state of the club address 2009

This year’s state of the club address is brought to you by the right irreverent James Payne.

 

As this article goes to print Celtic are still well placed to defend the title we won last season. Unfortunately, this season we failed to repeat the last two seasons’ achievement of reaching the last 16 of the Champions League and we didn’t even have the fall back of a last 32 place in the UEFA Cup to console ourselves with.

Optimists will point out that whilst many of the football world’s biggest clubs are, quite possibly, ill-equipped to handle the current recession Celtic’s long-term policy of reducing debt has left the club better prepared to handle the worst the downturn can throw at us. On the surface Celtic would seem to be doing quite well.

I am not so sure that we are. As I see it the club, the team, the manager and possibly the support itself are all at a crossroads. Recent successes and mistakes have to be acknowledged to see why things are as they are.
I don’t intend to be hypercritical but current failings have to be acknowledged but I also hope to suggest ways forward.

Before I go on I have to admit that I haven’t seen as much of Celtic playing, live, as I used to. A fan for the last forty plus years ( I’m 47), a season ticket holder for over twenty years and a shareholder since Christmas 1994 I decided that in the autumn of 2005 I wanted to see a bit more of the world . This meant some time in Spain, Ireland, New Zealand, the Far East but mostly Australia- where I spent over a year. For the most part I didn’t miss Scotland much and , surprisingly you might think, I didn’t really miss Celtic that much either - although in the latter case that was mainly because thanks either to the ’net or Setanta TV I was able to watch most of Celtic’s games live often at local supporters‘ clubs in the company of expats.

At times I felt I should have been at home- most obviously around about the time Jinky died and again when I was in Kuala Lumpur where I received a text telling me about the death of Tommy Burns - but, although I went abroad for other reasons, one thing I did appreciate early on was how big a club Celtic is. You see people of both sexes and many races wearing Celtic strips pretty much everywhere - in Australia it was quite possibly the most widely seen strip of all . I thought I’d found proof that we are as a big a club as we tell ourselves we are.

And yet recently I have begun to wonder if we are. I sometimes feel that our club itself seems to be going along with the notion that we are not such a big club these days. Only a few weeks ago I heard our manager - in reference to our victories over the likes of AC Milan and Manchester United in the recent past - as ’little old Celtic’ whilst the manager and those above him in the Celtic Park hierarchy gave the impression that before the defeat at Old Trafford we were about as likely to cause an upset as Queen of the South were in last year’s Scottish Cup Final.
What was worrying about this was not that this was an attempt at kidology but because it was what they really believed. Our 3-0 loss was seen as being no worse than expected and anyway all sorts of teams in the lower reaches of the Premiership are made to look as crap as we were that night. So now we see ourselves as being on a par with Hull City, Sunderland and Blackburn Rovers it would seem. This might be the reality in the cold light of day but if, as seems to be the case, many within the club have accepted this as fact, it is not I think the Glasgow Celtic Way.
Had we felt this way in 1966 - and things weren’t as different then as is now the accepted wisdom- we’d have gone out narrowly to Vojvodina in March the following year.

I understand that because we operate in a small country we do not have the access to the TV booty afforded the clubs in the top two divisions n England, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A or the German Bundesliga but we still generate more income on a yearly basis that most of the clubs from those and other countries bigger than Scotland. And yet despite being consistently rated as being amongst the top 20 of Europe’s richest clubs we operate in the bargain basement of the transfer market. Despite a sustained growth in income we haven’t signed a player for a fee of more than five million pounds since John Hartson in August 2001.

After the defeat in Denmark it was inevitable that many - pundits and fans alike- would criticise Chief Executive Peter Lawell and the club’s biggest shareholder Dermot Desmond for the defeat. Inevitably there were demands that big money be spent in the forthcoming ’transfer window’. Well I have a lot of sympathy for some of the criticism of Lawell and Desmond - Celtic have been frugal and as a result have appeared, at best, as a somewhat timid club.

In fact, though, over the last six years Celtic have twice found themselves in a position that had surpassed the supporters’ expectations. Once was when we reached The UEFA Cup Final and the other - and arguably the greater achievement- was beating Manchester United to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions’ League. In both instances there was a collective realisation amongst the support that not only did we have a demonstrably good team but that with a bit of expenditure to strengthen the obviously weaker areas of the team, such as at full back and perhaps an attacking midfielder, we could go even further.

Instead we signed nobody in the summer of 2003 and then having disposed of Thompson, Maloney and Pearson and signed two ineligible players we actually went into the matches with AC Milan with a smaller squad than we’d had for the Manchester United matches.

Milan went on to win the Champions League that season but nobody gave them a harder game than we did. We’ll never know if a slightly stronger Celtic side containing two fresh faces would have done any better but the feeling persists that we would have.

Ironically, though I disagree with those who argue that now is the time to, as they say, splash the cash. This is not because I believe that, on balance, the club has been right to be conservative when it comes to spending on players but because of the world we live in. If you haven’t noticed, the world is facing its gravest financial crisis since the 1930s. Household names are disappearing from high streets, banks need to be nationalised, businesses are closing and unemployment is poised to shoot up to levels not seen for decades.

Nearer home, and perhaps more specifically relevant to Celtic, Heart of Midlothian are unable to pay the wages and bonuses of their players on time whilst creditors such as agents and other clubs await settlement of outstanding debts with increasing nervousness and impatience. A big club, by Scottish standards, could go to the wall. I might not like Hearts but I don’t want to see them disappear either.

I am not sure if I truthfully could say the same about Rangers but their financial state - and connection to the eye watering debt mountain of David Murray’s business empire- could, just possibly, lead to their extinction.
Expending a few millions on a couple of players this particular January and plunging our club back into debt doesn’t seem such a wise idea to me.

To me, Celtic have adopted a ‘worst possible case scenario’ approach to their financial dealings since about halfway through Martin O’Neill’s time as manager but right now it doesn’t seem like such a daft idea to continue with that approach. Celtic’s income is in fact likely to shrink for the duration of the Recession/Depression. It seems plausible that income from commercial activities will fall and given that our average attendance fell substantially in the early eighties (when we fielded a successful, entertaining team) it would not surprise me if our crowd figures dropped, as they did then, by a quarter. If your income is likely to fall taking on more debt isn’t really such a great idea is it?
I think that in the past Celtic’s fiscal pragmatism/prudence/conservatism/stinginess ( delete as appropriate) has prevented the club from fulfilling its potential both on the field and financially but however much the club has stumbled upon it the long running financial modus operandi seems quite a smart approach for the new world we operate in.

Nobody knows what the world will be like if and when the Credit Crunch ends but it doesn’t seem completely unlikely that Celtic will be in a better position than many others to take advantage of improved trading conditions. If I am right I believe that then will be time to show more boldness than we did pre-crunch. Whatever the future I think much depends on the role played by one man. I refer to Dermot Desmond.

One of the richest men in Europe and, reputedly, cash rich after selling the City of London Airport, he has been an odd figure in Celtic’s history. He has sunk millions into Celtic- almost certainly more than David Murray has into the coffers of Rangers - and yet he has regularly been regarded - and not just by our enemies- as being a bit stingy when it comes to helping the club progress.

For the best example of how Desmond is perceived you probably have to go back to the summer of 2003. Having had a glorious run in Europe and safe in the knowledge that not only did we have a good team but also were financially sound, few fans were actually advocating Celtic stump up £20m on a couple of players. Instead most of us felt that perhaps a quarter of that figure be spent on a decent left back and another midfield player - the feeling was that we were close to greatness.

When it came to Dermot Desmond the thinking was basically that for a man who’d put tens of millions in what was another five?

That might seem a bit rich to just advocate somebody else spending a sum of money that most of us can only dream of spending but looked at now I do think it would have been money well spent.

benefactor not owner

Overall Desmond’s role as benefactor rather than owner has been a mixed blessing. He’s kept us from getting into the kind of mess that Rangers have been in for at least 6 years it is true but too often he simply been seen as an absentee landlord. He’s done a lot for the club, is, by all accounts, an avid fan of the team as well but too often he is an obscure figure. He has, I think, to be more ‘hands on’ in the times ahead. Our voice needs to be heard. At the moment one tycoon is being heard and he’s not in charge of Celtic. We have to challenge this state-of-affairs though it won’t be easy.

As I said earlier one of the biggest problems I had to readjusting to life back in Scotland was the realisation that Rangers were the biggest club within Scotland and, let’s face it, Rangers are one of our big problems. Rivals on the field, they have a far better public profile in the Scottish media.

In part this is because the media is, ultimately, scared of biting the hand that feeds them. The Evening Times, The Sun, Scottish Television, BBC Radio Scotland, Radio Clyde and the disgrace that is The Daily Record all seem to be in thrall to the adventures of Walter, Dave, Coisty and Barry and in part this will be because these organisations are read/watched/listened to by vast numbers of Rangers’ fans. This sycophancy means that a gloss is put on almost every story involving Rangers showing them in a better light than it possibly deserves.

In contrast, almost every story connected with Celtic- whether it be qualifying for the second phase of the Champions’ League (again) or the recommendation by the club that players avoid the city centre to avoid trouble - has a negative spin put on it by these same media outlets who so puff up Rangers.

In fact, the apparent negativity towards us seems to me to be a bit odd as, while Celtic’s support in Scotland may be smaller than Rangers it is surely still pretty substantial.

But, leaving aside the fact that the editors of Scotland’s most popular media organisations seem to be intent on antagonising a substantial minority of their audience, the current media position also makes me wonder what is happening at Celtic Park to try and counter this non-stop barrage of disinformation about our club. As I see it we have two options.

On the one hand the club can decide it just won’t have anything to do with the media- especially I would suggest the print media and STV who increasingly seem in a football context to be nothing more than mouthpieces for David Murray - and have done with them. Let them print what they like and for us to provide no interviews, exclusives or what have you as occasionally happens even now. We have our own TV channel, our own newspaper and a website so why not just communicate through them?

On the other hand Celtic could actually try and take a leaf out of Murray’s handbook and try and charm the mainstream media into giving us a better press. Personally that seems something of a lowering of our dignity but a lot of Celtic fans still read/listen/watch these things so why not try and change things so that just occasionally a story like announcing the re-signing of a player like Aiden McGeady is presented as being a good thing and not, as was the case in the Rectum, where a throwaway line about wanting, one day, to play in the English Premiership becomes the headline?

As the hacks in this country seem capable of being bought off with the occasional lunch of succulent lamb in oak-panelled rooms why not try a similar approach? I dare say there are a fair few Huns-with-typewriters out there but surely some of the hacks - Hugh’ Bonkers’ Keevins is an obvious example- are far more basically sympathetic to Celtic than the other lot? Who knows, a wee drop of Gevrey-Chambertin and double helpings of mint sauce might just work.

Whatever, Celtic has to do something to change the constant sniping at the club from outside. Either the fans should (in some instances drop the habit of a lifetime when it comes to their newspaper purchases and) support an officially declared boycott by the club of these organisation or else the club tries to get some good publicity. If we do nothing we just carry on being annoyed by these organisations continuing to dance to a tune played by Murray.

how do you solve a problem like the Rangers?

But Rangers are a problem for us. A permanent on field rival, supporters who offend us [and who bring disgrace on their country] and with a better sense of public relations than ourselves it is inevitable that we pay a lot of attention to them. But part of the problem is that we have ended up paying them too much attention.
It seems to me that our strategy when it has come to the signing of players has for years now been based around keeping (just) ahead of Them.

I get really fed up reading and hearing talk about how, for example, last summer we had the opportunity to really pull away from Rangers by using our supposedly superior spending power. That was (and is) to my mind negative thinking. We should be looking to strengthen our team for our sake, to make us competitive at the highest level and to be spoken of as being one of the top clubs and teams in Europe not just as being fractionally better than a club with an historical lack of style, currently no money and that seems more interested in currying favour with mediocre journalists and second rate broadcasters than aspiring to greatness.

In striving to keep just ahead of Them we have failed to maximise our own potential. Keeping ahead of them is great (and infinitely preferable to being behind them) but it is not enough for this Celtic fan.

And then there is the Rangers support.

The recent furore over the singing of The Famine Song further highlights our over-interest in things Rangers. Right off I have to say I cannot think of anything the Rangers support has come up with that has shown them in a worse light. To describe the song as racist and sectarian - whether in the edited version sung over and over again at Celtic Park in the closing minutes of the match at the end of August or the unexpurgated version easily found on various websites - is to give the song a dignity it does not deserve though it certainly is both of those things as well. Simply, it is a song of hatred for your fellow human beings. To describe it as ‘banter’ is no better than the workplace bully who uses the same word to describe homophobic, boorish, sexist or racist language whilst Rangers own mealy-mouthed and essentially self-interested reaction to the song has shown them in a dismal light.

But I am not sure that, however understandable, our reaction has been the right one. Everything John Reid said on the subject I agreed with but I am not sure if he wouldn’t have better saying it in private - possibly to draw it to the attention of those who run the SPL, the SFA and UEFA.

Again if we had hacks on our own side we might have had more than Graham Speirs (in the less than widely read London Times) pointing out both the nastiness of the song and the obfuscating response to it by Rangers. There is I think little to be glad about in being right about something (as we are in this case) if it is you who suffer more as a result and I have an uneasy feeling that in protesting about this in the way we have that we are going to suffer. Already the few occasions on which Irish Rebel Songs- or more specifically one, The Boys of The Old Brigade- have been aired the media (and others) have seen fit to highlight the fact. One of the things I didn’t miss about Scotland was the obsessive desire to show that one side is as bad as the other.

the Gordon Strachan question

In the forty one years I’ve supported Celtic there has, though, been no more difficult figure to assess than Gordon Strachan. Three and a half years into the job and there is no real consensus amongst the support as to his worth. I know myself that I really thought he was past salvation after his first game in charge and again after a tepid defeat at Ibrox in March of 2008 only to marvel at the way he turned things round both times.
I suppose to sum up most would say he’s been successful but his teams a bit stolid, a bit boring even. Neither aspects of this assessment are the whole truth though.

For a start, has he really been that successful? Three league championships in a row, two last-16 qualifications in the Champions League and two other domestic trophies suggest that he is. But the fiascos in Slovakia and Denmark on the continent, the worst performance by a Celtic team in my lifetime when we lost to Clyde on the day Roy Keane made his debut and a losing record in matches with Rangers are handy arguments to suggest otherwise.
His track record with signings is mixed - Artur Boruc and Shunsuke Nakamura have been inspired signings whose feats to date will be remembered for decades to come, but on the other hand there have been real flops like Gravesen, Donati and Adam Virgo.

Some players like Caldwell and Scott Brown have come good whilst others like Vennegoor of Hesselink and Zurawski have deteriorated after generally good first seasons. For every plus point in his reign there seems to be an equally strong negative.

Gordon Strachan strikes me as being a remarkably stubborn character, a man who sticks to his principles. Although it might not necessarily attract great headlines his impatience at the (alleged) lack of professionalism shown by some of our players shows him in a good light - showed him to be a man who wants to improve our club. He has stuck with players derided by fans and pundits alike and in some instances they have come good - no mere fan or journalist will tell WGS what to do.

And is it true that WGS’ side is dull to watch? In fact once the team founds its feet after about three weeks of his first season, Gordon Strachan’s side was, until the victory over Man U, a far more attractive proposition than Martin O’Neill’s had been post-Henrik.

The two home victories over Rangers in November 2005 (which I watched in Spain) were as contemptuous of their opposition as you could wish to see and the3-0 win over Benfica was a truly majestic display, in my opinion the best in Europe of its type since the 5-0 win over Sporting Lisbon in 1983 at least.

Since then Celtic have indeed been less pleasing on the eye and yet even over the last two years there have been good runs of form. The opening and closing weeks of last season were consistently impressive and even this season victories at Fir Park, Rugby Park and Tynecastle were stylish enough to make me wonder why we play so dully so often.

Currently the situation is beginning to look bleak again though. The European debacle was not unpredictable given the injury problems - though the manner in which we lost in Denmark was well night unacceptable. But still the team looks to be creaking ominously. Nakamura and Boruc have been magnificent signings but for different reasons neither is the player he was in the recent past. McGeady, Brown and Maloney are potentially very, very good Celtic players and, with one aforementioned exception, none of the current squad is anything like as poor as Martin O’Neill’s fringe players Sylla, Laursen and Henri Camara.

But the play looks very predictable now, we lack pace in every area of the field and although MacDonald, Vennegoor of Hesselink and Samaras are okay strikers they are emphatically inferior to Larsson, Sutton and Hartson. In addition our defenders play far too many aimless passes forward and collectively we start an awful lot of games in low gear- instead of coasting to victory over mediocre teams we have to chase victories in the last quarter. We still have a team which, domestically at least, looks to have the self belief to go on and grab those victories and, in fact, we do still try, mostly, to play the ball on the ground but as I say we look to be struggling a bit. Our manager has to turn things round soon.

Will he stay though? At times I think he must be extremely disenchanted with the way he his viewed by the support. They always say that every Celtic manager is three bad results away from a crisis but in Gordon’s case it can often seem like he is given only one bad result away from one - hell, a sluggish victory is enough to have thousands slating him.

Not even John Barnes was subjected to such criticism. He is plainly bored by the idiocies of the local media and treats them with barely disguised contempt [I totally understand his feelings but, like so much with Gordon Strachan, I am not sure he’s got things quite right by making his contempt so plain.] .

But he seems at other times to relish the job, to enjoy working with players who are willing to work for him - his loyalty to Caldwell, McManus and Brown means that all three are now better players than they were previously - and above all he knows he’s got a great job.

Overall I think Celtic are entering into a difficult phase in their development - at least as challenging as was the case when MON left. The most pressing aspect is the environment we are likely to find ourselves operating in. If crowds fall and income decreases for all our prudence we may not in fact be able to avoid the worst of whatever the Credit Crunch has to throw at us.

At times, since my permanent return, I have wondered if the club has taken the loyalty of the support just too much for granted and in difficult financial times we may find that loyalty, that faith stretched to breaking point. Celtic - as a club- have to communicate with those who support it a lot better than they do now- bland assurances that the manager will have money to spend in this or that transfer window is not enough.

The support has to understand that times have changed and that knee-jerk reaction to defeat like ’spend some f---king money’ are both puerile and pointless.

Because the club may well have to scale down its financial clout further there has nevertheless to be a re-assertion by the board that our ambitions are not merely about being better than Rangers - or even just reaching the last eight of the Champions’ League - but to be a great team and a great club that is admired across the world and possibly even by The Rectum.

If the club succeeds in convincing the support that these loftier ambitions are still realistic and attainable then the support should remain as faithful as it can in the hard times.

What is also needed, though, is a better team and perhaps even more so a better approach to team building. Gordon Strachan has signed an awful lot of squad players over the years which has left Celtic with rather a ’flat’ squad in terms of quality - lots of ‘quite good’ and even ‘good’ players but not enough ‘very good’ far less ‘great’ ones. There might not be anymore Laursens, Syllas or Camaras but there aren‘t any Henriks, Lubos or Chris Suttons either.

There are signs in the recently announced curfew of Celtic players’ social lives that - whatever the reasoning behind bringing it in - that Gordon Strachan is attempting to bring in a greater level of professionalism at Celtic Park. It’s long overdue. Greater professionalism and more actual work in sustaining and developing the skills of the players might not just help us keep us where we are it may get us to where, I think, we want to go. Anything less will result in failure.

The days of shortcuts to success are, hopefully, over. There may well be trouble ahead but if Celtic can refocus on what they want to achieve and the players and managers can work on developing what they have been hired for in the first place then we can still enjoy success. So let’s drop the obsession with Rangers, the bias of the media and looking for quick fixes. Let’s just go to work.

JIM PAYNE