Things must be going well.
Dermot Desmond has raised his head above the parapet and spoken to the masses.
He didn’t say much that we didn’t already know, but he did go out of his way to defend Peter Lawwell and Neil Lennon, and by adding a cheeky wee dig about the liquidation of Rangers, he clearly figured that’s what most of us will take from his musings.
A bit like Lawwell’s comment about a bid for a Rangers player coming from another planet in another galaxy.
That sort of thing.
Desmond was interviewed by Gerry McCulloch, and as ever with these arranged chats, the questions were designed to elicit what the main man wanted to say, rather than as genuine enquiries to ascertain facts or opinions.
The full text is as follows… with some additional comments. ( taken from the Record, but nevertheless it’s probably mostly accurate )
Gerry McCulloch: Can I ask you about your future? There has been speculation that your shareholding may be up for sale, that there are interested parties looking to buy them – would you like to comment on that and set the record straight?
Desmond: “I’m very glad to do so. Nobody has ever approached me about buying shares from me, that’s in the last 27 years or so.
“I have no intention of selling any shares, not now or in the future, even if somebody offers me a price three or four times the current share price, I’m not selling.
“I’ve been privileged and honoured to be able to be shareholder of a club I supported as a youth and I’ve been a fan for well over 50 years.
“Therefore I’ll continue to be a fan and shareholder and hopefully contribute to the continued development of the club.”
Aren’t we lucky ? One the one hand, it does protect us from an offshore owner, or owners, using the club to launder money or exploit the fanbase…stop laughing… but on the other it does promise a future of conservative financial policy. You can;t disagree with it to an extent, it’s working, but a little more ambition would have been nice in the past.
Would ange have got the board’s backing for a rebuild if he hadn’t been able to do it within their remit ? That’s the real question.
It could also mean he’s hanging on because he’s concerned one or more of his sons might make an arse of it. Which is probably closer to the truth. They’re not known for their discretion, and certainly don’t have their fathers business acumen.
McCulloch: Is that answer perhaps indicative of the passion that not just you, but your family have for the club?
Desmond: “All of my children are really passionate about Celtic. They’ve got that from me.
“It’s ingrained in them, their love for Celtic. My son Ross, he’s more passionate than me when he’s watching a match.
“Just keep every piece of furniture out of his way when Celtic are playing. But I would hope that they will take over the mantle from me and carry the baton forward.”
That kind of backs up my thoughts that he may not entirely trust them. Throwing furniture about might help run a business if you’re Tony Soprano, but doesn’t usually work in the real world.
But hey…they’re all Celtic fans….just like us. Indeed, just like Peter Lawwell used to say about the board when the support wanted a supporter among their number.
McCulloch: The club has moved on from last season’s challenges and disappointments. There’s a positive feeling around the place now but what did we learn as a club through that period?
Desmond: “As a club we’re continuously learning, we’re continually trying to improve every aspect of the club. Our facilities, structure and personnel, that’s a given every year.
“If we look at last year and analyse last year. Let’s look at it cold, let’s look at the facts. First of all, we wanted to retain all our squad to win 10 in a row – that we did.
“We wanted to retain the players we had on loan, Elyounoussi and Forster from Southampton.
“We agreed terms that both could come, both players wanted to come, those deals would be consummated but unfortunately at the last minute Fraser Forster decided to stay at Southampton.
“In the interim we’d let Craig Gordon go and that was the start of the challenges we faced from the previous year. We were in need of a goalkeeper to replace both Fraser Forster and Craig Gordon. We did that.
“We also recruited other players so that in every position we had cover. We got Shane Duffy at cover for centre-back and we did that throughout the whole squad.
“There was mistakes made, maybe in selection, mistakes made that were Covid related, mistakes made by players going on trips. Again it wasn’t from the lack of having the squad or dedicated manager or coaches to resolve the issues.
“You may say we should’ve got rid of the manager earlier on. This is a manager who was an outstanding player for Celtic, who won the league in his own right during the first period as manager.
“That won basically two Trebles and also that everybody endorsed the view that Celtic were favourites to win the league.
“All the pundits and commentators and, indeed, the betting companies had us odds-on favourites. Unfortunately that didn’t happen.
“I believe support should be given, not when you’re doing well, support should be given when you meet challenges and difficulties and the Celtic culture is to give support when people need it.
“We wanted to show loyalty to Lenny and give him the opportunity to turn things around. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and that was history, so you deal with that, you say to yourself, ‘What can we do about it?’
“The only thing we could do about that then is you always build everything from the top down.
“Lenny resigned and our objective then was to recruit a manager but when do you recruit a manager? What’s the right time to recruit a manager? Maybe not mid season, during the last quarter of a year.”
McCulloch: In terms of recruiting a new manager, there’s always an element of risk in a situation like that – there were some, many who were sceptical when it became clear that Ange Postecoglou was the man you wanted. It’s fair to say those sceptics have now all been silenced. Can you take us back to the recruitment process and what led to Ange becoming Celtic manager?
DD: “I think to provide a bit of history on how managers have been recruited since 2000… in 2000 we had a little bit of a coup at Celtic.
“That wasn’t public but we had a coup at Celtic. This was formed by Brian Quinn, Patrick Sheehy, and myself. We were unhappy with the progress we were making at Celtic. So what we decided was that we needed a new chairman.
“We needed a new chief executive, who was identified as Peter Lawwell. He came a little bit afterwards. Then I went about looking for a manager. I brought Martin O’Neill to the table.
“What Peter and I do is we put five names on a list that we feel could be good managers of Celtic. We’ve always had a list of five and interviewed five.
“In this case we had a list of five, Ange was on the list. I had no idea who Ange was, I couldn’t pronounce his name. Peter was insistent he was a person we should put on the list. He had a great record.
“We pursued another manager which is public. He was excellent to deal with, a person with integrity and ability, I couldn’t say enough good things about him but unfortunately for personal reasons he couldn’t go on with the position.
“I got that phone call at 12.30 on a Thursday and I made arrangements to speak to Ange at 5pm UK time, he was in Japan, to speak with him the next morning.
“In between that I had looked up and researched quite a bit about Ange and what he’d achieved, what his type of personality is.
“I’d watched that Craig Foster interview several times that he gave which showed he was a man of determination, integrity, passion, individualism.
“He was a leader so I was pleased to interview Ange. I got a good lot of background to Ange as well. I spoke to Ange about 5pm and had a long conversation with him. I had no doubt he was the person for Celtic in every way.
“He was the only person ever not to ask, ‘What is my budget? Can I bring X, Y and Z?’ He said he’d evaluate everything when he got there. I was convinced.
“I said to him Celtic is more than a club and it can’t be a mercenary role to take the money and use it as a stepping stone, passing on, being something that you’re going to use Celtic as your career development rather than Celtic is the club you want to intimately pursue and manage.
“He gave this great reply, ‘In the words of the Proclaimers, I will walk 500 miles and I will walk 500 more to manage Celtic’. So I said, that’s our man.”
Presumably Desmond was thinking about the saving on his air fare to Glasgow.
Whilst Postecoglou ticks all the boxes, and is an upgrade on any manager bar one in my lifetime, it does make me wonder when Desmond hired Mowbray, Barnes, and Lennon if he asked the same questions.
He certainly couldn’t say he told Rodgers that the job wasn;t a stepping stone, although in fairness there is more to that relationship than we’ll probably ever know, and Martin O’Neill lost interest when someone took the chequebook off him, so I think the best thing we can say is he finally knows what he is looking for in a manager.
Waiting so long for Eddie Howe to decide f he was coming was weak, and it could have led to all sorts of demands from other potential applicants that could have set us back years.
We were lucky that we’ve found a man who understands the club, and excels in management and coaching, thus saving the board at least one wage, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a mood bordering on sexual ecstasy filled the boardroom when he said he didn;t want to bring anyone with him.
To credit Peter Lawwell with finding him is noble, it may even be accurate, but there is a hidden worry here.
If it was Lawwell’s links with Manchester City that found him, it means that Manchester City are aware of him.
And no doubt their struggling neighbours will be as well.
Which will lead to a few pre semi final headlines about interest in him, but one thing we have seen is that Ange is a man of his word.
He says he is happy here, and he is building something. He has everything he wants to achieve something by his own hand, and that seems to appeal to him more than being a chequebook manager.
Very much in the Stein mould as opposed to the Rodgers or O’Neill style.
As he says…
“As I keep saying, I’ve just felt totally supported from day one. And it’s been really important for me to do what I need to do because, as people are aware, I came in by myself and that can feel fairly isolating if you don’t get support straight away.
“I’ve been really fortunate. The fans have been unbelievable towards me, the staff here, the players, but that includes the management and the board.
What struck me about him was in the Open goal interview at Lennoxtown when he said other clubs had approached him, but given the impression they weren’t really that keen on him. In fairness to Desmond, he made Ange feel wanted, which means his European break came at a bigger club than he could have hoped for, one where he can make a mark in European competition, and I suspect he wants to build a team and style to do that, rather than just buy one.
Which makes him and Celtic kind of made for each other, and hopefully he’ll grow to love the place in the same way as our last world class performer, Henrik Larsson.
It’s not that Celtic rescued Larsson from obscurity, he would have succeeded anywhere, as would Ange.
It’s that we gave them the chance to do so when they needed it.
It’s good for everyone.
McCulloch: The rest is history as they say, but how have you enjoyed watching an Ange Postecoglou Celtic team, and the style that has been developed?
Desmond: “Even when we lost a number of matches at the start of the season, I was absolutely convinced that we were on the right track.
“He was wonderful in the way that he managed the players, he was wonderful in developing players, he was wonderful at improving players. He’s been fantastic and he’s a wonderful person.
“He’s embraced the club in every aspect. He understands the culture of the club, he understands the desire of the supporters, he understands the necessity to play attacking and attractive football.
“One of his words in the interview, which rings with me, he didn’t promise to win the league, he didn’t promise to win cups, he said, ‘I will get the fans off their seats’.
“Part of his duty and function in managing the football team is to make the fans appreciate the style of football.
“Just to clarify the position – it came up in a number of times in misinformed press reports and other commentaries about recruiting players – in the last 20 odd years, the manager of the club decides what players to take in, not the board, not anybody else.
“Searches provide information to the manager, the manager then makes a decision, maybe in conjunction with his coaching staff.
“He makes the ultimate decision, he’s chairman of the board. Ange is chairman of the board at Celtic as far as football recruitment is concerned, and all things football are concerned.
“He is the person, and he is the person that takes the brickbats and the credit, so that’s the recruitment policy.
“It’s not the board that decides yes or no. What the board does do, it will set out the budget of what we can afford, so that we are going to be prudent, financially prudent, in the way we run the club.
“We do not want the club to get in a financial state, where the club goes into liquidation and there is going to be a new Celtic.
“We want our history to be continuous, not to be curtailed through financial mismanagement.”
McCulloch: Looking ahead, what are the next steps for the club? Do you see a bright future for Celtic both domestically and also in a European context?
DD: “Any business I’m involved in we always build from the top down. So if you look at where Celtic is at the present time, we’ve got a wonderful board, who are all Celtic supporters, people of diverse accomplishments but all passionate Celtic supporters.
“We have an executive that is led by Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay, and they are absolutely wonderful people. They understand Celtic, they’ve been with Celtic quite a bit of time, they understand the ambitions, they understand the constraints.
“They understand the developing strategies that we have and they are totally committed and trustworthy, and people we can be extremely proud of running Celtic.
“We have a great manager. Irrespective of what happens at the end of this year, we still have a great manager. He’s only had two transfer windows. Full judgement will be made after transfer windows three and four.
“I think I should also say that all of this came about, the success of Celtic, over the last 20 years. I don’t think it’s been the most successful period of Celtic’s history, the last 20 years, we didn’t win a European Cup, we got a European final.
“But I think we should acknowledge the work of Peter Lawwell. Peter has been instrumental in carrying out that work. He is the one that recruited Michael Nicholson, recruited Chris McKay, he’s the person that developed Lennoxtown.
“People should know this, he was offered three times the salary by English Premier clubs but his commitment and love of Celtic made him stay at Celtic. I want to put on record the value of the job he did.
“So with the board, with a manager in Ange Postecoglou, a management team led by Michael Nicholson, I think it’s bright.
“We will go through tough times, but you need great people to get over tough times and we have great people leading us at Celtic.”
A question about the future answered by a tribute to the former CEO.
He wasn’t even listening to the questions, was he ?
Desmond let Sevco catch up. He imo choose to save them by creating last seasons disaster. Hate saying this about a fellow Irishman but I don’t trust him and his tory masonic mates and I want him gone.
Hear hear, I also think it’s abhorrent that a man who has presided over the Hunger Games should be anywhere near Celtic……. Sorry John, on a more serious note I totally agree with you.
Just a question, genuine, I may be naive or poorly informed but what does your reference to DD and the ‘Hunger Games’ mean.
Jim,
Donald Sutherland had a hint of the Desmond look about him in those movies. Just a bit of Bhoyish daftness.
As we D’ho.
Thnx.
☘️☘️☘️
Absolutely bonkers to say that sevco ‘caught up’. They won a trophy in a behind closed doors season when we were in free fall. It took one transfer window to fix things, and a second to blow them out of the water. The additional £20-£25m (over regular UEL participation) that we now have access to, is not the only difference between us and them. We’re light years away in the distance, and they know it.
Can’t agree more John A. The most corrupt untrustworthy man in Ireland. A Tory scumbag. He will sell up in 6 months to someone with even less interest than him. Horrible human being. A pox on all his tax dodging houses.
Desmond is the common denominator in all failure at Celtic since he joined, unnecessary failure.The peaks have always been followed by very unequal and much deeper,avoidable troughs which is the rollercoaster we’ll probably ride yet again when it’s Ange’s turn to move on.We’ll learn nothing from the past 20 years and be expected to be grateful for being better than an Ibrox club whilst being humiliated from a position of strength that will again be totally unnecessary and btw, billionaires are everything that is wrong with the world we live in today, a small demographic that isn’t happy just to be multi millionaire’s, the ruination of society and sport is on them,they and their wealth are no saviours of club nor community.
Desmond is the coming denominator in all our failures and all our successes too. I thought Mowbray was a good appointment. Both Hibs and WBA played great football. A former captain who survived a major personal tragedy. It did not work out, Barnes had some good moments but was proved a poor appointment. Lenny was a risk both times, hindsight is wonderful, a great player and captain some great trophy wins. The strategic issue is did we nurture Second Rangers or were they always likely to return in some guise? That’s my take.
Desmond and Lawwell helped Charlie Green pull the corpse out the ground and personally took turns giving it the kiss of life.
Now they want us to thank them for it.
Mowbray and Barnes were pre-2000 ie before his alleged coup. Incidentally Lawwell wasn’t appointed CE until after Seville (remember his “slow lane” warning when the bean counter was appointed?).
Lennon was a lazy appointment both times, probably because Lawwell saw him as no challenge to him due to his inexperience meaning he had to accept whatever Lawwell wanted.
Any success, especially in the first stint, was despite them nothing to do with their good judgement.
O’Neill was a high-maintenance manager and if you appoint him you need to continue supporting him. Not to do so is bad management.
Similarly Rodgers was appointed with Lawwell told to butt out but wormed his way back in and Desmond did nothing to stop his corrosive behaviour.
Despite the revisionism, Ange was another Hail Mary pass and while its worked this time what’s the odds on the next one doing so?
On the basis of the pass 20 years, not very good.
Right Cha about the pre Desmond era of Mowbray and Barnes. Supporters booed FERGUS to their eternal shame but we all make mistakes. I doubt if the Rangers entity would have been gone forever though.We may not like it but they have a big support and something else would have happened, even Accrington Stanley came back! Of course folk would say at least we wouldn’t have saved them, OK.
We should remember the context to the McCann booing, as the excellent manager, who had performed an Ange like transformation and had won the league for the first time in 10 years, had been chased away.
McCann chose Jock Brown over Wim Jansen, something that the vast majority of fans disagreed with and some booing was a mild reaction to the anger that most felt.
Agree that ‘There will always be a Rangers’ as there’s no other outlet for their follow-followers to follow.
Common not coming though maybe coming too!
Lying Masonic Tory Hun loving zombie revivalist.
’Rangers are a great club with a long history.’
I wonder if he’s learned how to say Ange’s name yet instead of playing to the masses in the hope we forget just how much he’s skimmed off those massive transfer fees in his 2 decade reign.
Typical that he can’t even answer the questions he wrote himself.
I think if we demand of the players 100% effort even when we are not winning it is expected our board won’t be on the golf course and then pop up for an interview after the second choice manger (spare me the Howe guff). I really hope the Proclaimers song isn’t another Danny McGrain fantasy.
…second choice manger was appointed. Howe was just poor decision making and they got very lucky.
That’s the issue, its just down to luck and for the size of Celtic it shouldn’t be.
When it works, “we were brilliant”.
When it doesn’t, “we were unlucky”.
Not goo enough.
It’s all fantasy, Charlie.
He even had the gall to say ‘All the managers have picked the players’ despite years of evidence proving it was Lawwell forcing them on as projects, mostly failed.
He’d have been better keeping his garbage in his golf bag instead of trying to take the Celtic support fro gullible mugs again.
Though given how much skimming they’ve let him off with down the years I’m not surprised he’s so smug as to come out and further rub their noses in it.
Ah, ? No question on why the previous ceo only lasted a few months.
Of course not! Silly me
Well of course Dermot’s not gonna write awkward questions for himself that he doesn’t want to answer nor the support to know about.
As Ralph wrote, he couldn’t even address the final question without fudging it by mentioning ‘a management team led by Michael Nicholson’, which has echoes of the Lawwell hand in itself.
I could pick apart every point he made but I’ve covered all of them on this page down the years, and been abused for doing so, but I think my main point that it’s the Masons running Celtic is now taken for granted and that was why they couldn’t wait to dress the OldCo corpse in the dead man’s clothes and make it dance for the masses.
And all this pish about billionaires being ‘self made men’ is just that, a load of old hokum, as every so called billionaire has a team at his back that reaches right into the highest levels of the business world, some of whom are the real powers behind the throne.
See the excellent Celtic writer Tom Minogue’s blog for his experiences of the Freemasonic ceiling in every aspect of business, judiciary etc.
Look at Donald Trump, born into his Faither’s billions allegedly ‘going bankrupt’ only to then become a billionaire all over agin …
It’s nonsense story like that of how ‘anyone can become President’, the world is run by a criminal cartel and only the truly ruthless are allowed into the club.
All the guff in the Western media is only there to keep the people ignorant of how this place is really run, by the same crime families going back centuries so the rest of us keep slaving our lives away so our taxes can fund wars across the world on behalf of the West’s never ending quest for total hegemony.
Subliminal message sent to AyeBrokes today….7-0…..FOLLOW THAT hahaha
DD a legend in his own name, but otherwise useless in leading a great football club
Superb from the team today. Here’s hoping GG isn’t out for long. Maeda, I did say a while ago that he was undroppable, but boy oh boy, he is a remarkable wee guy who gives so much every single minute he’s on the park. Even with Madhun playing for them next week, he’ll be hard pushed to keep them in it. Exciting times Celtic, with this manager anything is possible. As for Desmond’s puff piece, a load of bollocks. As Cha stated, there was no plan, they got lucky with Ange and now the plan should be to keep the man happy.
Yesterday showed the measure of our progress this season.
Last week we had a narrow victory over the single trophy winning team from last season but yesterday we absolutely annihilated the team that won twice as many trophies.
As always, success on the field throws shade on our poor Executive management structure.
Last season to fob off the fans they talked about reviews, new structures, long-term sustainability etc.
Since then a modernising CE has been sacked to be replaced by a ‘Son of Lawwell’ clone and complete silence on other fronts (DoF etc).
This has been done because of the successes of Ange and nothing to do with them and it looks like we’re going to left with Lady Luck when he leaves, as they’re as unsuitable to run a modern football operation as they always were.
It didn’t take the Daily Pravda long to start it’s “operation-undermine Celtic” before the upcoming Cup semi-final against *rangers. “Celtic player in crash outside Parkhead”.
They’re reporting that a Celtic player was involved in a road traffic “incident” when leaving the stadium today. The exact details are fogged over,, except that the police attended and no charges were made.
They cleverly neglect to say if the Celtic player’s car hit another car or if it was the other way around….in fact they don’t even say if there was another car involved.
Be prepared for the next “operation-undermine Celtic” when they report that a Celtic player drops a chewing gum wrapper in the street.
I guess *rangers players never drink, never sleep around, never fight in the street…total paragons of virtue they are.
4-1 Celtic in the semi-final.
………and miraculously don’t catch covid when it mattered.
Now the Ibrox Evening Times “follows” on with “A CELTIC player has been involved in a road crash outside Celtic Park”. Then, since there’s actually nothing bad they can say about the player they go on with “the incident” saying “and no charges were brought against the driver.”
You see how they manage to put the word “charges” near “the driver”.
Then they say “An ambulance was not required and no one was injured.
” And then a few lines down they contradict themselves quoting Police Scotland as saying ” “Officers received report of an 18-year-old male pedestrian having been struck by a car….Emergency services attended and the male received treatment at the scene for minor injuries.”
So reading this it isn’t hard to surmise that the 18 year old carelessly or drunkenly stepped out in front of the player’s car and got bumped onto his backside…the Celtic player being totally blameless.
But they still couldn’t resist the delicious opportunity to report this non story and beef it up as much as possible to get another dig at Celtic’s image.
How do these guardians of democracy sleep at night?
I note that Aston Villa are sliding down the table. No surprise there when you appoint and inexperienced manager with only one managerial trophy. Everton also barely surviving hired another inexperienced manager with no managerial trophies. Ange has won trophies and led a team to the World Cup. He clearly has an approach that works wherever he has been. That kind of experience is what you would want in a manager. Less of a gamble than it may have initially appeared if you look at his CV
Prodigious Bhoys. Absolutely prodigious.
7 sliding celebrations. The Head Groundsman wants a word.
Such a feelin`s.
PS: We witnessed plan A-Z.
Shall The DUP man, sevco media and Ryan Jack go behind Giovanni
s back and chide the St. Mirrens forward, Eamonn Brophy ?Ryan Jack is being held hostage. He is the new huns hun, Halliday.
Dermot Desmond has thy attitude of a man with wealth. We are beneath. Though he would cower against my Mammy with a big stick.
99.8% of us have no say and that is what he expects. Dermot is gradually pulling the flat head stakes up and departing. Give the man his dues, he lasted longer than George W. Bush Jr.
D.D. is that you OUT ?
Listen to the questions ? – He wrote the questions !!
1 Fergus McCann is worth a billion Dermot Desmond’s,he’s a self absorbed wanker.
Interesting that I went into the bookies after full time on Saturday to put on a wager for the nationa. The previous coupon that gave a penalty at 13/8, a send off at 3/1 and tav to score first 7/1 Also tav to score first and sevco to win 1-0 @ 30/1 was gone and another coupon in place and NONE of the above bets were available!!!!
Will be very interesting to see the outcome in Paisley today.
Pure,beautiful,inventive Angeball
Thats all folks
HH