Celtic have lost the plot if they’re happy spending £50m on wages just to hoover up domestic trinkets
IAN BANKIER doesn’t say an awful lot as Celtic chairman. If his video address at the club’s virtual AGM earlier in the week is anything to go by, perhaps that’s just as well. Peculiar doesn’t even start to cover it. Perplexing is maybe closer to the mark.
It certainly did nothing to counter the mounting evidence that this is a Parkhead board that has lost sight of the bigger picture and convinced itself that the main purpose of spending more than £50million a year on wages is to win domestic trinkets against Scottish clubs, many of whom keep giving the impression they are struggling to keep the lights on.
What else are you to think when you consider the early tone struck by his message and his rather unique take on the footballing ups — and not so much the downs — of season 2019-20?
‘We started very strongly, we qualified for Euro,’ he said. ‘We got ourselves into a really tough group with Rennes, who are no pushovers and, of course, Lazio. Lazio would end up being No2 in Serie A, so they were a big, big fish.’
Let’s just start with the largely inconsequential, surface-level issues in that opening gambit.
Lazio didn’t end up second in Serie A. They were second when the league shut down because of Covid-19 i n March, but they finished fourth in the end.
Second up, and more important than the pedantry of who came where in a foreign league, is that phrase: ‘We qualified for Euro’. Qualified for Euro???
Who on God’s green earth refers to the Europa League as ‘Euro’? No one I know, for sure. People who talk about ‘footer’, get their patter from Soccer AM and think it’s a good idea to kick about in a half-and-half scarf, probably.
People like the posh bloke at our table at a friend’s wedding in London, who introduced himself as the biggest Chelsea fan this side of Singapore and ended an evening of booze, reminiscing and the usual chat by saying: ‘Wow, like, you guys all know the results of, like, games from the 1980s… and even, like, ones between foreign teams and all that.’
People like Zoe Ball off the radio. You know, the massive Man United superfan back in her ‘ladette’ days of the 1990s. Now to be found watching a re-run of the 1966 World Cup final on Celebrity Gogglebox and giving the distinct impression that Geoff Hurst, the Russian linesman and that ball bouncing down off the crossbar to make it 3-2 were news to her. ‘I never realised it was so, sort of, contentious,’ she said on Friday night’s edition.
Well, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s just, sort of, the most important goal in more than 700 years of football in England and one of the most iconic moments in the entire history of the global game. Mind you, it happened before Sky bought into the Premier League, so…
This is all by the by, of course. Just semantics. Possibly just a slip of the tongue by Mr Bankier. Not to be taken as any kind of indication, at all, that he maybe isn’t quite on the same wavelength as your common-or-garden Celtic punter.
Where his video address brought genuine concern, though, was that he started it by actually bumming up the club’s achievements in Europe last season, making it look and feel like the campaign had been some sort of success. That ‘qualifying for Euro’ was almost mission accomplished.
‘We started very strongly,’ he said. Very strongly? The season opened with wins over Sarajevo, Nomme Kalju, St Johnstone and Motherwell before falling apart at the hands of Cluj in the third qualifying round of the Champions League and sending the team into the play-offs fo rUE FA’s consolation cup.
As starts to the season go, it was a disaster. Just as Europe has become a disaster for Celtic every season, with what should be a guaranteed £30mplus payday for making the
Champions League group stage going up in smoke at the hands of relative no-marks. Again and again and again.
Sure, it was great to beat Lazio home and away in the Europa League. However, even ‘Euro’ ended in the last 32 with Copenhagen — more of a limp, nondescript haddock than a big, big fish — chewing up and spitting out Neil Lennon’s side at Parkhead.
There was no mention of that. And no mention of this term’s shambles, with Ferencvaros ending the Champions League hopes in the second qualifying round before
Sparta Prague ran riot twice over when ‘Euro’ got going.
Celtic have become cannon fodder at those levels. A disgrace given the money spent down the years and the dough still being committed. Yet, you watch Bankier crow about ‘qualifying for Euro’ and wonder whether anyone inside the place bothers all that much.
The set-up of the Champions League qualifiers — with its Champions Path — should more or less guarantee Celtic entry to the groups every season. They have made it two years out of seven.
Yet, as soon as the dust has settled from the latest failure on that stage, it gets forgotten about. ‘The Ten’ dominates everything. Rolling over teams with fractions of their resources on the way to treble Trebles seems intoxicating enough.
Even since hopes of getting out of this term’s Europa League group ended in such humiliating fashion, a win in a meaningless game against Lille and a victory over Kilmarnock appear to have cooled tempers.
Complete a quadruple Treble against a Championship side at Hampden today and the joy for many will be unconfined. The fans aggrieved enough to flashmob the car park recently will no doubt be scoffed at. There will be talk of momentum building. Less chat about why Celtic based their team around a 35-year-old Scott Brown for months when they had younger, fresher signings in reserve. And little about the fact that ‘The Ten’ now hangs on praying that Rangers, their wage bill and standard of player much ameliorated, will again melt like jelly and ice cream on a summer afternoon.
Winning a quadruple Treble, historic as it may be, is windowdressing. It cannot excuse where Celtic find themselves in the wider scheme of things. Bankier spoke to the powerbase’s detractors in his video address, insisting the board will be refreshed ‘as it is appropriate.’
It is not just the board that needs changed, though. It is the entire make-up and mindset of the club. The ambition of the coaching team. The overhaul of a failing recruitment set-up. The importance of returning to Champions League level — and being competitive there — moving front and centre.
Otherwise, we’ll be back here in 12 months as the next lot of AGM videos recall how a six-goal romp against KR Reykjavik and a late winner from Moi Elyounoussi in Riga kept the proud tradition of ‘qualifying for Euro’ going strong in 2020-21.
All set against the soundtrack of fiddling while Rome burns.