08/08/18 UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE QUALIFYING THIRD ROUND QUALIFIER 1ST LEG.CELTIC v AEK ATHENS.CELTIC PARK - GLASGOW .Celtic fans sing 'You'll Never Walk Alone' pre-match (Photo by Rob Casey/SNS Group via Getty Images)
So, it has been a week, and still nothing. Nothing from Celtic on the manager.
Manager interviews are apparently set to take place next week, so here we are, stuck in that familiar place where it all feels as if one of two things is true.
Either a lot of work has been done behind the scenes and this is all subterfuge, or no serious work has been done behind the scenes at all and this is just business as usual.
Yesterday, we all got a little scare when a tweet was sent around from a supposed football industry expert claiming that Keane was a done deal.
I checked Twitter immediately and found no such tweet on his page. So it was either fake, or it was something he posted and then deleted.
My money is on fake.
Safe to say, though, the reaction from most people who received it and sent it on to me was not: “This will be great.”
That tells you something.
This board has to unify the club with this appointment. It has to make a choice that brings Celtic back together, shows ambition and signals intent.
It cannot be some soft-soap, steady-as-she-goes type thing. We have a massive rebuilding job to do, and it is absurd to me that this job is not already well underway.
Our chairman went at the turn of the year. He should have been replaced already. A director of football went not long after that. He should have been replaced already. Needless to say, we have had no permanent manager since roughly the same time. Significant work on all of this should already have been done.
We are now dangerously close to the start of the World Cup.
Once that competition starts, everything we are trying to do becomes more complicated and compressed into a ludicrous timeline. If we are after players at the tournament, it will be incredibly hard to get that work done. If we are not after players at the tournament, my question would have to be: why not?
There are more teams at that competition than ever before. The player pool is enormous. Any serious recruitment department should be across it already.
Here is what is incomprehensible about where we have ended up. We knew this would be a summer where we had to find a manager. No one realistically expected Brendan Rodgers to sign a new deal or stay under the conditions he was being forced to work under.
So, we knew a managerial search was coming.
We should already have had our shortlist drawn up. People should have been contacted long before the swelling crisis engulfed the club when Rodgers quit. Some of those names should have been pursued for manager before Nancy.
Instead, here we are. We dragged our feet through the last three transfer windows. Whoever took the decision to bring in only loanees in January knew the size of the rebuilding job that would follow. They knew it would have to be done in an expedited time frame because of the World Cup.
The World Cup happens every four years.
Regular as clockwork. Everyone on the planet who follows football knows what the timetable is. None of this has crept up on us. It should not surprise us, of course, that this is how Celtic chooses to go about its business. This club deliberately left a rebuild of this magnitude until a World Cup summer.
They could have bought three or four good players in January, made the second half of the season easier and made this whole summer easier too.
They didn’t. That is part of the problem. That is part of why we are here.
We have all seen examples of how ridiculous this club can be. I remember when we risked losing almost the entire top third of the team to the Asian Cup, an obvious risk which some of us spent six months flagging.
Then, in the summer transfer window before that tournament, Celtic went out and signed four more players who were eligible to play in it.
In the event, we got lucky with the selections and only lost a handful of players. But the fact we went out and signed four more players eligible for a competition when so many of our existing players were already under threat of being there was beyond comprehension.
So, the idea that we might drag our feet into a World Cup summer is not a surprise.
Not really. The only surprise is that anyone would be surprised.
That does not make it less shocking. It does not make it less atrocious. It does not make it less disgraceful. But again, as I said last night in the Dom McKay piece, we are where we are because of choices.
This was not forced on us by circumstances.
We chose not to back Rodgers’ judgement last summer when he wanted to rebuild sections of the team.
We chose not to back Martin O’Neill in January when he knew what we needed to get over the line and win the title.
We chose to leave work undone.
It is astonishing how self-destructive this club can be, and how self-destructively it behaves.
That is why any hope of some negotiated settlement over the summer was never realistic.
Later on, I am going to write about the first move the board has made this summer, and how it has torpedoed what little was left of that already slim chance.
We do not have people in charge of Celtic who are competent. I am not even sure we have people in charge of Celtic who are rational.
The season finished a week ago, and only now we are supposedly starting manager interviews. Only now. What have these people been doing all this time?
What exactly have certain people at our club been doing for months?
How are they justifying their salaries?
How are they looking themselves in the mirror and telling themselves they are doing a good job? This summer did not arrive unexpectedly. The managerial question did not come out of nowhere. The rebuild was not sprung on us by fate. The World Cup did not suddenly appear on the calendar yesterday morning.
Celtic knew all of this. They knew the scale of the job. They knew the timeline. They knew the risks. If they are only starting now, then this is not bad luck. It is negligence.
And if that negligence costs us again, nobody should dare pretend they were not warned.
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James, I’m at a loss, as many of my Celtic friends are, as to why there’s not a manager in place already, never mind interviews being started.
You’ve pointed out all that is obvious, and yet there’s nothing coming from the offices of the yes men.
How can the board, in all honesty, expect to close the gap between and the fans when they appear to be treating us with contempt.
We can slaughter signings already made by the rangers, but for goodness sake, at least they’re making an attempt to get their squad ready asap for them “coming” again next season.
I honestly hope Martin doesn’t take on the job. This has nothing to do with what he has done for us, but more to do with making the yes men make a forward thinking decision. If Mon stays on, then it’s another season of loan players.
I could spend all day writing about this board and it’s short comings, but I wouldn’t be saying nothing that’s not already been said.
I hate the word “hope”. It defines itself as leaving something you want to happen, in the lap of the gods .
I’ll make this plea to DD and his yes men…..please relinquish all connections with our club, and hand it over to ppl who want to take it further, and not take, take from it to swell their bank balance
I repeatedly tell my family and friends that there is no way that there can be a repeat of the mistakes of last season. No way Jose. Then I start to doubt myself. This board gives me the fear.
No disrespect to the amazing and great Martin O’Neill but him signing on again would be short term thinking in my opinion. We need a manager that has enough guts to realise that we need a huge rebuild and take on that task with courage and confidence. Positive and courageous ambition needs to be the way forward. No more accepting of mediocrity. Nicholson and the board will be under the microscope more than ever in the few weeks leading up until the start of next season. Surely lessons have been learnt I keep telling myself but then reality kicks in. There is no certainty of that with this board.
What surprises me is there is people that give these parasites the benefit of the doubt time after time and think they will learn from their mistakes.
First of all they believe that they aren’t making mistakes and everything is world class in what they do (pmsl).
They have absolutely no time for the fans and anybody who doubts that need to wake up.
They tell us absolutely nothing and will have no intentions of ever telling us anything worth while other that the next batch of merchandise to hit the shelves for the peasants to empty their pockets again and again.
The very fact we don’t have the manager in place right now typifies these clowns.
It’s been reported that people at the club want saracchi the guy has been in the door for months surely someone could have been on the phone sorting this out before he leaves the country and heads off to the World Cup, No not these clowns.
I can guarantee this will be another long drawn out summer if these clowns are still in place.
Three things I’ll say…The Board is not fit for purpose and a major overhaul is required…I’ll repeat what I’ve said before….Robbie Keane has been offered the job…and finally,I’m told that most of the delay is being caused, by the issues concerning an over bloated squad… This ranges from new players coming in..players being sold…difficulty moving on players not wanted by us…Current loanees wanted by us…Current loanees not wanted by us….Loanees returning to us from other Clubs…All this is causing huge logistical problems…And its NOT to defend the Board in any way…But it is what it is….Told to you in good faith.
Every Celtic supporter needs to fuckin face it…
That’s the way it is under these snails and slugs…
That’s the way it’s gonna be under these snails and slugs as well…
Sevco always win The Close Season Cup – We know that but at least they compete well in it and play fast in it…
It’s not brought them season success in the last two decades thankfully but with them having ceased thumbing their nose up at Scottish players it certainly will next season !
If I had to guess then it would be that the board want Martin O’Neill to stay for 1 year to help with stability while they go through transition of boardroom changes like new chairman and possibly CEO and eventually a director of football and want a steady hand as manager while all this goes on.
I would guess O’Neill has asked for time to think about it having had all his focus on winning the league and cup. He said himself it is a tiring job, regardless of age, and that he didn’t know if he would want to stay on another year.
I think that’s where talk of a 1 week delay comes from. I think he’s asked for a short time to think about it after celebrating and coming down from the high of the success and they have agreed to let him think it over and speak with family etc. Only my guess.
Next season will be the season it all crashes down. It simply has to happen with this board
IMO they haven’t looked beyond MON and they’re hoping he’ll come back for another season. It’s not what I want but it may not be the disaster that many forecast. Martin has the old codger act nailed, but he always knows exactly what he’s saying even if it doesn’t sound like it and I think he’s sent out a clear message to Desmond and his flunkies on the board. Martin said (twice) “if it’s a project then I’m not the man for it and I won’t be here. I don’t believe in projects.” My reading of that is that he’s telling them that he’ll only be here if he’s allowed to go out and buy first team ready players just like he did in his first tenure, anything else and he’s not interested. I hope I’m right because they’ll either bow to his demands or move him on and I could live with either option.
Tenaka Khan – this would not surprise me at all. I can see MON being tempted by a crack at the CL or the Europa if we don’t qualify but wanting a few days to think things over – he has earned that time. MON will be fully aware of this being his point of maximum leverage and so might be figuring out what commitments he gets from the board.
Putting MON to one side, I’d like to know to what extent James thinks that Robbie Keane would “split the Celtic support” based on his work in Israel. I think he is very much overestimating the amount of bad feeling that he would come with – and this would dissipate pretty quickly if the team was winning games.