James Forrest
The Emperor of Ice Cream
The Celtic board spent the final stretch of last season telling anyone still willing to listen that it was in “listening mode.”
Big changes were coming, we were told. Lessons had been learned. The club understood the anger. The relationship with the support had to be rebuilt.
The silence, the arrogance, the drift, the contemptuous mismanagement of the season, the lack of professionalism, the shocking hiring practices; all of it was supposedly being processed inside Celtic Park by serious people who finally understood the scale of the damage they had done and the changes that needed to be made.
Well, here we are. The season is over. The double is won. The pressure of the run-in has passed. And what have they done?
They have moved again against members of the Green Brigade, with that group accusing the board of betrayal after two members were barred from renewing season tickets over a disciplinary matter linked to an incident before the so-called peace.
We have watched the managerial search collapse into the familiar orbit of Martin O’Neill and Robbie Keane, with Keane now being reported as having held constructive talks over the job. They have allowed Shaun Maloney to be interviewed for a major football-operations role despite the obvious question we have already asked on this site: what experience does he have for a post of that magnitude?
So let me ask another obvious question.
What exactly is different? Unless by different they mean worse. Because if this is “listening mode,” then God help us when they stop listening.
I wrote the other day about the Green Brigade and the way the timing of those renewed bans burned trust to ash. That is not hyperbole. The board allowed that section back for the run-in, benefited from the return of the atmosphere, watched the players respond to a stadium that had life in it again, and then, once the season was safely over, went back to the old war. If these people wanted to persuade supporters that peace was merely tactical, they could hardly have done a better job.
If they wanted to say, “we needed you when the title was still on the line, but now that the trophy is in the cabinet we can get back to screwing you over,” they have said it more clearly than any statement ever could.
That is the problem with this board. Its words are meaningless because its actions keep contradicting them.
I wrote about Robbie Keane as well, and I meant every word of it. I said he should think very carefully before taking this job. I said the manager is the rod that catches the lightning. That remains true. I said he’s not going to be welcomed by much of the support.
If they appoint Keane, with all the baggage we have already discussed, the outcry will be off the charts. Celtic fan groups have already protested the possibility, and the backlash is not theoretical. It is already outside the front door.
What kind of board looks at a divided club and thinks: yes, let’s do the one thing guaranteed to divide it further?
What kind of board watches months of protest, anger, distrust and supporter mobilisation, then decides that the correct response is a managerial appointment many supporters do not merely doubt, but morally reject?
What kind of board says it wants unity, then reaches for the matchbox?
This club is not interested in peace in our time. Not really.
If it was, it would not be doing any of this.
A club interested in peace would not pick fights with supporter groups the moment the title was won. A club interested in peace would not frame a global managerial search around the same old familiar names from the same old emotional comfort zone. A club interested in peace would not take a role as important as sporting director or head of football operations and treat it like another internal promotion exercise for someone who knows the club.
That is not reform. That is not modernisation. That is not ambition.
That is this board doing what it does, and this is where I keep coming back to the same question. What is wrong at Celtic that they act this way?
Because this is not normal institutional behaviour. It is not rational. It is not strategic. It is not even politically clever.
If these people were cynical masterminds, they would be better at this. They would understand when to lower the temperature. They would know when to give ground. They would know when to throw the support something real. Instead, they behave like men who have mistaken stubbornness for strength.
They seem to believe that if they simply endure the anger, it will pass.
They seem to believe that season-ticket renewals are consent. They seem to believe that supporters will shout, protest, write, organise, rage, then turn up anyway and eventually forget what they were angry about.
That is a dangerous belief. I wrote in the communication piece that silence is not strategy. It is the sound of people hoping nobody notices they do not have a plan. This is worse than silence. This is action which looks designed to piss people off. Think about that. It looks like a calculated snub to large sections of the support.
This is movement in the wrong direction. This is a board apparently determined to prove that every criticism made of it over the past year was not only fair, but understated.
Celtic Supporters Limited produced a document that diagnosed the problem properly. I disagreed with them the lack of desire for regime change, because I do not believe this board can be reformed into competence.
But their central point was devastating: Celtic’s problem is not only what it does badly, but what it refuses to do at all. It refuses modernity. It refuses strategy. It refuses communication. It refuses accountability.
And now, apparently, it refuses even the most basic act of self-preservation.
Self-preservation would mean making an appointment that unifies the support. Self-preservation would mean pausing the petty wars. Self-preservation would mean appointing experienced, serious football operators with track records in the roles they are being asked to perform. Self-preservation would mean proving, through deeds, that “listening mode” was not just another phrase fed into the supporter-management machine.
Instead, we get this. Green Brigade bans. Keane talks. O’Neill as the safe fallback. Craig Bellamy floated around the edges. Maloney interviewed for a major football-operations role. Not one thing that suggests a club preparing for the future.
Not one thing that suggests lessons learned. Not one thing that suggests humility. It is almost impressive how comprehensively they have misunderstood the moment.
The club came out of last season with a chance to reset. It had a double in the cabinet, a support exhausted but still emotionally invested, and a summer in which it could have shown seriousness. It could have appointed a proper sporting director. It could have named a manager with vision and pedigree. It could have repaired the relationship with the support. It could have communicated a strategy.
Instead, it has behaved like a board that heard the supporters demanding change and decided the answer was to show them who was boss. That is not leadership. That is provocation. This board could have lowered the temperature. Instead, it broke out the flamethrowers. It is now, obviously, willing to go scorched earth.
If they do appoint Keane, if they do push through the one appointment almost guaranteed to set fire to the summer, then nobody should pretend they did not know what they were doing. Nobody should pretend the reaction came from nowhere. Nobody should say the support was unreasonable, impatient or impossible to please.
The warning signs are everywhere. As I said the other day, you cannot find a single blog that is willing to endorse this guy. Not one. The unified whole of Celtic fan media is against this, and it was made clear that many of us felt this way when his name was put into the frame over the closing months of the season.
The rejection of this whole idea has been written on banners, in articles, in fan statements and done the rounds on every podcast out there.
These people said they were listening. Maybe they were.
But the whole time they were doing that they were loading the cannons.
So be it. War it is then.
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The post The Celtic board could have calmed tensions. It deliberately inflamed them. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
Continue reading...
Big changes were coming, we were told. Lessons had been learned. The club understood the anger. The relationship with the support had to be rebuilt.
The silence, the arrogance, the drift, the contemptuous mismanagement of the season, the lack of professionalism, the shocking hiring practices; all of it was supposedly being processed inside Celtic Park by serious people who finally understood the scale of the damage they had done and the changes that needed to be made.
Well, here we are. The season is over. The double is won. The pressure of the run-in has passed. And what have they done?
They have moved again against members of the Green Brigade, with that group accusing the board of betrayal after two members were barred from renewing season tickets over a disciplinary matter linked to an incident before the so-called peace.
We have watched the managerial search collapse into the familiar orbit of Martin O’Neill and Robbie Keane, with Keane now being reported as having held constructive talks over the job. They have allowed Shaun Maloney to be interviewed for a major football-operations role despite the obvious question we have already asked on this site: what experience does he have for a post of that magnitude?
So let me ask another obvious question.
What exactly is different? Unless by different they mean worse. Because if this is “listening mode,” then God help us when they stop listening.
I wrote the other day about the Green Brigade and the way the timing of those renewed bans burned trust to ash. That is not hyperbole. The board allowed that section back for the run-in, benefited from the return of the atmosphere, watched the players respond to a stadium that had life in it again, and then, once the season was safely over, went back to the old war. If these people wanted to persuade supporters that peace was merely tactical, they could hardly have done a better job.
If they wanted to say, “we needed you when the title was still on the line, but now that the trophy is in the cabinet we can get back to screwing you over,” they have said it more clearly than any statement ever could.
That is the problem with this board. Its words are meaningless because its actions keep contradicting them.
I wrote about Robbie Keane as well, and I meant every word of it. I said he should think very carefully before taking this job. I said the manager is the rod that catches the lightning. That remains true. I said he’s not going to be welcomed by much of the support.
If they appoint Keane, with all the baggage we have already discussed, the outcry will be off the charts. Celtic fan groups have already protested the possibility, and the backlash is not theoretical. It is already outside the front door.
What kind of board looks at a divided club and thinks: yes, let’s do the one thing guaranteed to divide it further?
What kind of board watches months of protest, anger, distrust and supporter mobilisation, then decides that the correct response is a managerial appointment many supporters do not merely doubt, but morally reject?
What kind of board says it wants unity, then reaches for the matchbox?
This club is not interested in peace in our time. Not really.
If it was, it would not be doing any of this.
A club interested in peace would not pick fights with supporter groups the moment the title was won. A club interested in peace would not frame a global managerial search around the same old familiar names from the same old emotional comfort zone. A club interested in peace would not take a role as important as sporting director or head of football operations and treat it like another internal promotion exercise for someone who knows the club.
That is not reform. That is not modernisation. That is not ambition.
That is this board doing what it does, and this is where I keep coming back to the same question. What is wrong at Celtic that they act this way?
Because this is not normal institutional behaviour. It is not rational. It is not strategic. It is not even politically clever.
If these people were cynical masterminds, they would be better at this. They would understand when to lower the temperature. They would know when to give ground. They would know when to throw the support something real. Instead, they behave like men who have mistaken stubbornness for strength.
They seem to believe that if they simply endure the anger, it will pass.
They seem to believe that season-ticket renewals are consent. They seem to believe that supporters will shout, protest, write, organise, rage, then turn up anyway and eventually forget what they were angry about.
That is a dangerous belief. I wrote in the communication piece that silence is not strategy. It is the sound of people hoping nobody notices they do not have a plan. This is worse than silence. This is action which looks designed to piss people off. Think about that. It looks like a calculated snub to large sections of the support.
This is movement in the wrong direction. This is a board apparently determined to prove that every criticism made of it over the past year was not only fair, but understated.
Celtic Supporters Limited produced a document that diagnosed the problem properly. I disagreed with them the lack of desire for regime change, because I do not believe this board can be reformed into competence.
But their central point was devastating: Celtic’s problem is not only what it does badly, but what it refuses to do at all. It refuses modernity. It refuses strategy. It refuses communication. It refuses accountability.
And now, apparently, it refuses even the most basic act of self-preservation.
Self-preservation would mean making an appointment that unifies the support. Self-preservation would mean pausing the petty wars. Self-preservation would mean appointing experienced, serious football operators with track records in the roles they are being asked to perform. Self-preservation would mean proving, through deeds, that “listening mode” was not just another phrase fed into the supporter-management machine.
Instead, we get this. Green Brigade bans. Keane talks. O’Neill as the safe fallback. Craig Bellamy floated around the edges. Maloney interviewed for a major football-operations role. Not one thing that suggests a club preparing for the future.
Not one thing that suggests lessons learned. Not one thing that suggests humility. It is almost impressive how comprehensively they have misunderstood the moment.
The club came out of last season with a chance to reset. It had a double in the cabinet, a support exhausted but still emotionally invested, and a summer in which it could have shown seriousness. It could have appointed a proper sporting director. It could have named a manager with vision and pedigree. It could have repaired the relationship with the support. It could have communicated a strategy.
Instead, it has behaved like a board that heard the supporters demanding change and decided the answer was to show them who was boss. That is not leadership. That is provocation. This board could have lowered the temperature. Instead, it broke out the flamethrowers. It is now, obviously, willing to go scorched earth.
If they do appoint Keane, if they do push through the one appointment almost guaranteed to set fire to the summer, then nobody should pretend they did not know what they were doing. Nobody should pretend the reaction came from nowhere. Nobody should say the support was unreasonable, impatient or impossible to please.
The warning signs are everywhere. As I said the other day, you cannot find a single blog that is willing to endorse this guy. Not one. The unified whole of Celtic fan media is against this, and it was made clear that many of us felt this way when his name was put into the frame over the closing months of the season.
The rejection of this whole idea has been written on banners, in articles, in fan statements and done the rounds on every podcast out there.
These people said they were listening. Maybe they were.
But the whole time they were doing that they were loading the cannons.
So be it. War it is then.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
The post The Celtic board could have calmed tensions. It deliberately inflamed them. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
Continue reading...
