FLINCH &
New season but same old failings from Celtic chiefs who lack joined-up thinking
FORGET the World Cup ...
When Celtic confirm Martin O’Neill is staying and Rangers think Danny Rohl is going, the World Cup is trumped – and I’m not talking about the leader of the country in which the competition is being staged.
If, as has been suggested, Celtic are trying to get Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham to assist O’Neill on financi al ly- reduced contracts, the idea is as shameful as it is stupid.
And I would go so far as to say O’Neill should not have agreed to his new deal before exercising his clout and ensuring his invaluable allies had also been looked after by the club.
Fawning words from Martin about the board in a carefullyprepared club statement don’t sit right with potential failings on their part relative to Maloney and Fotheringham
Celtic’s chief bean counter, finance director Chris McKay, might understand spread sheets but he appears to have an impoverished grip on what makes a football team successful.
Wiser heads in that regard should put him right before Celtic prove they specialise in self- harm and have a fatal fascination for proving they’re odd on a daily basis.
A league and Cup Double was won by a trio at Celtic Park last season.
Martin without the other two doesn’t work.
They baled Celtic out of serious t r o u b le and camouflaged the chaos that was going on behind the scenes before they arrived.
To break up that group of men on budgetary grounds, when you have as much money as Celtic have in their current account, is a dereliction of duty and a betrayal of the club’s support.
It is an unnecessary controversy that has to be attended to as a matter of urgency by renewing the contracts of Maloney and Fot h e r i ngham on an appropriate l e v el of recompense.
The fans, whose contempt for the club’s directorate knows no bounds, must wonder what the hell is going on as Celtic prepare for the defence of their trophies.
For a lot of people, the new season begins now.
The fixture list will be out on Thursday and the settling of old scores, of which there are many after the conclusion of last season’s turbulent and tempestuous title race, can be planned in meticulous detail.
The first meeting of Celtic and Hearts, for example, will be ringed in more than a few calendars because of an abiding belief in certain quarters that the outcome of the championship was not above board, but was beneath contempt.
Likewise, any Celtic game against Motherwell at Fir Park would, I imagine, be ring-fenced in the ongoing spirit of subterfuge and espionage.
And that’s even before we get to Old Firm derbies, the dates of which are underlined and committed to memory on the basis that nothing is more important in the everyday lives of those who support both teams.
But, before then, something else of profound significance will occur.
The summer transfer window officially opens tomorrow.
This is traditionally the point at which Celtic assemble, sometimes at immense cost, a group of players who are of absolutely no use to the club.
A rag, tag and bobtail collection of misfits and unheard of no- marks who conspire to further diminish in quality a first-team squad that was once promising enough to prompt genuine optimism. A decline that has been as gradual as it has been unmissable over the course of successive transfer windows.
Flinch and repeat. Nobody accepts responsibility for the arrival of the rapidly remaindered.
There is no accountability, either when, to cite the outstanding example of recent times, £5million is spent on someone like Michel-Ange Balikwisha.
Even at the height of Celtic’s need for reinforcements last season, when O’Neill was trying to salvage a league title from the wreckage of a season in which he was the third person to take charge of the team, Balikwisha could not be asked to lend a hand.
He was rejected, presumably, on the basis that he found it difficult to play football.
Transfer windows are the means by which Celtic have come to flag up the lack of a proper recruitment structure at the club as well as the absence of any other kind of joined- up thinking behind the scenes.
Except that idiosyncratic approach, which has driven a wedge between the club and the fan base who provide the wealth that then gets frittered away, has got to come to a dramatic end. Or else.
Starting tomorrow.
The first thing I thought about when I heard that Celtic’s CEO Michael Nicholson had been appointed to the SPFL’s board was that he might have to be seen in public while reserving the right to speak in private.
But, one way or another, Michael has been thrust into the spotlight along with McKay.
Celtic are going to Portugal to play Sporting Lisbon in a pre-season friendly to begin the 60th anniversary celebrations of the European Cup win over Inter Milan.
Nicholson would surely want to go there in July with a team worthy of the club’s name.
Michael’s in-tray must be as deep as a dustbin with the amount of problems he has to attend to while the clock ticks loudly in the background.
The great irony is that it was said, last January, the club with the best transfer window would become league champions.
The truth of the matter is
Martin without the other two does not work .. to break up that trio due to budget is a dereliction of duty
Celtic, the team with undeniably the worst transfer window of the title contenders, ended up being crowned in spite of that logical way of looking at things.
O’Neill can’t be asked, or expected, to make a mockery of commonsense on an annual basis.
He’s got enough problems trying to sat isfy the expectations of the Celtic support without having to battle the inadequacies of his employers.
One fan on the radio summed up what Martin is up against when he said O’Neill’s appointment for another year, with a 12-month long extension if he wants to take it up, would lift Celtic “up to where we should be”. Considering that Celtic have won 14 of the last 15 Premiership titles and have recently completed a league and Scottish Cup Double, you’re tempted to ask how much further they can go in an upward direction before they satisfy supporter happiness levels.
But now is a monumental test of how to cope with transition on an industrial scale because the Parkhead club face what is arguably the biggest turnaround of players in Celtic’s history.
Money is plentiful, and the transfer fund could be boosted significantly by the seemingly inevitable sale of high-profile assets like Daizen Maeda, Arne Engels and Benjamin Nygren.
But if you don’t have an eye for replacements who are their equal, or even better, then trouble lies ahead.
There is a saying that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, then you’ll never do anything original.
Celtic would have to confess to being habitually wrong in the last few transfer windows.
Originality will come in the form of changing their ways and signing players who can actually get a game on merit – and not because they’re all you’ve got left.
But everything starts with re- establishing O’Nei l l ’s managerial team.
Only a fool would fail to realise that was the case.