LAWWELL’S ADDRESS SOUNDED ARROGANT AND FAILED TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE
EVEN when Celtic try to do something that is right these days, they still get it so badly wrong. Peter Lawwell’s decision to concede that the trip to Dubai was a mistake was absolutely the correct call.
If he’d been short and to the point in his in-house interview last week, it would have been a worthwhile exercise.
All the chief executive had to do was hold his hands up, express regret and remorse, and insist that the club meant no disrespect to anyone. End of story.
Why did he feel he had to list all the reasons for Celtic being there? It sounded like excuses. It seems like the club still feel they were right to be there but it only became a bad idea because Christopher Jullien tested positive for coronavirus.
If that’s the case, they simply aren’t paying attention to the real sense of anger that’s still out there.
Do they have no consideration for the millions of people who are stuck in their houses during a second lockdown?
Have they heard about all of the elderly people who can’t see their friends and family, the growing concerns over mental health, the sacrifices that so many people are making right now and the worries so many people have about their jobs?
Lawwell’s address smacked of arrogance and the inability of the Celtic board to see the big picture that ordinary people find themselves in right now. No wonder so many fans are so disgusted. The whole thing was distasteful.
The sporting advantages Celtic got from going to Dubai the past four years were completely irrelevant in any decision-making process. The pandemic has changed everything but the club doesn’t seem to be fully tuned into that fact.
It tells me that the people making the decisions at the club have no appreciation of what’s going on beyond their own doorstep. There is now a real disconnect between them and the real world.
Does Lawwell honestly believe that Celtic have been hit harder by Covid than any other club in Scotland? If he means financially, he’s got a point. But he didn’t say that.
What about Hearts, Partick Thistle and Stranraer who were relegated? The lower league sides who’ve just had their season suspended? It was a crass and deeply insensitive comment.
From a moral point of view, Celtic should have been nowhere near Dubai.
But even if they were able to justify it to themselves from a sporting advantage stance, the associated Covid risks always far outweighed any benefit.
Didn’t they recall the Scotland Under-21 trip to Greece? David Turnbull and two other players tested positive and 11 further players had to isolate as a consequence of being close contacts. That was a direct consequence of being on a flight. As I recall, Neil Lennon was furious at this — as he was when Odsonne Edouard, Nir Bitton, Hatem Abd Elhamed and Ryan Christie were ruled out of important matches for Covid-related reasons.
Celtic have been happy to bang on about protocols and how they have led the way for Scottish football in all of this. This is despite John Kennedy recently admitting that there had been slip-ups.
Of course Jullien could have contracted Covid in Scotland but he wouldn’t have taken a flight home from Lennoxtown. That’s the entire point. And it still seems to be lost on them.
We are repeatedly told only to do what’s essential right now. Does a training trip to Dubai come into that category at this moment in time? Not for me.
Like everyone else at the moment, I worry about getting in my car and going to a supermarket, never mind going to an airport.
All we’ve heard is that the Scottish Government gave Celtic permission back in November. Just because someone tells you that you are allowed to do something, does that mean that it’s a good idea? Do they not watch the news?
I find it astonishing that someone in the hierarchy of the club, a director or one of the medical or coaching staff, didn’t come to their senses and say that it was simply a bad idea.
You always have to anticipate the worst-case scenario. There was always a chance Celtic would lose at Ibrox. From the moment they boarded that flight, anyone sitting in the sunshine with a beer was a walking PR disaster.
Maybe 20 years ago they’d have got away with it to an extent. But social media ensures there is absolutely no hiding place nowadays.
It beggars belief that no one realised the impact of those pictures by the swimming pool.
Heaven knows where Celtic go from here. The past seven months have been nothing short of a shambles, although the past week has taken it to a new level of farce.
One of the few saving graces for Celtic fans would be if Rangers don’t break the record points tally for the season.
Whether they do or not, despite drawing at Motherwell yesterday, there’s no question that Rangers have improved and have enjoyed a proper season. There’s not much you can do about that from Celtic’s point of view.
But it’s this excuse of a title challenge from a team that was supposedly going for ten in a row that really sticks in the throat of fans.
Losing the title they all wanted would have been tough had it gone to the wire but there would have been a certain degree of acceptance had that happened.
But the league is gone in mid-January. You could not completely discount the possibility of Celtic failing to finish second.
When you are capable of losing at home to Ross County and have drawn against Hibs and Livingston, games in hand don’t mean that much.
Even with 13 players missing on Saturday, there was still a good side out there that should have been demolishing Livingston — even if they are on a great run of form.
This is Celtic at Celtic Park against Livingston. There are no excuses.
The fact there was no recognised striker is entirely Celtic’s own fault. Why on earth, at the very least, wasn’t the squad put into two bubbles for Dubai, with the four strikers split two and two?
That would have been common sense. There’s just not a lot of that being applied to any situation in there right now.