Dermot Desmond

It wouldn't need to be England though, it could be anything aslong as it would be a better product that could raise TV money.

For example just Scotland, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway joining together would give you a League with...

Celtic, Ajax, Feyenoord, PSV, Anderlecht, Club Brugge, Basel, Malmo, Rosenborg, Copenhagen etc plus it would give us the combined TV money of countries with populations of about 60million which in football terms would make us the 4th/5th/6th/7th biggest Footballing "country" in Europe. If that was a League it could probably bring in hundreds of £millions a year in TV money and given the strength of the League it would probably be viewed worldwide so sponsorship and advertising money would go way up.

 

We need external revenue because of our geographical reality, mate. Yes, I completely agree we need to reform AT LEAST the direction of our resources, this whole idea of not investing for the CL to just recoup £20m is insane.

 

The North Atlantic set up is a good alternative, I doubt it will happen. Nothing is materialised for that to happen so therefore we must look at external options.

 

It will eventually happen, the sooner the better though. Especially as Western Europeans all get on with each other mostly and theres only so long fans of Ajax, Celtic, Anderlecht will be happy for their clubs to turn into complete dross and feeder clubs to teams like Sheffield Wednesday which is inevitable. It will happen at some point within the next 20 years I think, not necessarily an Atlantic League but some sort of reform.

Bit trickier for Eastern European smaller Leagues to merge given most of them hate each other Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Cyprus, Croatia, Serbia, Poland etc :smiley-laughing002: A lot of once good Eastern European teams are basically dead already like Dinamo Zagreb, Partizan, Red Star, Steaua Bucharest, Hugarian/Polish/Bulgarian football that will soon be the smaller Wester European Leagues where any glimmer of a good young player and they'll be sold for buttons to richer teams and stadiums will be lying empty with 2 guys and a dug in them.

 

The minute it was confirmed we are NEVER getting into the English setup is the minute this * decided the game was a bogey and he would just let us stagnate as long as it kept us ahead of the others

 

What else could have been done though?

 

There's and endless list of things that Lawwell and/or Desmond could do to improve our current situation and blaming everything on the financial rise of English football. * even if they themselves are completely devoid of ideas they could employ a consultancy firm to do the hard work for them. I've said for a long time that we lack a visionary (and hoping for a golden ticket to the EPL isn't what I mean) at the top of the club. We have no direction other than to be marginally better than the Huns.

Ultimately if you believe Lawwell simply can't do ANYTHING to improve our current and future situation then the obvious thing to say is why the * is he allowed to take £1,000,000 a year from us?

It's a mental situation when an acceptable answer to our decline from someone at his level is simply "ain't * I can do about it" as he helps himself to 7-figures a year.

 

Fair play KingOfKings. What I dont understand is how this attitude crept into our support? No fight, no guts, no * questions even. Daniels summed it up when he said; "you'd rather live in * than let the world see you work a shovel".

 

Lawwell has improved things though, he is well known and well liked among European football and obviously a well known tough negotiator etc

Had we had a worse guy in place who would get the pish ripped out him then we could be much worse off as he wouldn't negotiate as cheap a deals for signing or as high a fees for players sold or as big a contracts for the kit deals and stuff. Theres a reason Arsenal and Liverpool have sniffed about Lawwell, you're acting like he's been awful and someone else would have had us in better shape when it's probably not just the opposite but we could really be in a shockingly bad way without a very good guy in Lawwells position.

 

Stop wasting your * time on an internet forum. You're getting paid a million year for * sake. Go and sort out Mulgrews and Jamesy's contract and sack Forrest Gump before it's too late.

 

It's classic apathy imo.

One thing I've always respected Deila for is that he believes in having high standards in his playing staff. Wether he can bring out those high standards or not is a different matter but I don't think anyone can doubt that things like wanting the players to be full-time athletes is a good thing, even if he can become a bit blinded by it. What I don't see is those same standards being applied to the coaching staff by the board, or to the board by the fans. No company can be successful with the current apathy running through the club and things won't change until we have a threat from Newco.

I could go on about this all day tbh, I think we are very, very poorly run due to numerous factors. Ultimately though I believe that while this apathy exists we won't really improve. We might mask it a bit when sevco come up and we beat them, but if fans aren't willing to hold people at the club to a higher standard the general decline will continue unabated sadly.

 

It's impossibly I say where we would be with a different person at the helm really. I don't doubt lawwell is a tough negotiater, I do wonder though if sometimes his reputation as such has caused us to miss out on some potentially good deals. Looking at our recent transfer record and the money we've shelled out for some poor players certainly suggests his negotiating skills are far from perfect.

Ultimately the question shouldn't be wether or not he's a tough negotiator or not. I don't doubt for a second we could find someone to negotiate transfers on our behalf for significantly less than £1m a year. The reason I question him is because I don't believe he is a visionary of any sorts. It's frankly embarrassing for a company of our size to look at external factors that are out with our control on such a. Consistent basis and blame them on our failures, especially when these factors exist for pretty much every club in Europe outside the very top leagues. Focus on our strengths and focus on what we can change to address this decline.

 

I say this every time I am with fellow tims and some have the red neck to turn round and say "we would die without him tho" its beyond comprehension on how compartmentalised our support are, its staggering hardly any supporter except a few can actually think for ourselves.

 

Because people believe everything that comes out the TV. Mind the time he came out with a joke about that disease in Govan? Everyone was out wanking themselves into a coma and willing to voluntary kiss his ring so much it would bleed. Its embarrassing.

 

He's a fat arrogant slug, Lawwell is only interested in himself, he would let the club die if he knew his bonus depended on it

 

This
Its always interesting reading how lawwell/DD should run our Club though , I just never imagined there was so many switched on 'experts' out there :smiley-laughing002:

 

Sometimes its best to just laugh :smiley-laughing002:

 

Thats pish though, Lawwell is a Celtic fan and he could leave Celtic next week and be earning more money in another job easily.

It's funny that Celtic fans mostly dislike him and want him sacked, yet Lawwell himself probably goes to sleep at night panicking what would happen if he left us and some other numpty took his place and started making a * of things after his hard work for over a decade to try and get us in a good position and running smoothly :smiley-laughing002:

 

He is arrogant but I doubt he would let us die because he does balance the books but thats about it, even if we are regressing he still balances our books, thats all hes good at but some are under this illusion hes * its far from the truth.

As KingofKings stated we have no vision, you would think for one second our Board went 'Alright lads, listen this footballing inflation is killing us so what we going to do about it?'
You would think any logical director or majority shareholder would be like 'well we can look to shareissues or we could set up a club membership scheme where it can raise enough capital to decrease the gap'
You would think thats what would be going on, but nope it doesn't instead Lawwell comes out and states we have to blame everything on England and we cannot compete with them. No ones even asking to competing with England were wanting to reassert Domestic succes and do well in Europe to the extent where financial income is growing. We simply aren't doing that, the figures aren't showing that, the quality of the park isn't showing that, the scouts aren't showing that nothing and I mean NOTHING is showing that. If anyone is willing to engage in the embarrassment to suggest otherwise then they seriously need help.

 

You're so wrapped up in the pseudo-Lawwellism that your default psychological impression of getting in another managing director is so negative that you are under the impression that we would be under threat, that is absolutely incredible. Thats how much of an extent the Board has compartmentalized you.