James Forrest
The Emperor of Ice Cream
They say even a broken clock is right twice a day, and regular readers will know my complete disdain for Simon Jordan.
But Simon Jordan is not always wrong, and it’s astonishing to me that it has actually taken someone like him to point out that some proposed managerial dream team, where Robbie Keane sits in the manager’s office and Martin O’Neill leans over his shoulder like a teacher making sure you’re doing OK in detention, is a bad idea.
It should be blatantly obvious to everyone that it’s a bad idea.
I don’t know that the Celtic board is contemplating this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. But if Martin O’Neill doesn’t take the job, then they have to either put him in an executive role far away from the football manager, or let him go.
They cannot have him hovering over the guy like a vulture.
There is no manager in world football who is daft enough to come in and work under conditions like that. If O’Neill is not going to be the manager, let him go. This club does not have to find him a role. That’s not how serious businesses work, and it’s one of the things I find absolutely lamentable about the way this club behaves.
You’re supposed to fill these roles with people who know what they’re doing. You’re supposed to fill these roles with people who have the requisite experience to do the job.
The only argument in favour of Robbie Keane is that he has actually coached in two different countries and won leagues in both of them. That at least gives you a valid footballing reason for hiring him, although I don’t think his record is as good as it looks on paper.
But effectively having a manager and co-manager is just idiotic. If there are people inside Celtic who are thinking along those lines, they ought to stop now. In fact, they ought to be sectioned, because that is insane.
This is not a serious football club. This is not a serious institution in any meaningful way.
This is an institution run by a handful of people for the benefit of a handful of people and their friends. That’s all it is.
We’re shoehorning people into jobs now just because we think we owe them something. Martin O’Neill can have a statue in the carpark. Martin O’Neill can have a place on the board. But if Martin O’Neill is not going to be the football manager, he should have no role in the football department. Why would he?
To haunt the guy who’s actually in the dugout?
It’s mad, and it will lead to friction.
I don’t know whose bright idea Craig Bellamy is either. Paulina wrote a brilliant piece on Bellamy last month, where she said that he is actually the one of the three possibilities who excites her most, because he at least is nobody’s yes-man.
The idea that he would come in and be a yes-man for anybody is too ridiculous to contemplate. Bellamy is the kind of person who would tell Desmond himself to fuck off if that’s what it came to.
But there’s no real football reason for giving him the job. He has no experience whatsoever that suggests he can handle something of this magnitude. I know there are people who would think, well, you can bring in Bellamy and put O’Neill in there with him.
But again, that is insanity. The second you create confusion within the building as to where somebody’s authority starts and somebody else’s stops, you’re going to cause problems. It’s all right for that old bastard in Ireland to inflict that on the club. He doesn’t have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis.
There’s nothing about the way this is developing that is not horrifying.
The shortlist is unimaginative and horrendous. The possible backroom teams being mooted are unimaginative and horrendous. We seem to be giving jobs to people just because of a previous Celtic connection.
This is one of the things that has long been a major source of frustration for myself and a lot of other people.
Is it too much to ask for this club to do things in a professional manner? Is it too much to ask for them to do things based on merit? Is it too much to ask that we go out and get the best people we can for the respective jobs that need to be filled?
Why is that difficult?
We are a £100 million-a-year turnover business. Let me put that in context for you. Let me explain what that means in simple terms.
Depending on how you count the business base, companies with turnover at that sort of level make up only a tiny fraction of UK businesses. Against the whole private-sector business population, it is around 0.2%. Against VAT and PAYE registered businesses, it is closer to 0.4% to 0.5%.
Either way, we are talking about elite-company territory.
That kind of turnover puts Celtic in a category most businesses never get near, and yet we are run like a third-rate bowling club.
We make mistakes like this all the time. This business isn’t being run on an optimal basis. We treat it like it’s a tiny private members’ club for certain people and their close associates.
There is very little to suggest that many other businesses in this turnover bracket operate on a basis such as ours.
This is beyond a joke. This is borderline scandalous.
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But Simon Jordan is not always wrong, and it’s astonishing to me that it has actually taken someone like him to point out that some proposed managerial dream team, where Robbie Keane sits in the manager’s office and Martin O’Neill leans over his shoulder like a teacher making sure you’re doing OK in detention, is a bad idea.
It should be blatantly obvious to everyone that it’s a bad idea.
I don’t know that the Celtic board is contemplating this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. But if Martin O’Neill doesn’t take the job, then they have to either put him in an executive role far away from the football manager, or let him go.
They cannot have him hovering over the guy like a vulture.
There is no manager in world football who is daft enough to come in and work under conditions like that. If O’Neill is not going to be the manager, let him go. This club does not have to find him a role. That’s not how serious businesses work, and it’s one of the things I find absolutely lamentable about the way this club behaves.
You’re supposed to fill these roles with people who know what they’re doing. You’re supposed to fill these roles with people who have the requisite experience to do the job.
The only argument in favour of Robbie Keane is that he has actually coached in two different countries and won leagues in both of them. That at least gives you a valid footballing reason for hiring him, although I don’t think his record is as good as it looks on paper.
But effectively having a manager and co-manager is just idiotic. If there are people inside Celtic who are thinking along those lines, they ought to stop now. In fact, they ought to be sectioned, because that is insane.
This is not a serious football club. This is not a serious institution in any meaningful way.
This is an institution run by a handful of people for the benefit of a handful of people and their friends. That’s all it is.
We’re shoehorning people into jobs now just because we think we owe them something. Martin O’Neill can have a statue in the carpark. Martin O’Neill can have a place on the board. But if Martin O’Neill is not going to be the football manager, he should have no role in the football department. Why would he?
To haunt the guy who’s actually in the dugout?
It’s mad, and it will lead to friction.
I don’t know whose bright idea Craig Bellamy is either. Paulina wrote a brilliant piece on Bellamy last month, where she said that he is actually the one of the three possibilities who excites her most, because he at least is nobody’s yes-man.
The idea that he would come in and be a yes-man for anybody is too ridiculous to contemplate. Bellamy is the kind of person who would tell Desmond himself to fuck off if that’s what it came to.
But there’s no real football reason for giving him the job. He has no experience whatsoever that suggests he can handle something of this magnitude. I know there are people who would think, well, you can bring in Bellamy and put O’Neill in there with him.
But again, that is insanity. The second you create confusion within the building as to where somebody’s authority starts and somebody else’s stops, you’re going to cause problems. It’s all right for that old bastard in Ireland to inflict that on the club. He doesn’t have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis.
There’s nothing about the way this is developing that is not horrifying.
The shortlist is unimaginative and horrendous. The possible backroom teams being mooted are unimaginative and horrendous. We seem to be giving jobs to people just because of a previous Celtic connection.
This is one of the things that has long been a major source of frustration for myself and a lot of other people.
Is it too much to ask for this club to do things in a professional manner? Is it too much to ask for them to do things based on merit? Is it too much to ask that we go out and get the best people we can for the respective jobs that need to be filled?
Why is that difficult?
We are a £100 million-a-year turnover business. Let me put that in context for you. Let me explain what that means in simple terms.
Depending on how you count the business base, companies with turnover at that sort of level make up only a tiny fraction of UK businesses. Against the whole private-sector business population, it is around 0.2%. Against VAT and PAYE registered businesses, it is closer to 0.4% to 0.5%.
Either way, we are talking about elite-company territory.
That kind of turnover puts Celtic in a category most businesses never get near, and yet we are run like a third-rate bowling club.
We make mistakes like this all the time. This business isn’t being run on an optimal basis. We treat it like it’s a tiny private members’ club for certain people and their close associates.
There is very little to suggest that many other businesses in this turnover bracket operate on a basis such as ours.
This is beyond a joke. This is borderline scandalous.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
The post Celtic is an elite-level business run like a corner shop. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
Continue reading...
