Yesterday, Celtic released results for the six months ending 31 December 2023 to the London Stock Exchange.
Of course, the number 67 has a special place in the hearts of the Parkhead faithful.
So, by a cruel twist, which is the number of millions that the club is hoarding in the bank, £67.3 million to be exact,
Just before the turn of the year, Brendan Rodgers stated at a prawn sandwich function that he expected to be given FOUR first-team starters in the January window.
He was very precise to my source: a goalkeeper, a left-back (yes, one of those), a dynamic central midfielder and a proven penalty box striker.
Instead, as we know, the world-class recruitment team found him a project winger and a forward on loan from Norwich City reserves.
Even the most loyally obedient online poodles have struggled to justify this strategic own goal.
This, from the toxic chairman’s statement, is comedy gold:
The Board shares the frustrations of the supporters regarding the less than anticipated activity in the recent transfer window.
Oh, dear…
The Board’s commitment is to strengthen and improve the playing squad in every transfer window and although resources were available, we were unable to further add to the squad due to the unavailability of identified targets.
Allow me to translate:
In Scottish terms, Celtic has a substantial financial advantage over the rest.
However, the Parkeahed club currently have someone on work experience who is playing dress-up as the head of the recruitment team. Consequently, the manager didn’t get the players he confidently expected in January.
Dear reader, I have asked this question before.
What was the exhaustive executive search that revealed Lawwell Jnr as the outstanding candidate in the global football market?
Nepotism FC is on the brink of gifting £60m in UEFA revenue to their twelve-year-old rivals.
That’s a game changer and a windfall the Sevco High Command could not have reasonably expected six months ago.
The January window is gone, and so should Lawwell and son.
Anyone arguing the opposite is a shill.
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Pretty clear first half message fron Rodgers today about how our second string isnt good enough to deal with lower half of the table teams.
Jakethepeg.
Spot on. Murray wanted us dead and buried. Our board did everything to save rangers and have done everything to help sevco.
In those Interims, the Chairman has very publicly admitted to
2 specific failures;
– “inefficient” cash management
&
– “unable to further add to the squad”.
Those seem like perfectly reasonable grounds for both
PL and ML to do walking away.
Simply not good enough for a – supposed – ambitious club.
Desmonds, Lawwells & Strachans for crying out loud – nepotism at it’s worst! Lawwell senior has made money for Desmond senior, pocketing generous bonuses along the way, so it’s understandable why he’s in situ but he appears to be an arrogant, interfering control freak whose penny-pinching lost out on at least 3 top players we should have got (McGinn, Toney etc) & it seems, was largely responsible for losing us the 10IAR. This is a new low, however, in giving jobs to family & friends who are obviously incompetent given the state of things with the team.
We wouldn’t have got McGinn although I woul have liked to have seen it. The reason being the angst between Petrie and Lawwell Hibs wouldn’t have sold him to Celtic.
I really would like Mr Desmond Jnr to turn Celtic into a UCL standard club. We can more readily help him secure future business deals through association with strength and success, home, away, wherever we play, in a truely Celtic Way.
Lawell and Son have outstayed their welcome.
What I don’t understand is that Celtic had supposedly identified the players they wanted to get in but for various reasons beyond the clubs control they weren’t available! So did Brendan walk into Lawell Jr’s office on 30th December and say i need 4 top class players and could you just nip out and get me them. To which Lawell Jnr said no problems i’ll just nip out just now and get them for you!
Or should it have been months of planning, sounding out agents, listening to scouts, analysing potential difficulties and understanding how much it would take to get their clubs to listen. Possibly, even, identifying at least a couple of players from each of the areas required. May’be even agree it all with Brendan and then on 1st of January, fully equiped with all this research starting the buying process. You might not get all across the line but adding another winger that doesn’t know where the by line is and so far appears to be unable to cross a ball is quite frankly amateur hour at its finest.
I read someone thinking, with Hart hanging up his gloves, our board would suggest Siegrist as No 1 with Bain No 2, it wasn’t funny but could turn out to be true
If the nepotism is still there , put money on it
As usual ,you are a breath of fresh air on being a proper journalist ,Phil . If the doppelganger club in Govanland deposit the £ 60 million + into their bank account ,it seems to me the manager shall be obliged to offer loans ,credit and overdraft facilities as a goodwill gesture . It would be silly not to accommodate such a large sum of money . What I’m trying to say is that if that does happen ,Celtic FC shall be playing ‘catch up’ to a tribute act …very ,very soon ! Unfordamnedgiveable ! To paraphrase a line from a movie …we’re back !!!!
Lawwell senior & junior think 1 & 2 million pound players will achieve Champions League progress….enough said. Desmond is more interested in turning up at Pro-Am golf Tournaments than Celtic AGM’s….enough said. If the Sevco Tribute Act basket of assets win the league it’s ‘GAME OVER’ for Desmond & HIS BOARD OF CRONIES.
Sadly and reluctantly I have to disagree Captain. It won’t be over unless THE GOLFER and his CADDIES choose to go. I seem to recall, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that the Bunnett (God bless him) intended for the future, that no one person could control our club. In that I believe he was unsuccessful…..Shame indeed! In short, if they won’t sell their shares it’ll be business as usual. Or rather, no (real) business as usual.
Bang on Phil, No One Wants PL &Son
what is it with celtic fans who always want to blame the board, this I believe is laziness and a go to position when things are not going well. i remember FergusMcCann being booed by our support when unfurling a league flag, fans buy in to easy to the media narrative. there did not appear to any problem when Ange was manager in getting players in so why now is it Lawwells fault. When we signed players with Ange in charge it was obvious he had a say. the fact we have had so many signings this year and Brendan Rodgers doesnt think they are good enough then the question must be who sanctioned them?
It was the same last time Brendan was here no one takes responsibility for signings. now that is an area the board should clear up, ” on who’s say so are signings made” the real problem at Celtic park is the product on the pitch nothing to do with the board, the football is slow predictable and depends on 2 wingers. you cannot keep playing wingers who continually cut inside when you are using inverted full backs. we need forwards to hit byeline and turn defences. whilst we have 3 good midfielders on the ball there is no one who can break up play or tackle allowing teams to run directly at our defence. there are a lot of opinions about defence but the reality in the current climate is we are not scoring goals or looking like scoring we all accept the odd occasion where we pummell teams and dont get the break but we are not even working opposition goalkeepers. Joe hart has had a busier 2 months than he has had since signing for us. So look at the real picture its down to manager and coaching staff they are the culprits. there must be a ratio of around 90% every time the ball goes to Maeda or Palma the move breaks down, this has to be corrected at Lennoxtown in training not in the boardroom
I am a season ticket holder from Belfast for the last 20 years. For the first time I am seriously considering not renewing for next season. Why should I invest my hard earned money in my club when the board will not invest in strengthening the squad. It costs me a fortune to travel and stay in Glasgow and I am being rewarded with watching shocking performances every week. If I and every other supporter invest in our club we expect the board to protect our investment by investing in the playing squad with proven quality players not just a continuous import of project players. It’s all well having millions in the bank but the most important thing to us supporters is winning the league and if we do not win it this year it will be on the board.
Sorry for the rant but as a Celtic supporter I have never been as angry and disheartened with my club as I have been over the last number of months.
Bring back Harry Kewell. We’ve been crap since the day he left.
When I read the club’s press release a day or so ago a rancid vile smell was rising from my iPad. I. Didn’t realise that smellivision had come to social media. My familial proboscis is very sensitive to previously experienced rotten odours. What I read and could smell was minging mealy Lawwell mouthed SHITE. THAT WAS INSULTING TO US ALL!
I agree, but I think you can also add BR to that list of those that should go. Why is he just sat there accepting this? How many of the decent players that he does have are now shadows of the players that they were during the last couple of seasons? How many previous ever-presents are now ever-injured? Why is the football like watching Angeball in slow motion? Why is he persisting with the same slow, side-to-side, horseshoe “attacking” “strategy” that got GvB the bullet over at the Asbestos Arena – even when it’s been shown to be totally ineffective against the 10-man defences we routinely come up against and fail to break down? Why does a team still containing a lot of the players that regularly banged in 4,5,6 (and once even 9) goals against their opponents now seem incapable of getting more than 1? How is it that the defence is also incapable of keeping a clean sheet – which, allied to the team’s inability to score, means BR’s record just now is little different (possibly even slightly worse) than Beale’s? Why are so many of those goals scored very late in the game, when the opposition should be tiring, not us?
Nobody could argue with any of that Phil.
For me, though, there is another important point to be made regarding announcements this week. And that is the retirement of Joe Hart at the end of the season. An announcement made 3 weeks after the transfer window closed! Hart has said himself that he has thought about it a few times this season. I can’t believe this wasn’t raised with BR before the announcement and certainly before the transfer window.
The situation we are now in finds us likely to be playing Euro qualification rounds, either without a first choice keeper, or scrambling round looking for one. If that is indeed the case there should be more heads rolling than just the Lawwells.
All this talk of January being a hard time to buy players is guff! If you want a player and you have the money they can be bought. Other clubs manage it.
Nobody could argue with any of that Phil.
For me, though, there is another important point to be made regarding announcements this week. And that is the retirement of Joe Hart at the end of the season. An announcement made 3 weeks after the transfer window closed! Hart has said himself that he has thought about it a few times this season. I can’t believe this wasn’t raised with BR before the announcement and certainly before the transfer window.
The situation we are now in finds us likely to be playing Euro qualification rounds, either without a first choice keeper, or scrambling round looking for one. If that is indeed the case there should be more heads rolling than just the Lawwells.
All this talk of January being a hard time to buy players is guff! If you want a player and you have the money they can be bought. Other clubs manage it.
When is the last time Stevie Woods improved a goalkeeper?
Stevie Woods has worked with Arthur Boric, Fraser Foster and Joe Hart. All good keepers and all apparently rated Woods as a coach. Why you picked on him in this thread is a mystery.
They cost us the Ten and for the same reasons are now breathing life back into a failing twelve year old Lazarus.
You have to ask why that is. Lawwell’s job is to protect Desmond’s investment. Part of that job appears to be a friend, and helping hand, to a financially struggling club called, The Rangers. So why is that? Is it the 10,000 or so empty seats in the top tier of the Lisbon Lions Stand when Sevco were plying their trade in the lower divisions?
Does helping The Rangers to a £60 million euro windfall fit into Lawwell and Desmond’s long-term investment plans? Probably.
I sit in the Jock Stein Stand and to my right is a continuous pounding sore heid of a ‘choir’ that appears to mention Rangers more often than they do Celtic, albeit with a few expletives in front of it. I think that this, in part, goes to the heart of Desmond’s problem — 15-20% of a core fan base that went missing when the old firm ended along with the death of that cheating and fraudulent club across the city.
So, is a fairweather section of the Celtic support along with the greed of investors the architects of Celtic’s intermittent failures?
Are Celtic’s intermittent failures, on the whole good for ilour main investors? Maybe, but they certainly aren’t good for my stress levels or my happiness.
The football under Deila was dreadful
The quality of player poor ..
Poor product … falling attendances
The performance of CFC board in the Jan window was a total disgrace ..made worse by the interim results
Sevco are in the box seat to win the treble and they’re still Europe
Meanwhile all at CFC are outrageously well rewarded for dreadful failure
David Murray didn’t seem to think old firm was vital to his business . Happy to attempt to crush Celtic out of existence .
The Lawwell ball is at Dermot’s foot. It’s up to him to boot it into touch. He must be seeing something else that the rest of us don’t to keep Lawwell on and to reward his performance.
When it comes to the board’s words I ignore them and look at their actions or inactions in this case…
Absolutely.
Spot on
not the best choice of words … we’d probably miss it!
I’d like to see the back of the Desmonds and Strachans too.
No argument from me!