James Forrest
The Emperor of Ice Cream
And so it seems Celtic’s global managerial hunt is over.
It turns out Dermot Desmond scoured the earth for the very best Irishman he was willing to let us pay for.
I know Paulina discussed the subject of our Irish identity earlier, and she made a fabulous argument about how we’re at our best we simply aim high, but there is precious little of that in sight as we go for identity over ability.
The choice appears to be between Martin O’Neill and Robbie Keane.
Neither would have been on my list of first choices. Neither would have been anywhere near that list. With Martin, I can at least see the merits of it. This club is cowardly. This club lacks ambition. This club will always take a safe option if it can get away with it.
These people are so afraid they might have to make real decisions that they simply do not make decisions at all.
There is a possible managerial case for Keane, but there is no moral case for him whatsoever. His appointment would divide the supporters and give us another long season of conflict. It is probable that will happen anyway, but Keane’s appointment guarantees it and a far more aggressive version of it. It locks it that conflict from the start of the campaign and assures that it will not end until his tenure is finished.
And the tenure of a good few others at Celtic Park may be finished with it.
The most troubling element of this, the part that is impossible to shake, is the feeling that this is a club going nowhere. It has no long-term plan. It has no fully thought-out strategy.
We dip into the same well over and over again.
We could be sitting here in ten years’ time marvelling at Robbie Keane returning to the club after he has already been and gone, because that is the level of their imagination.
These two options are uninspiring. In fact, they are downright insulting.
The entire organising principle of The Collective over the summer was that we wanted a club that was modern, progressive, forward-thinking and ambitious. Neither of these appointments is even remotely near that standard.
This is the shortlist many people predicted. The fact so many ordinary supporters could see this coming a mile down the road tells you how little imagination there is in the idea. When punters in the stands and folk online can predict the endpoint of your supposed global search, why did we ever think it would be any different?
This is as predictable as Glasgow rain.
I look at Keane’s proposed backroom team and despair even more. Scott Brown and Johnny Hayes? Whatever happened to going out and finding the best people?
This is just a boys’ club. A group of people hiring their mates. It does not seem to matter whether that leads to a successful Celtic, whether they have the skill set, whether they are the best we can get or whether they are qualified for the job.
It secures people in employment. That appears to be the key thing.
This is just a tiny group of people running Celtic for themselves and for the people they know. It is not a serious endeavour any longer.
There are plenty of Celtic supporters who will lap this up like Pavlov’s slavering dogs. That is what it is meant to do. It is meant to inspire that kind of reaction.
It is not meant to be looked at with any critical eye. It is not supposed to be given any serious examination. Because if it was given serious examination, it would not stand up to it.
This club needs to build a continental structure. It needs to start thinking five steps down the line, as clubs do all over Europe. Our biggest problem is not the geographical boundary we live in. It is the geographical, psychological and operational boundary we have boxed ourselves inside.
I keep saying this, so let me say it again.
We are here by choice. We are stuck in the mud by choice. We are restricted to a tiny group of possible candidates and a tiny group of possible hires for their backroom teams by choice.
We have made a collective and conscious decision to build those walls around ourselves.
As long as we continue to operate like this, and as long as people in and around Celtic continue to think like this, we will keep bumping our heads not on a glass ceiling, but a concrete one.
A glass ceiling is meant to be broken through. A concrete one is not. A concrete ceiling says: “this is our level. This is as high as we go.” And that is how people inside our club think. Parochial. Small scale. Provincial.
We should be going out and hiring a continental manager to build a continental-style juggernaut. Instead, we are choosing between Martin O’Neill and his in-house staff, or Robbie Keane and a backroom team of SPFL-grade coaches whose careers have been spent almost entirely inside the same narrow football culture.
I have mocked the Ibrox club for going down the road of hiring all the “real Ranjurs men” it can find. We have mocked them for trying to build teams and backroom staffs whose one qualification seems to be that they know the club. In the meantime, we are watching as our own club does exactly the same thing.
I used to love manager-hiring time.
When a manager left Celtic, I used to be excited, even if I liked him and even if he had been genuinely good. I wondered who we would go and get. What kind of man would next sit in that dugout? What kind of adventure would he take us on? What new ideas would he bring? What new style would he play? What kind of signings would follow?
I don’t get excited about this stuff anymore. I don’t get excited about change, because there won’t be any. I don’t get excited about new adventures, because this board does not like adventure. Its contempt would be one step ahead of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
What style is the next coach of Celtic going to play?
My guess would be the same style of play we have been playing for most of the past twenty years, one which depends on moments of magic and moments of luck to break through packed defences that can read us like a book.
That was why I supported the Nancy appointment before I really knew the first thing about him. Before I had heard him speak. Before we had been exposed to his stubbornness, arrogance and complete lack of comprehension as to what Celtic is supposed to be.
At least he offered change. At least he offered a new direction. I don’t even think we are moving in any direction now. I think we are a club at a complete standstill. There is no forward progress. There is no forward motion.
We are run by an arrogant old bastard who does not even attend most of our games and by board lackeys who are too cowardly to question him, but who still think they can sneer at us as though they were hardened leaders, as though they were tough, as though they were masters of the universe and not useful nodding donkeys for an overseas billionaire.
We are a club going exactly nowhere.
When Shaun Maloney gets hired as sporting director, quite possibly with Martin O’Neill in some capacity as well, the happy-clapper wing of our support will be thrilled.
Then, in three to five years, they will be scratching their heads wondering why the club across the city is in front of us and why the club at Tynecastle is running rings around us.
Because those clubs are at least attempting forward motion.
I could not tell you this morning what Celtic are attempting.
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The post Celtic’s two-man managerial “short list” is a joke. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
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It turns out Dermot Desmond scoured the earth for the very best Irishman he was willing to let us pay for.
I know Paulina discussed the subject of our Irish identity earlier, and she made a fabulous argument about how we’re at our best we simply aim high, but there is precious little of that in sight as we go for identity over ability.
The choice appears to be between Martin O’Neill and Robbie Keane.
Neither would have been on my list of first choices. Neither would have been anywhere near that list. With Martin, I can at least see the merits of it. This club is cowardly. This club lacks ambition. This club will always take a safe option if it can get away with it.
These people are so afraid they might have to make real decisions that they simply do not make decisions at all.
There is a possible managerial case for Keane, but there is no moral case for him whatsoever. His appointment would divide the supporters and give us another long season of conflict. It is probable that will happen anyway, but Keane’s appointment guarantees it and a far more aggressive version of it. It locks it that conflict from the start of the campaign and assures that it will not end until his tenure is finished.
And the tenure of a good few others at Celtic Park may be finished with it.
The most troubling element of this, the part that is impossible to shake, is the feeling that this is a club going nowhere. It has no long-term plan. It has no fully thought-out strategy.
We dip into the same well over and over again.
We could be sitting here in ten years’ time marvelling at Robbie Keane returning to the club after he has already been and gone, because that is the level of their imagination.
These two options are uninspiring. In fact, they are downright insulting.
The entire organising principle of The Collective over the summer was that we wanted a club that was modern, progressive, forward-thinking and ambitious. Neither of these appointments is even remotely near that standard.
This is the shortlist many people predicted. The fact so many ordinary supporters could see this coming a mile down the road tells you how little imagination there is in the idea. When punters in the stands and folk online can predict the endpoint of your supposed global search, why did we ever think it would be any different?
This is as predictable as Glasgow rain.
I look at Keane’s proposed backroom team and despair even more. Scott Brown and Johnny Hayes? Whatever happened to going out and finding the best people?
This is just a boys’ club. A group of people hiring their mates. It does not seem to matter whether that leads to a successful Celtic, whether they have the skill set, whether they are the best we can get or whether they are qualified for the job.
It secures people in employment. That appears to be the key thing.
This is just a tiny group of people running Celtic for themselves and for the people they know. It is not a serious endeavour any longer.
There are plenty of Celtic supporters who will lap this up like Pavlov’s slavering dogs. That is what it is meant to do. It is meant to inspire that kind of reaction.
It is not meant to be looked at with any critical eye. It is not supposed to be given any serious examination. Because if it was given serious examination, it would not stand up to it.
This club needs to build a continental structure. It needs to start thinking five steps down the line, as clubs do all over Europe. Our biggest problem is not the geographical boundary we live in. It is the geographical, psychological and operational boundary we have boxed ourselves inside.
I keep saying this, so let me say it again.
We are here by choice. We are stuck in the mud by choice. We are restricted to a tiny group of possible candidates and a tiny group of possible hires for their backroom teams by choice.
We have made a collective and conscious decision to build those walls around ourselves.
As long as we continue to operate like this, and as long as people in and around Celtic continue to think like this, we will keep bumping our heads not on a glass ceiling, but a concrete one.
A glass ceiling is meant to be broken through. A concrete one is not. A concrete ceiling says: “this is our level. This is as high as we go.” And that is how people inside our club think. Parochial. Small scale. Provincial.
We should be going out and hiring a continental manager to build a continental-style juggernaut. Instead, we are choosing between Martin O’Neill and his in-house staff, or Robbie Keane and a backroom team of SPFL-grade coaches whose careers have been spent almost entirely inside the same narrow football culture.
I have mocked the Ibrox club for going down the road of hiring all the “real Ranjurs men” it can find. We have mocked them for trying to build teams and backroom staffs whose one qualification seems to be that they know the club. In the meantime, we are watching as our own club does exactly the same thing.
I used to love manager-hiring time.
When a manager left Celtic, I used to be excited, even if I liked him and even if he had been genuinely good. I wondered who we would go and get. What kind of man would next sit in that dugout? What kind of adventure would he take us on? What new ideas would he bring? What new style would he play? What kind of signings would follow?
I don’t get excited about this stuff anymore. I don’t get excited about change, because there won’t be any. I don’t get excited about new adventures, because this board does not like adventure. Its contempt would be one step ahead of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
What style is the next coach of Celtic going to play?
My guess would be the same style of play we have been playing for most of the past twenty years, one which depends on moments of magic and moments of luck to break through packed defences that can read us like a book.
That was why I supported the Nancy appointment before I really knew the first thing about him. Before I had heard him speak. Before we had been exposed to his stubbornness, arrogance and complete lack of comprehension as to what Celtic is supposed to be.
At least he offered change. At least he offered a new direction. I don’t even think we are moving in any direction now. I think we are a club at a complete standstill. There is no forward progress. There is no forward motion.
We are run by an arrogant old bastard who does not even attend most of our games and by board lackeys who are too cowardly to question him, but who still think they can sneer at us as though they were hardened leaders, as though they were tough, as though they were masters of the universe and not useful nodding donkeys for an overseas billionaire.
We are a club going exactly nowhere.
When Shaun Maloney gets hired as sporting director, quite possibly with Martin O’Neill in some capacity as well, the happy-clapper wing of our support will be thrilled.
Then, in three to five years, they will be scratching their heads wondering why the club across the city is in front of us and why the club at Tynecastle is running rings around us.
Because those clubs are at least attempting forward motion.
I could not tell you this morning what Celtic are attempting.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
The post Celtic’s two-man managerial “short list” is a joke. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
Continue reading...
