Perhaps the real problem with the policy of Managed Decline at Celtic is that it can take on a trajectory and life of its own.
The objective was always to keep the bottom line looking peachy.
That meant that on-field success was very much secondary to the cost base.
In that, the ex-CEO was perfect for the job.
As a perk of the position, he was allowed to become the unofficial director of football.
Of course, he was supremely unqualified for that role.
Almost every Celtic fan could rhyme off a litany of strange acquisitions for decent money that arrived without a trace.
In early 2011 the Rangers managing Director Martin Bain and the Celtic CEO Peter Lawwell corresponded about pitching the Glasgow duo to the EPL.
It was very much Old Firm Limited.
This was the holy grail for the main man at Parkhead.
His “two cheques” business philosophy was based on acquiring a company with latent value.
Once that was fully realised, then the enterprise could be sold for a much higher sum than was shelled out to acquire it in the first place.
Hence “two cheques”, buy with a small one and sell with a big one.
His brilliant coup with the London City Airport (buy it for £23.5m in 1995 and selling it in October 2006 for a reported £750 million) has been the gold standard throughout his business empire.
The Parkhead club could become the sporting equivalent of that real estate deal if admitted into the English Premier League.
In Desmond World, that almost certainly meant exporting the Glasgow rivalry south of the border, which required the existence of Rangers, a Rangers, any Rangers at all, really.
I cannot imagine that Desmond’s CEO would have been advising him any different, especially given what we know about the Bain/Lawwell correspondence on the matter from early 2011.
Ian Bankier was appointed as Celtic Chairman in the October of that year at the AGM.
He had been introduced to the meeting as a lifelong Hoops fan.
Unfortunately for the club’s PR people, your humble correspondent was at the AGM and the subsequent presser.
Consequently, I was in the room and able to challenge this paper-thin Enid Blyton narrative.
I gently questioned Chairman Bankier about his earliest memories of going to see the Celtic.
For the avoidance of doubt, I had sound journalistic reasons to ask him as I’d been well prepped by an ex-business associate of Mr Bankier, the late great Turnbull Hutton.
The Raith Rovers man had suggested to this fella in Donegal that the new Celtic Chairman might not have much affection for association football, let alone the Hoops.
I have to say, given Bankier’s mumbling, fumbling answers in that presser, I think that the Stark’s Park man was, as ever, on the money.
This is my enduring memory of Celtic’s new chairman as I asked him questions about his earliest memories of watching the team and his first hero in the Hoops.
In October 2011, it was an open secret in Scottish football that Craig Whyte’s Rangers were in serious money trouble.
They had been ejected from both UEFA competitions earlier in the season, and this meant that the spreadsheets just didn’t make sense.
This site is fully searchable by year, month, and keyword.
My readers at the time knew what was coming down the pipe for Rangers.
Moreover, so did the people in the Celtic boardroom.
When prospective buyers were in discussions with the Administrators the following spring, they were all assured that the football authorities would facilitate the new Rangers into the flight-then the SPL.
Dear reader, I am fully convinced that the people in the Parkhead boardroom wanted that outcome too.
Despite the clear evidence, the Rangers had indulged in cheating on an industrial scale for a decade that didn’t matter.
The bottom line needed those sold out derby matches.
When season ticket renewals came around in 2012, the clubs in the SPL found that their fans would not countenance any parachute deal for the new Ibrox club.
It was one of those rare occasions when the good guys won, and the right things were done for the right reasons.
Unfortunately, the Celtic support they have lost their only real leverage over the board until next year.
The season ticket renewals was a bump in the road that the club had to negotiate. Monies duly arrived in the club’s bank account, so it was job done and Managed Decline FC had a teenager in central defence for a Champions League qualifier.
This is a shitshow that a competent coach has been dropped into.
He is in a new football environment where the dignified opposition can do this to his players with impunity.
Also, this type of incisive passing move will be flagged offside if the attackers are wearing the Hoops.
However, even allowing for these entirely honest officiating errors, Celtic should have enough to get past a team of well-drilled journeymen who has just been promoted from the second tier.
The absence of a competent goalkeeper for the away side at Tynecastle was also a part of Managed Decline.
Someone should really be telling Ange that these types of refereeing mishaps are entirely typical in Fair Caledonia. They should also say that they’re not wholly unconnected to the ethnicity of the club that now employs him.
Given his own immigrant background, he should get it quite instinctively.
At least in the eyes of the home crowd at Tynecastle, Postecoglou himself does not fit the criteria to be classed as a Fenian.
Moreover, what he witnessed at the home of Sevco’s low-calorie cousins will be as nothing to what will almost certainly occur at the first Glasgow Derby match of this campaign.
Last year the imperative was to stop the Ten. This season it is about guaranteed Champions League revenues.
In the aftermath of the cup semi-final defeat to Sevco in April 2016, an angered Desmond proved that the club, if so directed, could perform a handbrake turn on the Managed Decline policy.
The Rodgers interregnum proved that with a suitably qualified person in charge of all football matters, the Celtic could dominate the domestic sphere.
Sadly, when this fella left and Managed Decline was re-instated.
You know the rest.
Is it too late to grab the handbrake again?
Like the road to Galway, I wouldn’t start from here…
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Well there’s the first two quality additions Phil expect more to follow now Dermot is in charge.
Really??? Calamity Joe, who hasn’t been trusted to play a league game for ANYONE in almost THREE YEARS after shipping five goals in his last, and a guy who has been plagued with injury for even longer than that.
Yet both have played over 400 top flight games between them in a League which requires a level above what most of our signings usually come from 🤷🏻♂️
Or would you rather we scouted the bargain bins in Europe for yet more unproven potential paying well over the odds for them while we are at it?
What they achieved in the distant past has NO relevance to the players they are today.
McCarthy has averaged just 13.2 league games per season, including sub appearances, in the LAST five years. He’s been plagued by injury. He’s approaching 31 years old. You talk of the folly of bargain basement buys, but taking a 31 year old crock on a FREE, and giving him a four year contract, probably on a very substantial pay package, represents good business?
In his prime, I viewed Hart as a vastly overrated keeper, and his prime was a long time ago. I’m fully aware of the fact that he shares the record for EPL shut-outs. That record however owes much to the defence that was playing in front of him. When he had to play behind defenders who were not of that standard he was “found out”.
He hasn’t been trusted to play a league game for ANYONE for over two and a half seasons and we bring him in to play behind the worst Celtic defence in living memory. The logic completely escapes me.
We allowed possibly the best keeper Scotland has ever produced to leave last year, because they wouldn’t pay him what he was worth, and forked out millions on a donkey to replace him. McGregor easily saved sevco 13-14 points last season our keepers COST us roughly the same. There’s the title right there.
I cannot see Hart as a solution. I would be delighted to be proved wrong but I really DON’T expect to be.
A fully fit McCarthy would be a wonderful addition. But he hasn’t been for years and is now of an age where injuries are harder to recover from. Again, I’ll be happy to be proved wrong.
The Fans have backed Celtic through the renewal of their season tickets. Is it now about time given Celtic’s lack of ambition that we start boycotting Europa League matches, or worse, Scottish Cup and League Cup Matches?
Football without fans….is ‘bad business’.
Grant, of course we can attend Home Games(Already paid for)……………..there are only two types of negotiation, Collective bargaining or restriction of l
abour (I E Attendance)
Dermot Desmond only ever seems to respond when he feels like he’s been made to look like a fool at Celtic.
Well now is one of those times but perhaps the most embarrassing of times for him.
He has the financial clout to spend £30m in the Transfer window without even having to speak to our current lenders the Co-Op.
The fact he has openly stated he is now directly involved in proceedings is telling me and anyone else who is interested that he means business this time.
Ie the lackies have failed to deliver a reasonable response so here I am to deliver that response.
There is a guaranteed windfall of at least £30m next year for the side who wins the Title ,there is no risk in heavily investing in players who can deliver that.
All Celtic and The 2angers Mk2 have proven over the past 5 years is the fact that you don’t have to be spending on genuine quality in order to secure the silverware in Scotland ,in fact you don’t have to have a side that is anything more than mediocre in European terms in order to solidify that position.
He will be acutely aware of this fact and also the fact that flooding the Celtic squad with proven quality ( Hart would come into that category) will greatly improve our chances of doing so.
We could sign 5 players at a value of £6m each ie an upgrade on the usual £3-4m signings we see and massively improve on the current squad.
We don’t need to balance the books either for going into it our books are already balanced.
We were the only Club in Scotland to post a profit last Season and one of a few in the U.K. to have done so through what was a terrible financial year in Football.
We have no huge overdraft or creditors wanting paid so again the immediate pressure is off in that regard.
They aren’t a team of superb individuals at Ayebrokes no they are a solid team of journeymen who have been coached well into a cohesive unit.
Like Celtic over the previous 9 Seasons had very little serious opposition in terms of domestic challenge in the League but unlike Celtic failed to win everything that was available to them.
So Dermot knows the gulf in class is t really a gulf but more a self created gap through gross mismanagement at all levels under him.
Postecoglou knows where the weakness are and no doubt we have a list of targets already in place to remedy those areas.
All it takes is the finances to rectify it and the will to spend the money on the right players to do so.
I believe Dermot Desmond has stepped in to ensure that this happens.
His eye is keenly fixed on that £30m as are the eyes of the desperate at Ayebrokes because without it this Season they are seriously in trouble again as they were in 2012.
A loss making enterprise that hasn’t made a penny in 9 years is not sustainable no matter how many times you water the shares down.
He knows this.
Joe Hart is the start of a proper investment in the squad at Celtic.
ACSOM said yesterday were left behind if they get the UCL groups this season and win league and same next year, surely they can’t get in front of us financially.
DD has no interest or why would he let our decline so rapidly
Relatively speaking, Desmond’s investment in CFC could equate to a spare tenner we might find in a pair of trousers – before we fling them into the washing machine at home.
Maybe the shocking decline at CFC since August 2020, [if not since the NL appointment in 2019], is down to the simple fact that DD can’t be @rsed?
CFC is insignificant in the DD investments portfolio and doesn’t deserve his time: he has bigger fish to fry?
How else can anyone rationally explain why there was not a Boardroom exodus, following on from Lawwell’s exit?
Which other Board in the country put the interests of their rivals before the well being of their own club??
Business folk do business, always have done. We’re the sideshow.
We never reacted to a resurgent foe malign. We have a soft underbelly and a thin skin. Gutted but prepared to take my medicine. Be good if we knew how to have a pop at the custodians of the club.
At this moment we are a ‘shoddy but expensive ‘
Cheers
Hi HMP,
The ONLY way to have a “pop” as you call it, is to NOT give them your dosh – it’s the ONLY thing the board care about.
I think the handbrake cable has snapped and the clutch just failed while reversing …..
Dermot Desmond’s obsession with Eddy Howe is a fundamental reason why this season has got off to such a catastrophic start.