Celtic announce new head of scouting and recruitment; Ange speaks

By Lewis Laird

May 2, 2022

Celtic have this evening announced that Mark Lawwell has been appointed as the new Head of First Team Scouting and Recruitment.

Lawwell has spent the previous ten years in the position of Head of CFG Scouting and Recruitment within City Football Group’s global structure.

Of course, that is a familiar name to the Celtic support, with his father Peter being the old CEO of the club.

Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou has previously worked with Lawwell as part of the City group during his time in Japan with Yokohama F Marinos.

He will now join the 56-year old in Glasgow as part of the recruitment team heading into this summer’s transfer window.

In a statement released this evening, Celtic announced the appointment of the new head of scouting and recruitment, with Postecoglou reacting to the appointment by saying [Celtic FC], “I was very keen for Mark to join the Club, and clearly I am delighted that he has accepted this important role and that we have been able to bring him to Celtic.

“Mark is someone who I worked closely with throughout my four years at Marinos, through which time we developed great trust and an excellent working relationship.  He knows the way I like to work, the way my teams play and the particular player profile which this requires.

“I know he will be a great addition to our team, leading our first-team scouting and recruitment function and delivering on our key objective of identifying and bringing exciting, talented players to the Club.  

“We have a great team of people at the Club, and since joining Celtic, I have been hugely impressed by the staff around me who have all worked so hard to deliver success.  

“I have said before that I didn’t want to make changes just for the sake of it, but we always aim to build and develop everything we do, and in bringing Mark in, I know we have made an appointment which will be hugely beneficial for us moving forward.”

Previous rumours have suggested that Mark Lawwell has had an involvement in some of the club’s transfer dealings due to the close working relationship between Celtic and English Premier League giants Manchester City in the last few years.

Questions will be asked about the links surrounding this appointment.

However, the most important aspect of all this is Postecoglou, and the former Socceroos boss seems to have been keen to see the arrival of Lawwell with his comments.

The positive of this new role is that Ange and the club are clearly looking towards the future, starting with this summer.

Hopefully, some more questions can be answered in the lead up to the transfer window. It will undoubtedly be interesting to see where this goes further down the line.

In other news, stunned Chris Sutton reckons things are about to get even better at Celtic.