John Kennedy has touched on the overall impact of Nick Hammond at Celtic after he departed the club yesterday.
The former Head of Football Operations became the latest name to leave the club as part of Neil Lennon’s previous regime. His announcement follows the imminent departure of Peter Lawwell, whilst Lennon himself is already gone.
Hammond’s time at Celtic in terms of player recruitment had more downs than ups. For every Chris Jullien, there was an Albian Ajeti, Vasilis Barkas, and Patryk Klimala. Too much money had been wasted on players that offered the club very little.
However, Kennedy was still happy to big him up as he discussed what he actually did at the club. Whilst still managing to be a touch vague, the interim Celtic boss did shed some more light on some of his projects. Speaking via Celtic TV, Kennedy said the following:
“A lot of processes”
“Nick made the decision to look for a new challenge. He’s moved on. I spoke to Nick last night and he was good, he’s a terrific guy. He has a fantastic work ethic, came in and set up a lot of processes behind the scenes that people won’t know about to get us covering more areas around the world. He brought more personnel in to look at more players, and then things take time to build. But Nick has obviously looked at his own situation, stepped away and look at something else.
“This is probably unknown. Recruitment was one factor of Nick’s job, but it was across the football spectrum in terms of different areas. But we still have our recruitment team, we still have a chief scout/head of recruitment. So all of the processes and the personnel are still there. The heads of those departments are changing, but underneath that the work still goes on.
“The club will decide what’s the best way moving forward in terms of who we replace and how they structure that if they want to make any structural changes. Or they just replace like-for-like.”
Kennedy bigging up Nick Hammond is all well and good, but much responsibility for Celtic season falls on him
This all sounds great in theory. Putting in processes to help us reach a bigger scale around the world. That’s ideal, it helps open up new markets for the football club both in terms of footballing ability and commercially.
However, Kennedy mentions that a lot of Hammond’s work has gone unnoticed. That the processes he’s put in place effectively won’t be given the praise they deserve. And all simply because it’s being kept from the fans.
But that’s part of the problem. The Celtic supporters were never actually given any information on what Hammond actually did. All we knew was that he was in charge of recruitment. On that remit alone, we’ve all made our minds up on him. If there was greater transparency about some of these projects Hammond took on, perhaps he would’ve been viewed in a different light. Perhaps the same pressure wouldn’t have been on him before his departure.
As for this idea that recruitment still goes on, it may well do, but only to an extent. Scouring Europe for cheap young talent will always be part of Celtic’s recruitment plan. Regardless of whether we have a manager or not.
But don’t expect a new £4million goalkeeper/centre-back/striker to be signed. There are limits to what will be allowed before the new structure is put in place. Yes, players may still be scouted which will be put forward to a potential new manager. No deals, however, should be anywhere near completion until there’s some structure about the place once again.
Regardless, Kennedy clearly hasn’t been given an update on the managerial side of things as of yet. Either that or he does indeed have a tremendous poker face.
In other news, Scott Brown is set for a superb battle with Aberdeen after Dave Cormack’s latest reveal.
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