The orderly transfer of power is the sign of any stable polity.
That does not happen when the person in charge believes that the position, they hold to be their own personal property.
Donald J Trump Exhibit A.
Sadly, something like that has been allowed to develop at Celtic over the past 17 years.
Firstly, that is far too long for any CEO to be in post.
For example, the usual length of stay in any of Dermot Desmond’s other companies is between 5-7 years…
Only in the Rodgers interregnum did Mr Lawwell have to endure the ignominy of a football person being in charge of…well…football matters!
Of course from 2016 until February 2019 was a period of unparalleled domestic dominance for the Hoops winning every available trophy in Scotland.
The fans were jubilant, but the CEO was not the best paid person-playing person in the building and been put on gardening leave as the unofficial director of football.
Sadly, because Celtic has bee allowed to become a personal fiefdom, there has been no succession planning in place.
Ultimately this shambles will be solved by one person, Dermot Desmond.
Some in Irish business circles recently stated to me that the Dubliner is “a two cheque guy”.
He explained that term by saying “he buys with a small cheque and sells with a big one”.
The London City Airport is a celebrated case in point.
Between cheques Desmond wants his CEO to run the business on a self-sustaining basis as the bottom line.
If it goes into the red, he gets a new person to run the company.
It is no secret that Desmond has wanted Celtic to gorge on the riches of England as the big cheque.
Of course, that mirage has never moved from the horizon, always just out of reach.
Mr Lawwell is an accountant, so presumably, he will appreciate it if his tenure is assessed in balance sheet format.
A massive liability has been the way in which be put the Old Firm brand above the interest of the club.
Although it probably falls into the “tl;dr,” category for many, the R12 archive is a treasure trove of evidence of how our CEO failed Celtic and the fans.
You can read it here.
I can only imagine how Fergus McCann would have reacted in the summer of 2012 when it emerged that his club had been systemically cheated for a decade.
If the Bunnet knew that Celtic had been denied a crack at the Champions League because the city rivals were owing tax, then the wee man would have been all over it with the lawyers.
Indeed, it would not have taken shareholders SEVEN years of battling to get their club to listen to them.
McCann certainly would not have tolerated a CEO telling him to stay schtum about it in the interests of the Old Firm brand.
Jorge Cadete Exhibit B.
Faced with the overwhelming evidence of cheating on an industrial scale Celtic’s CEO decided that silence was good for business.
Mr Lawwell has had his obedient poodles in the Celtic blogosphere have his back for over a decade.
Any criticisms on him were readily dismissed as “fake news”.
However, it was just the truth and this site has been calling for his removal for many years.
he was always going to crash and burn and this shambles of a season has happened on his watch.
Changing a manager now will be useless tinkering if he remains in place.
The fish rots from the head.
Always.
And there is something rotten in the state of Celtic.
Impeachment proceedings are now overdue in Paradise.
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Dermot Desmond is part of the problem at Celtic not the Solution.
To force the changes NEEDED at Celtic you first half to change how Celtic is run.
50+1 Fan Ownership would see the end of Boardroom Politics and control by people who are Celtic for personal gains.
Anything else is just playing into their hands.
The faces may change ie Lawwell out and Desmond Jnr in bit the game will remain the same.
The aim of the game being making money.
Fc not PLC
If Desmond’s big cheque target is the EPL then I’d suspect as long as the balance sheet is kept in the black he won’t be too fussed at the moment.
Make no mistake the old firm are more saleable to the EPL as a package deal. While anti-Irish racism is still a major problem here in Caledonia I suspect a bigger one for Celtic wanting to join the EPL is a jingoistic post brexit land of the rose who will struggle to have staples imported but will at least have hazy apocryphal glories of imperial rule to keep them warm at night.
Much like sevco they are not going to want the comfortable lie of a glorious empire which civilised the world shattered by a support more than happy to point out the ignominious truth of the imperial yoke in Ireland replete with tales of the evil actions of the Black and Tans and atrocities like the Croke park massacre to pop the bubble of hazy recollection of some fictitious peak Blighty moment they are headed for again blissfully ignorant of the fact there are international laws against piracy (or buccaneering spirit as Boris calls it), colonial plunder and attempted genocide.
You do like to repeatedly infer lawwell as being top of the tree and now the fishes head whilst implying Dermot is removed from the ‘team’ somehow and when he acts it will almost be like saving the club all over again.
Neil Lennon has said himself on multiple occasions he and Dermot speak on an if not daily then weekly basis
He is as culpable as lawwell.
He is the majority shareholder who has stood and done nothing whilst the business has failed.
I refer you to a business phrase called vicarious liability.
I would question why replacing the CEO whilst the man he is answerable to is still in situ, isn’t useless tinkering?
Let’s not forget lawwell has hit 100% of his KPI’s during all those years you have been calling for his removal.
Difficult to disagree with that, Danny P. If DD wasn’t happy with PL’s performance he would not still be in post!
Well for two successful businessmen here’s a wee business lesson.
DO NOT PISS OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS.
DO NOT TREAT THEM LIKE IDIOTS
If you think this is bad advice, if you think you know better, go and have a wee word with Mr Gerald Ratner.
No one warned him. I’m warning you. I strongly advise you to heed the warning.
It would be even better if PL’s replacement was brought in for a – relatively – short, sharp period of say 2 years.
A very capable turnaround specialist to go through the whole operation like a dose of salts from top to bottom.
Shake everything and everbody up: not least a clear out of Board members. A brutal reset before handing the reigns of a sorted organisation to another CEO.
…and that would be much more entertaining to watch than the tedious football currently on offer! 🙂
I agree Phill that Lawell has failed our club since 2011 but I believe that Desmond was aware of everything that was going on across the city and in fact wanted a new Sevco under any name for the blue £.