The Celtic board had to get this right: they didn't

By Euan Davidson

May 28, 2021

Let’s say you’re not the Celtic board, but you’re just a regular employee somewhere.

You’ve got an important project, with months of research and staff involved. You take your time, because you’ve got to give a big presentation. Maybe, you’re trying to secure some funding, or support for a campaign, say. So, you get your budgets looked at, you delegate, you consider all possible routes to achieving your goal, and then after about 4 months, you turn up to work with nothing. Absolutely nothing.

You’d probably get sacked, wouldn’t you? Being honest? It wouldn’t be good enough.

Ok, now let’s say you are the Celtic board. You’ve got the expectations and hopes of millions of people hanging on the hope that after a season full of calamities, you’ll pull it out of the bag. Surely, people think, nobody would take this long unless they had everything covered.

And surely, you wouldn’t try to part people from their money without an actual plan in place? I know, it’s about the team and not the manager. But to be quite honest, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say having the right manager is particularly important.

What possible justification do you have, then, when things go so embarrassingly askew? We have reached Boris Johnson levels of utter incompetence. Unless Dermot Desmond is sat next to Pep Guardiola on Monday, this isn’t going to be forgiven any time soon.

The Celtic board have questions to answer

Now, don’t think for a minute I’m trying to whip anyone up into a lather here. Or, that any of the genuinely shocking abuse directed towards the board is in any way tolerable. Being upset is justified, being aggressive isn’t. That’s not what we’re doing here.

What I am doing though, is questioning the sheer complacency this board have shown time and time again. If you were writing a sitcom about a badly-run football club, the Eddie Howe saga, and how it’s finished, would be too on-the-nose and unrealistic.

Paradise / (Photo by Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)

What’s more is that if we are, indeed, in “advanced talks” with another manager, the Club have rolled out their season ticket renewal information while holding back on what was actually happening on a footballing level at the club. That’s more than a bit questionable.

This saga, regardless of who comes in, is going to rumble for a long, long time yet.

READ MORE: Of course, it could get worse