| Lawwell Years Must End Now |
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| Written by Psychoheart |
| Wednesday, 05 October 2011 17:57 |
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I suggested previously that there were indications that perhaps the manager was not the one who got the say in the comings and goings at the club. Juninho coming in under Martin O’Neill despite not fitting into his regular team plan, Gordon Strachan saying he wanted to keep Kenny Miller before watching him head out the door, Marc Crosas coming in under Strachan and not being used, Tony Mowbray starting to build a team around Massimo Donati before seeing him sold. It all smacked of a Director of Football undermining the head coaches. Which is odd, since Celtic apparently only have a football manager. There was more. The likes of Ki Sung Yeung, Zheng Zhi and Koki Misuno looked very much like an attempt to make Celtic popular in East Asia. Ki has since grown into an important part of the Celtic team, but Misuno and Zhi very quickly disappeared altogether. I can’t help but think that after another summer transfer window of frustration this year, bringing in no fewer than three African born players and very little else has the same hallmarks. Now Badr El Kaddouri was a last minute replacement for the injured Emilio Izaguirre that we had apparently looked at previously, but Victor Wanyama is another in a long line of “young players with a bright future”. But the one that raises the most eyebrows is Mohamed Bangura - a man who seemingly has a surname of “recommended-by-Henrik-Larsson”. All good and well, but was he recommended by the current Celtic manager, Neil Lennon? When Bangura was being signed up at the end of the transfer window, Neil was in Portugal looking at Baba Diawara. Oh look another African. In isolation, you could accept that we were hedging bets. But surely the manager would go to see the one he wanted? To me, this is looking more and more like a pattern spanning several transfer windows.
Another disturbing pattern is the increasing popularity of the “big-name target” story. Celtic get openly linked with a big name from down south - say Sol Campbell, Craig Bellamy, David James or even Jimmy Bullard. The manager, among others, will confirm that we are interested in them. For several seasons though it has been Celtic policy that signings are kept on the down low. The players that Celtic have actually signed have come out of the blue, with very little news being revealed until the new player has almost signed on the dotted line. So why are these big name targets different? The mischievous part of me, and many others, would suggest that it could be to get the fans on side during the summer when the increasingly dipping season ticket renewals need to be paid up. But equally it could be that we are so close to the English market that keeping secrets is difficult, right? Well, we got Kris Commons fairly quickly and he came from England. He spent more time being linked with Rangers than he did being linked with us. We also got Gary Hooper signed up pretty quickly too, despite it being hot property following a good showing an one of the Championship’s poorer teams. Maybe they just wanted to come to Celtic while the big names all just happened to take ages to make up their mind before all deciding to sign elsewhere. Craig Bellamy twice in successive seasons. Last summer though we saw exactly the transfer activity that we needed. The Tony Mowbray era was all but consigned to the bin and Celtic brought in virtually a new team worth of players to move forward. All was good and the squad was rich with talent. Well, sort of. For one thing, we brought in the majority of those players relatively cheaply. Gary Hooper was the biggest outlay at a couple of million pounds. Even that was a steal given how much Andy Carroll - a man who scored less for a better team in the same league - went to Liverpool for a mere six months later. But the biggest eyebrow raiser was when we eventually sold Aiden McGeady to Russia for nearly £10 million. Surely the manager would get to spend some of that windfall? He certainly thought so, and said as much even before Aiden had signed for someone else. But no, that money was banked as we failed to qualify for Europe. In fact, it still hasn’t been spent, and two transfer windows have come and gone since. Mind you, we’re only half a million pounds in debt now, so smile for the balance sheet! As I said, neither the January window nor the summer window this year saw much movement at all. Which is fine if you’re happy with the squad you have. At least we got rid of the deadwood, right? Wrong. We currently have three centre backs from the Strachan and Mowbray eras out on loan. Jos Hooiveld, Josh Thompson and Darren O’Dea are still Celtic players, even though they’re all playing in the lower leagues of England. It is blindingly obviously that not one of them is wanted at Celtic having been loaned out both last season and this season. Morten Rasmussen, the forgotten striker, is in the same boat. We can’t get rid of these players, so some suspect we won’t bring in replacements for fear of being stuck paying two lots of wages for one squad position. You’d think that we can’t just release them from their contract. It happens all the time, allowing players no longer wanted to go for nothing. We could even sell them for a nominal fee. Why not? What’s the alternative, loan them out until their contract expires and then they go for nothing anyway? Who wouldn’t want a £100,000 instead of nothing at all? As a long term strategy that is pretty poor indeed. But we are stuck with these players for whatever reason. Another thing that Celtic were criticised for was their non-movement in the January transfer window of 2009. We got Willo Flood in when everyone knew we really needed another striker. We ended up finishing that season with two 0-0 draws. Since we finished four points and two goals behind Rangers, had we won those two matches with even a single goal in each it would have seen us win the league. So did we learn from the mistakes of that season? Well, this summer we saw Kelvin Wilson come in to a Celtic defence which was still smarting from losing cheap goals in Inverness - a defeat that ultimately cost us the league. But everyone - at least we thought everyone - knew that we needed more at the back. It never came, and although Adam Matthews also came in as a full back, the centre back role is where the problem still lies. We have since had to sit and watch as Celtic have conceded ridiculous goal after ridiculous goal. You can forgive people making mistakes if they learn from them, but Celtic clearly haven’t learned from this one, and that’s just criminal. Was in the manager? You could say that, but two separate managers making the exact same mistake? Hmmm... Another criticism of the Peter Lawwell era I had eighteen months ago was that of downsizing the manager. Martin O’Neill came in as a high-flying Premiership manager who had won the League Cup with an unfancied team twice. He was replaced by a Premiership manager who had got one team relegated while another had lost in the FA Cup final. He was then replaced by a Championship manager who got his team into the Premiership before seeing them fall back out of it again without even looking like doing anything else and could only get to the semi-final in the FA Cup. That pattern continued it’s downward spiral as we appointed a completely untested and untried rookie manager. Now, whether that gamble has worked or not remains to be seen. Last season looked good, but questions are already being asked this season. Have the events of last season taken their toll on Lennon? Has his calmer nature this season resulted in a team that don’t fight like they did last season? Who knows. I for one hope that Lennon can turn things around, but whether he can or not, the fact remains that Lennon was the easy appointment for the board. A fans favourite who was already working at the club and who could very probably do the job on the cheap. That last point is always a winner for the Celtic board. The downsizing pattern continues in Europe too. Where once we were competing with Barcelona or Manchester United home and away, we went through a period of beating most teams at home while struggling away, before finally getting to where we are today - unable to beat teams who command a paltry sum of money when compared to what Celtic have at their disposal. Braga, Utrecht, Sion... you can understand the argument of not being able to compete with English Premier League teams thanks to the money Sky give them, but these teams bring in far less money than we do! But to be fair, we’re not the only Scottish team struggling in Europe these days. Mind you, even across the city it’s a joke - but not the one we’ve been cracking. The Celtic support have had a good laugh at the perils of “the mighty Glasgow Rangers” as they proved just how “loyal” they are by not paying tax bills and then getting caught “red handed” for it. First the banks were in control, then they were taken over by a mythical billionaire - no millionaire - no maybe he’s just got a pound - but the tax case gorilla is still in the corner and they’re going to go into administration or, even better, liquidation any minute. They’re still ten points clear of us already, with three titles in a row. In my previous article I argued that the turning point on the field for Celtic was when “Smithy” came in and stopped Rangers dropping silly points. Fact of the matter is, they haven't done that since, and even when we pushed them all the way last season it was us and not them that dropped more. They had to, we even beat them more than they beat us last season and that still wasn’t enough. McCoist - their own rookie manager - may now be in charge, but he’s been able to carry that on and that is why they are already so far in front. We dropped more points to St Johnstone at home in one match than they have over their opening ten fixtures. We’re even sitting third behind Motherwell right now. Okay, so we’ve played a game less but our game in hand over them, and the rest of the league, is at home to Dunfermline - a team who so have have been scoring goals but have also been conceding them far too often. Sounds disturbingly familiar... Money was another area I looked at in that previous article. When I wrote it, Celtic hadn’t produced their figures for 2010. So we’ll pick up where I left off shall we... 2009 Turnover: £72.59m Operating Expenses: £61.36m 2010 Turnover: £61.72m Operating Expenses: £57.25m 2011 Turnover: £52.56m Operating Expenses: £52.50m A point I made was that we were spending more money in 2009 than we were when we went to Seville in 2003. Well, good news, we’ve sorted that. Yes, we now spend SLIGHTLY less than the £53.84m we were spending in 2003. Mind you, we’ve also turned over £8m less. Good thing we don’t have to pay those European win bonuses like we did back then! In fact, turnover has dropped a whopping £20m in two years. How did we manage that? We can only account for the Champions League non-participation drop once! Once you cut that out you can’t cut it out again! Overall, in the last two years we've lost £20m turnover but only cut costs by £9m. Ahh but he debt blah blah blah. Now, to be fair to Peter, he did make a valid point about the operating expenses at the roadshow last summer - something I had so much hope for. He made the point that costs had not dropped because wages across the board are increasing. The average wage of a player in the UK has risen, so we’re having to pay more and more money just to stand still. More accurately, we’re paying the same money we were to go backwards. Some would say that’s a shame and that we’re forced to do it because of our proximity to the English leagues. Others, like Mark Cooper, would say we’re doing it completely wrong by focusing on them so much - or possibly by not focusing enough on being a stepping stone into them. As far as I can see, in the eighteen months since I hoped that the roadshows would be a new start and a new way forward for Celtic plc, we haven’t actually done anything different whatsoever. There’s still a smell of interference from upstairs, there’s still downsizing, we’re still not winning anything. In fact, we’re now struggling to even compete with tax case handcuffed Rangers, while Europe is pretty much a complete write off for us as things stand. Yet we’re still paying the same prices - if not more - to “support our team”. Season tickets went up by the VAT increase alone (which was actually a nice little dodge by Celtic) while I actually turned down an offer for a ticket for Ibrox because £42 was a joke. I know Rangers set that, but I’m fairly certain they get together with Celtic to discuss these things to ensure fairness for both sides. Or in other words I fully expect Celtic to charge their fans the same when they visit in December. I’m still paying £45 for a new jersey, except now we’re changing the away jersey so often it’s costing me twice as much. Even the Paradise Windfall ticket doubled in price from £1 to £2 yet the prize only went from £9000 to £15000! So How much longer is this going to continue? The only logical conclusion to this, as far as I can see, is this. Whether or not Peter Lawwell is micro-managing every aspect of Celtic - and we’ve all heard those rumours on the Celtic Underground podcast never mind my own analysis of his tenure here which just so happens to tie up - does not matter. Fact of the matter is, he is failing even his own targets. Further, by his own admission what we are paying now is not getting us the value we were seeing previously. Continue down that path and we will continue to go backwards until we aren’t just third in the league in October, but third in May. Or possibly worse. So do we increase prices? People are barely willing to pay what they are being charged now. No, putting prices up will just make matters worse and probably reduce income further. it’s clear that fundamental changes are required at Celtic. If Peter Lawwell is not the man to bring about those changes - and by the look of the last eight years he is not - then he must stand aside and make way for someone who is. What of the rest of the board? They must take some of the blame for this. Either they’ve been pulling Lawwell’s strings all this time or they have sat back and let him do as he pleases for too long. Either way, if they are truly the Celtic fans they claim every time it’s suggested that we put a fan on the board, then they cannot be happy to allow the club to continue along the so very obvious decline that it is in. Perhaps it’s time for wholesale changes in that area too. But one look at the ballot sheet that Shareholders have for the current AGM proves that we will get none of this. Harry Brady’s revival plan has little chance of being implemented. Which is a shame, because at least in that situation the Celtic support would only have themselves to blame for Celtic’s woes. Or better still, triumphs. No, what we will get during Celtic’s AGM is confirmation that Celtic are being run by a small group of people who will go on to prove it by ensuring that several of them are reappointed as directors to the board through the majority of shareholdings they own between themselves. They will then go on to chase off the Celtic Trust’s suggestion of fresh blood from within the general fan base as they have done on several previous occasions. Among those up for reappointment is the name of Peter Lawwell. I’m not looking forward to writing part three of “The Lawwell Years”. |
Comments
1)What is Dermot Desmond's true ambitions for the club?
2)Where do you see Celtic going as a club, if we unthinkably let Rangers win 4 in a row?
3)Peter, would you consider stepping down if Rangers win 4 in a row?
etc etc
Good luck bhoys and ghirls...
"Neil,
Why is it after a full season and more under your belt you dont have clue who your strongest 11 are?
Why is it you make change after change week after week for what appears to be in some cases for no obvious reason? Forster's out then he's back in one game later, was that tactical?
Why does Peter Lawell currently get all the blame but few criticise you?"
Peter Lawell is not blameless by any means and a lot of the above is true but if we are to single him out then I personally disagree. The situation our club finds itself in ain't the fault of one man. The fault lies as much with him as it does above him and below him.
Psychoheart agree on the African player issue, did anyone stop to think we'll probably lose them in January every two years at the African Nations Cup?
I'd agree that questions must be asked of the football manager as well as the chief executive and the questions you ask are valid ones.
The trouble I have is that there's a very clear pattern since Lawwell took over the role on 2003. A pattern risk averse decisions and micro-management that just didn't exist during the first three seasons of O'Neill's tenure, or even before then. In fact, Dalglish and Barnes were probably given too much free reign by Allan MacDonald.
My concern is that your questions could be answered with things like "because I was told that these players had to play and I've got to fit them in to my plans somehow". I also wouldn't expect the manager to come out and admit that for fear of the - rightly - negative comments that would come out.
And if you don't think that it's possible that question could be answered like that, you have to wonder why it's quite possible that the last four Celtic managers have had players in their squad that don't quite seem to fit.
The recent signings with an African nationality all look to me as if they can play a bit and perhaps when the team settles and confidence is restored we will see the best of them.
In these times when money is tight why should the club not look to new markets - we are constantly being told it is a global game it would be remiss of those in charge not to attempt to - widen the brand- to use an awful cliche.
I find it amazing the amount of guff which is written about Lawwell. When I think about the folk who ran the club in earlier times it makes me laugh.
I agree about looking into different markets. In fact, I encourage it because as we've read in other articles on here there is little or no value in the English market which we seem to favour.
What I would ask is why do we seem to focus on one area at a time? Why have we just turned to Africa this summer, when we've had success there with Balde and Agathe previously? Has the Asian market been exhausted now already? Is it possible this is a sign that our scouting is quite limited and we just don't have the resources to scout on several fronts?
I don't agree with your point about the duds however. Hooiveld and Rasmussen were both brought in under Mowbray and both came with decent statistics, the usual youtube links, and high hopes. Then Hooiveld got injured almost immediately and Rasmussen was frozen out by the Robbie Keane signing. Lennon doesn't seem to like either of them and both have been long since frozen out. As such I'm still not sure if either of them are duds as I just haven't seen enough of them at Celtic to know either way. I guess we might need to trust Lennon on that. They do seem to be doing better than the other players on their loan deals though. Maybe they've found their level, or maybe they're not "duds" after all.
Either way, you'll always get the "told you so" brigade on message boards when someone doesn't turn out to be a superstar. I haven't known a single signing that doesn't have fans saying "dud" even before they put pen to paper. Larsson, Nakamura, Boruc, even the aforementioned Robbie Keane have all been branded that way!
I have also complained bitterly in the past about the salary/bonus package he gets for failure on the park but success off (and even that's questionable). The man who gains most from this (DD) is probably the man who has most influence over it.
We also have to look at the board. How many true Celtic supporters have influence their?
We are rapidly getting back to a Kelly/White/Grant era where the power lies with a few who only have self interest at heart.
And who appoints that good manager? Who appointed Strachan, Mowbray and Lennon?
It's not that our managers have been terrible, but they do have a record of making the big bad decision at exactly the wrong time.
I can't see how that's Lawwell's fault.
If you assume that the changes have nothing to do with interference from above (I'm not entirely convinced by that but we'll go with it) then we've had three separate managers who have all made the same mistakes at the same time. All three of them were appointed by the same person. Would you then trust that very same person to appoint a fourth manager that wouldn't make those mistakes?
2. shirt selling and branding the priority.
3. forgot the reason for our existence i.e we'r a football club.
if you think that this is other than the boards fault yr either deluded or stupid.
Bang on Psychoheart. It's one of the things that really bemuses me when people somehow seek to shift the heat away from the people who made these shocking appointments in the first place.
Is Neil Lennon good and experienced enough to be manager of a club the size of Celtic with the expectations and demands that go along with it? IMO no. But that's not Lennon's fault for being offered the gig.
When he cocks things up he deserves stick - and he's getting plentyof it now and deservedly so - but ultimately he should never have been there in teh first place.
It's a bit like the Samaras situation. It's gotten to the stage were the guy has been so poor for us so often that he should be nowhere near the first team. Yet he still gets the nod for massive games like the one at snake mountain a couple of weeks ago. The guy isn't good enough, but if he keeps on getting picked who is to blame for that. Should he do a Tevez and refuse to play?
Actually, with the AGM coming next week, now is PRECISELY the time to be questioning whether or not those on the board of directors - which includes Peter Lawwell - are doing the job needed to run Celtic as a successful business. When else do you want to do it?
Just blindly having faith and following them as they continue to make the same mistakes they made eighteen months ago is precisely why nothing will change.
When should we be discussing this then? When everything appears to be going well and we can paper over the cracks at the club? When Strachan won three in a row there were those who thought we couldn't go on the way we were going and that change was needed, but they were shot down because we were domestically successful and had made the last sixteen of the Champions League two years in a row.
So if the fans can't call for change at the top after success or failure because both are the wrong time and we don't want to generate negative press, what's left?
Besides, we get negative press all the time. I'm not sure what difference that makes. If we don't feed them then they'll make it up anyway.
I can't believe Celtic fans would rather plod along in hope that things get better when there's eight years of downsizing evidence in front of them that suggests things won't get better. But if there are, then I commend their faith - it's far stronger than mine and I hope you're right.
I fail to understand why Strachan name is included in that list like he was some sort of a failure. Strachan won 3 titles out of four and in my book was an excellent Celtic Manager. Yes it was soured at the end and a bit like Tony Blair's name was booed at the Labour Party conference the other week I really do wish some fans would stop treating Strachan's tenure as some kind of a disaster. The guy inherited a team dying on its knees and turned it round winning the League 3 times in a row all whilst being forced to make circa £28m (Source Phil McGillivan, not sure it makes it more credible though) in cuts over that period.
Psycho, I'm not buying into the idea that Lawell is the one picking players just to promote the brand far and wide. Yes we have widened our market search in recent years, but as was stated by Lachie, we need to get value in our playing staff and we wont get it in the UK. Some of our perceived market driven signings have done well, Ki and Naka for example, in fact I dont remember too many complaining about Naka when he signed. It never ceases to amaze me how people want only to criticise a perceived policy but wont praise it when it does work and say nothing or little when its going swimmingly. I do have an issue with the African signings as I said above due to the African Cup of Nations which will likely rob us of those players for 6 crucial weeks every two years. However I doubt players from what are impoverished countries can be considered as "market aware" signings, the opposite if anything.
I'm not trying to take away from the achievements of Gordon Strachan. In fact, if my assumptions of interference from above are correct, then it's quite possible he doesn't get enough recognition for what must have been a difficult job. But even his tenure eventually ran it's course and he too was badly affected in his final season.
I'm also certain I'm not the only one who thinks that he was a step down from Martin O'Neill. It's hard to tell how he would have done as he only caught the start of the Lawwell years and I guess we'll never know.
strathavenhoops,
I know where you're coming from - we DO need to continue to back Lennon and the players. But that doesn't mean we have to back those above them at the same time. Lennon and the players need to get more support from all angles - us AND the board. As several banners have said at the ground, "FC not PLC".
As for Desmond... well, if I'm looking at the managers and looking to complain about who appointed them, then it's just as valid to look at who appointed the appointers. That rests firmly with the shareholders. So I take your point on that one.
However, I don't agree that Desmond should simply be throwing his own money at Celtic. The club should be self-sustaining, not hoping for a cash injection from shareholders every few years. That's how the mob across the city were run for long enough, and that's only got them into trouble. What we need are people better suited to running the business side of things properly.
Which leads me to one interesting thought. Why do we need Ian Bankier AND Peter Lawwell? I've never been convinced that's been two jobs when the likes of Brian Quinn and John Reid have been chairman. Now that we're getting another recognised business man in there I would suggest that is one area that is ripe for cost-cutting. And with any luck, Mr Bankier will bring the fresh ideas that we need at that level of the club.
Besides all that, we don't really know what went on with that transfer. Since then every bit of Lawwells tenure has been knit-picked looking for negatives. Heres a reminder of the few positives from Lawwell:
After MON spending massively, Lawwell was given the task of ensuring that the wage bill dropped, the debt was decreased (and there was plenty of it) and that new players were recruited that were younger and fitter than those leaving and on top of all this for celtic to keep winning titles. Peter Lawwell succeeded in this task as Celtic won three in a row.
Despite Fergus McCann leaving many a fine legacy, his biggest regret was that he did not leave behind a state of the art training facility. Peter Lawwell ensure Celtic now have that facility.
Despite Celtic having a few good young players coming through, kennedy, McGeady etc...when Lawwell took the reigns, the youth set up was drastically underfunded and smaller english league 2 clubs had bigger set-ups and it was only focussed on the Glasgow region. Unprecedented funding has been given to this important area and not content with that, Celtic have undertook the boldest move of any other British club (Watford apart)with the Lennoxtown initiative (no EPL club even has such a programme). This all happened under the watch of Peter Lawwell - was he tight with the strings there?
If the spending on youth and the new training facilities start producing us players of the standard of Arjen Robin and Van Persie who went through the system at PSV and Feyenoord which Celtic have based it on, will anyone give credit to Lawwell in a few years time? There is no other direction that a club like Celtic should be going depsite the (admittedly interesting) ideas about copying Porto's methods. We need to remeber that these things take time and it was not his fault that he was building from scratch in certain areas. We also need to remeber that there is a recession on that will get a lot worse before it gets better and maybe Peter Lawwell and co are taking this into consideration when they refuse to speculate with what we clearly haven't got.
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