The ongoing uncertainty around Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham’s Celtic futures has once again put the club’s decision-making under the spotlight, with Dermot Desmond’s influence remaining front and centre.
With pre-season approaching, the situation surrounding Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham’s Celtic contracts has come to the fore as Graham Spiers shares what he says is behind the delay.
And it looks like Dermot Desmond is at the heart of the Celtic contract issues.
What should Shaun Maloney’s role be at Celtic next season?
Dermot Desmond’s ‘unfair’ stance on Celtic coach contracts
Early reports suggested that Celtic lowballed Maloney and Fotheringham over their contracts and now, it seems that Desmond’s stance is pretty clear.
Spiers wrote on his Patreon site, “The saga of Maloney’s and Fotheringham’s new contracts has dragged on and on. Right now, at the time of writing, they are still unresolved, even while the Celtic squad is just days away from returning for pre-season.
“Dermot Desmond, the significant shareholder who historically has done so much for Celtic, is the man behind it all.
“Desmond has proved hard to budge on what he believes to be the unfair financial demands being made by Maloney and Fotheringham.”
Desmond’s influence at Celtic is not new, but it is consistently present in moments where the club are finalising major football decisions.
His position as the club’s largest single shareholder has somehow placed him at the centre of every decision at Celtic.
Celtic coaching delay and what it means for Martin O’Neill
As things stand, Maloney and Fotheringham remain in a state of flux with no one really knowing what is going on at this moment in time.
For Martin O’Neill, the Celtic boss faces the reality of starting pre-season training without his coaching staff in place and the optics of that look embarrassing.
O’Neill, Maloney and Fotheringham returned to Celtic twice to bail the club out last season in their hour of need.
A double was won and Celtic’s standing as the champions of Scotland remained. At the very least the club should do the right thing and look after the coaching team that saved their backsides not once, but twice, in a campaign that threatened to fall flat on its face.
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