Focus on the top brass if Celtic fail again in Europe
BIG words about succeeding in Europe ought to bring big expectations and there has certainly been no shortage of those from Celtic in recent days.
Callum McGregor is talking about aiming for finals. Ange Postecoglou, meanwhile, is open to selling players for big money to reinvest and build a team better suited to making it through the Champions League groups.
The reality, though, is that very few other people at Parkhead really seem to care about anything other than staying ahead of Rangers and celebrating Trebles against Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
Yet, they should.
After all, it’s that lack of real ambition beyond these shores that led to the shambles of throwing away 10-in-a-row and leaving Postecoglou with the task of rebuilding a football set-up from the charred ashes of 2020-21.
Major shareholder Dermot Desmond claimed that team of late 2020 was better than the Martin O’Neill side that reached the 2003 UEFA Cup final. He claimed Europe was the yardstick for all football progression.
Lots has been said about that team’s capitulation — and the reasons for it — of late, with old boss Neil Lennon back on the job market, but little focus was placed on a catastrophic Champions League qualifying loss at home to Ferencvaros and the shipping of eight goals in two games to Sparta Prague, who effectively played their reserve team in one of them.
McGregor and Postecoglou, if he’s still at Parkhead, will have their words — and ambitions — thrown back at them when Europe rolls around next term. After all, Celtic haven’t won a knockout tie at that level since 2004 and have been routinely rolled over by the likes of Maribor, Malmo, Bodo/Glimt, Cluj and Copenhagen.
More failure next time, though, and it really ought to be Desmond and the others up the food chain who come under scrutiny.
That season of losing ‘The Ten’ and bombing (again) in Europe was supposed to signify proper change. Peter Lawwell left — although he didn’t really — and in came rugby bod Dominic McKay as chief executive, proving as comfortable a fit as a pair of size-five stilettoes on a prop forward.
He’s long gone, of course, and Lawwell is back in a prominent role as chairman. Meanwhile, Michael Nicholson, 10 years in the door at Parkhead, is where McKay used to be and very rarely heard from.
In other words, despite everything that happened two years ago, Celtic look very much like they are back to being run by the people who allowed them to slide into the role of irrelevant bottom-feeders in UEFA competition.
More of the same next term and the club’s fans really ought to be wondering what all those banners and car-park protests about the board really did achieve. No matter which team is in possession of the domestic bragging rights.