What’s the Plan

The dust has now settled on last season and the fixtures are out. Celtic fans have celebrated a double since the end of May. Some fans celebrated it in style in Cabo Roig in Spain at the Celtic Supporters Festival while in the US New Orleans hosted the North American Celtic Convention.

Now all eyes switch to the Celtic board room to see if they can deliver for club legend Martin O’Neill who against all the odds delivered the title and the Scottish Cup. The last week of the league campaign will live long in the memory. It was tense, dramatic and in the end gave the Celtic Fans a high that no drug could ever do!

Confidence is not high within the Celtic support that the current board can deliver for O’Neill after two very poor transfer windows and a management merry go round. Bringing in Martin O’Neill will buy them time. If Celtic do not hit the ground running and winning games he will be given grace by the Celtic support.

Celtic CEO Michael Nicholson has failed to communicate any forward planning to a restless Celtic support. His last interview was to welcome Wilfried Nancy to the club and tell us he was the boards No. 1 choice to succeed Brendan Rodgers.

What ever Celtic fans thoughts are on Brendan he is a top manager and he delivered plenty of silverware and showed us he could adapt his tactics in Europe after the mauling in Dortmund, he would eventually lead Celtic out of the new CL faze for two competitive ties against Bayern Munich. We left the stadium in Munich that night full of optimism for the future!

Another person who may divide the Celtic Support is former Celtic CEO Peter Lawell and again what ever people think of him he was a far superior operator than Nicholson. When Martin O’Neill left Celtic the club was in debt of £45 million. Gordon Strachan came in and together they cut the budget and made a profit while making the last 16 of the Champions League for the first time.

The alarm bells started ringing after the double when reports filtered through that Dermot Desmond had only spoken to two candidates for the job, O’Neill and Robbie Keane. You would imagine that a club as big as Celtic could cast the net a little further. Don’t get me wrong I am happy with MON returning and I think he deserved first refusal after what he done not once but twice last season. He steadied the ship and sailed us to victory.

At the moment O’Neill has no backroom team in place and the Celtic players will be back for pre-season soon ahead of 3 planned friendlies against Shels in Dublin, Sporting in Portugal and AC Milan at home. Player recruitment will be key and once again Celtic have failed to do any business early with the exception of releasing defender Stephen Welsh who was on loan last season at Motherwell.

I hope and pray that I am wrong about the current Celtic board and that they prove me wrong and deliver a short term plan to get Celtic into the Champions League and give Martin a decent budget to improve the first team. They also need to be putting a longer term plan in place that does not include kicking the can down the road and hoping for the best.