavily from within that system. We should be looking outward. We should be learning from environments that consistently produce better footballers and better coaches.

So yes, the work at Lennoxtown looks impressive. It is modern and professional. It is the type of infrastructure a club of Celtic’s size should have had long ago.

In that sense the investment is welcome.

However buildings do not produce footballers. Systems do.

You can build the best training centre in Scotland, but if the thinking inside those walls remains unchanged, nothing fundamental will improve. If the same insular mentality governs recruitment, coaching and development, then those buildings will simply house the same problems in nicer surroundings.

That is the real challenge Celtic faces now.

If the upgrades at Lennoxtown represent the beginning of a deeper rethink about how the club develops players and recruits staff, then they will prove worthwhile. If they are merely cosmetic improvements layered on top of the same old thinking, they will achieve very little.

Because modern football is not won with bricks and mortar.

It is won with ideas.

Until Celtic shows that it is ready to modernise those ideas as well as the buildings, many supporters will continue to look at these improvements and wonder whether the most important renovation of all still lies ahead.

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