Why canny Desmond may live to rue his Keane punt
But complete perfectionist must see something in Roy
THEY don’t see much of Dermot Desmond around Celtic Park. But when it comes to the big decisions, the major shareholder leaves nothing to chance. The Pink Sands Club sounds like a teenage soap on the Disney Channel. But when it came to choosing salt and pepper grinders for his luxury Caribbean resort, Desmond personally tested 29 different versions before choosing the perfect pair.
That done, he picked out Pratesi bed linen worth £2,000 a set. Don’t bother searching for those in Debenhams.
‘He is so detail-orientated,’ gasped the resorts sales and marketing manager Patrice van Isacker breathlessly. ‘He wants everything to be perfect.’
Not for nothing, then, has the Corkborn mogul accumulated a personal wealth in the region of £1.4billion. Desmond routinely snaps up plc businesses before most people have climbed out of bed. He has the Midas touch. Even the salt grinders have to be just right.
His astute attention to detail extends to picking Celtic managers as well. Among supporters, Desmond is regarded as a remote figure – a man who doesn’t turn up for Annual General Meetings. But when it comes to choosing coaches, he is hands on. He’s right there, taking centre stage in the front row.
The largest individual shareholder since Fergus McCann’s departure, Desmond sat down with managerial target Guus Hiddink 14 years ago to decide if he was Celtic officer material. The club had just been stung by the Barnes and Dalglish fiasco. They had fallen for the hype and the bluster. They couldn’t get it wrong again.
Allan MacDonald, the chief executive of the time, had fastidiously courted the Dutchman. But Desmond looked into his eyes and detected indifference. Within days, Martin O’Neill was marched into a London hotel to meet the Parkhead board. The rest, as they say, is history.
When O’Neill left to care for his sick wife, Desmond hired Gordon Strachan at a race meeting – then put an arm around Neil Lennon (right) to tell him his latest gamble was him.
Tony Mowbray notwithstanding, he has got these decisions largely right. He has earned a degree of trust from supporters.
But you have to ask, this time, if his judgment has deserted him. If choosing Roy Keane as the next manager might be a punt too far.
Last week, there were reservations over Henrik Larsson’s readiness for the Parkhead hot seat right now. Virtually all the same reasons could be offered up with regard to Keane.
A chequered managerial record. Check.
Questions over his patience for the external irritations of the job. Check.
A decision being reached for all the wrong reasons. Check.
The suspicion lingers with Keane, as with Larsson, that his appointment would be all about selling tickets. About putting a marquee name in place rather than the best qualified football manager. And if he happens to appeal to Celtic’s Irish diaspora, all the better.
Perhaps this does Desmond a grave disservice. He must know any spike in ticket sales and hype would be quickly cancelled out if Celtic fail to reach the Champions League in July because they picked the wrong man.
He must also know that a big name can only arrest falling attendances at Parkhead for a short time.
Celtic’s challenges are structural in nature. They can only be fixed by moving to England – not by picking a controversial, box-office manager. O’Neill made the observation on Thursday night that the Roy Keane he knows is often a very different character to the calculating, cold, hard-nosed and hugely-entertaining figure we see on our television screens.
DESMOND clearly sees something in Keane beyond the cartoon caricature and contrasting managerial record at Sunderland (where he won promotion to the Premier League and kept them up) and Ipswich Town, where he was sacked after 20 months in charge. Desmond hired him as a Celtic player in 2006 and was instrumental in landing him a gig as O’Neill’s assistant manager in the Ireland set-up. Now he could be instrumental in taking him away.
Celtic say all this is premature. Chief executive Peter Lawwell says Keane is but one of five to 10 candidates. But since Larsson ruled himself out, only one man has been the subject of a Desmond phonecall. If he hasn’t already, then Celtic’s Mister Big will soon look into the eyes of his fellow countryman and ask if he is another Guus Hiddink. He will look into the black beads, as they were described by Alex Ferguson, and ask if he really wants it. If they say ‘yes’, then Celtic fans should stand by their beds.
There may be trouble ahead.