a tipping point?

 

Jim Payne on the importance of this season to the future wellbeing of the club.

I know we all say it every season but this new, but already tarnished season, is vital for Celtic. It is my opinion that not since 1997-98 has it been so vital for Celtic to win the league. We all remember that particular season had, shall I say, a happy ending and I doubt that if come April or May 2011 Neil Lennon’s side clinches the league there will be an outpouring of euphoria to match that which greeted our 2-0 win over St Johnstone in May 1998, but I’d still think we shall all be pretty pleased if we do win.

As with May 1998 relief will be in the air. Unlike in May 1998 when the relief was felt most keenly by the support those who will be most relieved will be those who comprise the Celtic hierarchy who surely now realise that our financial situation depends more than anything else on success on the pitch.

I’ll be happy and relieved if we do it but I’ll not forget that we should never have found ourselves in this state.

I don’t need to repeat the entire back catalogue of failures of the Celtic hierarchy of the last, I’d say, nine years. This and other fanzines and the many and varied websites that make up Celtic Cyberspace have been telling it as it has been, so you know what has happened.

The results of the failure has meant that in a near decade in which Rangers have been in a financial mess at least as bad as ours was in the days of Doctor Kelly, John C. McGinn and David Smith’s ’Two Celtics’ Rangers have still managed to win thirteen domestic trophies to our ten.

I know that their SPL win in 2003 still leaves a bad taste in the mouth and I’d concede that however bad our manager and team were last season there were too many times I heard a voice* say ‘this is not fair’ after yet another ‘honest mistake’ was made by a match official. I know that the trophy count doesn’t tell the whole story of why Rangers have actually won more than us even though they‘ve had rather less than two halfpennies to rub together. The thing is, given our financial situation and theirs, last season we should have been annoyed when Mowbray’s side flopped not just because it was embarrassing to behold but because we should have been going for ten-in-a-row.

Whatever, the mistakes of the board have been made and for the second year in a row we have failed to qualify for the Champions League. Rangers will make up the numbers in that tournament again this season and yet simply by taking part while we don’t their financial situation will be eased - a bit - as a result.

The Celtic Board’s timid/lazy/complacent/myopic management has not just led us to mediocrity on the park but Lawell and Co’s alleged financial acumen and obsession with eliminating debt has in fact led to the point where our financial superiority over Rangers is in the course of being lost as well. For the first time in well over a decade they play to bigger home crowds than we do. That’s one, perhaps five million pounds a season, advantage lost.

Our dominance of them on the park was illusory - thirteen trophies to ten says it all - but now our financial dominance may be about to evaporate also.

Ten thousand fans have gone, perhaps forever. Another failure this season will see the steady drift away turn into a mad headlong rush for the exits. And the board knows this.

We are potentially at a tipping point where Rangers and Celtic will, almost by default, be back to where they were in February 1994- Rangers as dominant off the field as they are off it.

I have no love for the current regime, but in the absence of any serious alternative we are stuck with them. I don’t want to see a return to ‘Sack the Board’, boycotts and Celtic being also-rans. I am fed up with the embarrassments of the last two years and yet if Celtic doesn’t do it this year what happens in the future will just be more of the humiliation of recent times and worse. Quite simply, we have to win.

But will we?

The jury isn’t even listening to closing speeches from Counsel far less considering its verdict on Neil Lennon and his Celtic team.

Regarding the former I have to admit that I was not happy when he was given the job on a permanent basis. I like him, thought him an underrated player and think he is intelligent and perceptive enough to be a good manager given time. It’s easy to say that last season he lost the only match that really counted but I think that’s being unfair on him. People forget that by the time Mowbray’s side was caving in against St Mirren there was a possibility that Celtic might just get caught by Dundee United for second place in the league and so Neil deserves more credit for last season than he has been given.

Losing to Ross County was a big debit entry in the ledger (as was that numbing loss in Utrecht) but my quibble remains his lack of experience. I know Pep Guardiola has enjoyed great success in his first job as manager and that all managers have to start somewhere, sometime, but for every Guardiola there are Ciro Ferraras, Leonardos and John Barneses- young articulate, untested managers who failed ignominiously.

But we have Neil Lennon and I want him to succeed.

Results so far are decidedly mixed and it concerns me that one of the most obvious failings under Mowbray - the propensity for collapsing when under pressure- has not been checked. Braga and Utrecht were bitter nights indeed. Replacing the disappointing Zaluska with Foster may work and the new centre back, Majostorovic, looks grittier than anything we’ve had in that area of the field since Bobo Balde went to the African Cup of Nations in 2004 but there are worrying signs that we still have a soft centre. There may be humiliations ahead.

And for the first time in my forty three years as a supporter we do not have one demonstrably high class player on our, as Derek Rae would no doubt say, roster. We have had worse teams than the current one but terrible managers like Brady, Barnes and Mowbray were still able to call upon players of proven class such as Elliott, McStay, Collins, Larsson, Viduka, Lambert, Moravcik, Boruc and Keane.

Neil Lennon has players who may yet become high class players but right now there are no Celtic players who would, definitely, get a game for a top Premiership, Bundesliga, la Liga or Serie A side.

A lot of new faces have come in but in reality substantially more money has come in for players going out than we have used bringing players in - despite the banner headlines Celtic have not splashed the cash this summer.

As it is, Izaguirre, Kayal and to a lesser degree Juarez look promising and I wouldn’t write off any of the other new signings just yet (though at least three look pretty dodgy to me on early evidence) but signs of true class are faint so far.

A more intriguing figure than any of the new signings is young James Forrest who looked our best player in the first two league games. Having lived through Simon Donnelly (the ’new Kenny Dalglish‘) and Mark Burchill (’Scotland’s Michael Owen‘) as well as Aiden McGeady (who looked the best winger we’d had since Jinky on the nights he tore Benfica and Shakthar to shreds but whose career with us rather fizzled out**) I’m not rushing to judge young James.

An even more intriguing figure than Forrest is Paddy McCourt. Two and a half years on from his arrival I doubt he’s started a dozen games which is a troubling reality. Perennially dismissed as lacking basic fitness he also seems ludicrously injury prone (and prone to picking up ludicrous injuries as was demonstrated after his wonderful goal versus Inverness). During the Utrecht match at Celtic Park with Celtic comfortably two ahead I thought it would be worth bringing him on for the last quarter of the game to try and get us a third goal but the general feeling was that his game lacked the defensive qualities that modern football requires.

Leaving aside the point that I can’t see what defensive qualities Shaun Maloney brings to the table this argument reminded me of the same argument I heard in my time in Australia concerning, of all things, the visiting English cricket team.

I’m not sure how many readers of NTV followed that series but to sum up England’s manager, Duncan Fletcher, preferred the workmanlike Ashley Giles over Monty Panesaar as the team’s spinner. Monty, I was told, couldn’t field or bat to save himself but unlike Giles I also was told that he had the potential to bowl his team to victory - as it was England was whitewashed five matches to nil with Panesaar picked only when all was lost.

From what I have seen McCourt, like Nakamura and Lubo, has the ability to produce something special when neither the team nor he is playing well and you cannot say that about any other player in Celtic‘s squad. I am not sure that Paddy McCourt has it in his makeup to succeed against really good sides but against crappy teams of the type we shall face in the coming months I reckon there is ample proof to show that if he stays fit he’ll run riot. If picked.

Has modern football become so boring that having an artisan left winger who can ‘track back’ is preferable even against moderate opposition to one who might win you a game and entertain the crowd?

So, we have a squad then which lacks proven class and a manager who lacks experience. It’s far from an ideal situation to go into this most vital of seasons.

There are other factors to consider. Rangers don’t have any particularly good players but they are in a Scottish context hard to beat and since conceding a late equaliser in December 2006 in a match shamefully refereed by Kenny Clark we’ve had a poor record against them ’head-to-head’.

Their manager, Walter Smith, is retiring at the end of the season which is something of an unknown factor as is, I suppose, the refereeing we are likely to encounter. Last season was, on that last point, almost beyond belief and we can only hope there is no repetition but I am not holding my breath. Rangers have to be stopped - because if in the coming seasons they gain a sense that they are in true ascendancy they will not show us the mercy we showed them when we were meant to be ahead of them financially.

I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic about our chances of stopping the rot. Some of our new players will fire and others will flop miserably. I do know that we have to stop wilting at the first sign of pressure and we have to win games when things are running against us.

We also need either Hooper or Stokes (preferably both) to score goals with the regularity he did for his previous club.
We are not capable of controlling how Rangers do (except when they play us) and the officiating we’ll have to put up with, but we can control how we do.

We may be playing in a mediocre league but we might as well win it. We have to. And given how things have been for quite a while now that may be our biggest problem.

Success is essential but it is not unattainable.

JIM PAYNE

 

* For some reason it’s John Hurt’s voice I hear.