I have run out of ways to criticise the Celtic hierarchy – they are fleecing devoted fans and have more kits than coaches. Martin O'Neill has no backroom staff, no chairman, no head of recruitment and nobody willing to take accountability.
Silent Hierarchy and Lack of Staff
The business of Celtic Football Club has, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, come to a complete stop. Other than the mandatory attempts to fleece supporters with the launch of a third strip which means Celtic now have more kits than coaches. Pre-season training begins on Friday for those players not at the World Cup.
The defending league champions have, since acquiring the title last month, lost three members of their backroom staff: Shaun Maloney, Mark Fotheringham and Gavin Strachan. The way things are going at Celtic Park, Martin O'Neill will look behind him on the touchline at kick-off against Dundee on August 3 and there'll be no-one left in the home dug-out.
Maloney and Fotheringham have been sufficiently insulted to decline Celtic's offer of employment on reduced wages. Strachan has gone off to West Brom. Who's next? More importantly, what's next? I have run out of ways to constructively criticise the Celtic hierarchy. They have broken my personal blame-ometer.
Unfathomable Business Practices
I have exhausted the means at my disposal for trying to understand their inactivity. And made redundant all attempts at logic when it comes to trying to understand their unfathomable methods of running a football club. The hierarchy defy comprehension and contradict accepted business practices in the twenty-first century. I thought I was, due to being at an advanced age, analogue in a digital world. Celtic's board of directors, however, conspire to make me look state of the art while they are, conversely, simply in a state.
Who, in the current climate of uncertainty at the club, would think it was sound commercial practice to bring out a new strip which supposedly cashes in on the sixtieth anniversary of the Lisbon Lions' triumph over Inter Milan in the European Cup final? The response from fans has been as vicious as it has been vociferous. How can it be possible not to know what their management team will look like for the new season when pre-season training begins in five days' time?
Fans Left in the Dark
That is what is occupying the minds of the supporters. Celtic have no-one in place to mastermind recruitment when the first team squad is in a state of flux. The club has no chairman. No assistants to Martin O'Neill in the coaching department. And there is nobody who is answerable to the fans for any of the aforementioned nonsense.
What multi-million pound organisation would have a Chief Executive, and the clue is in the title, who would not have said anything about anything at a time like this? Michael Nicholson is, to get down to basics, paid a salary that would be life-changing for the Celtic support. He has presided over twelve months of turbulence while managing not to have said a single word in public.
Is Celtic Immune?
Is he in charge of a football club who believe they are looked over by a guiding hand and are therefore immune from the rules as they apply to the rest of their competitors? An institution who, by their eternal silence also believe that blatantly ignoring the people who pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to fund the club's business are unworthy of their concern? Or has Dermot Desmond simply not yet told anyone what they have to say? I can highlight all of this in the full and certain knowledge that no-one from the club will deem it necessary to refute any of the criticism made of them.
Celtic have a thriving business which is based on the unwavering devotion of a global support. The club reserves the right to have no interest in any of them. It is an astonishing, utterly unique business concern. Give us your money. Go away.
