Michael Kelly's view ... oh dear

The bottom line is that canny, dime-conscious Fergus McCann paid me £300 per share for my holding in the club. He did so, because, despite all the hot air surrounding Celtic's plight, it was obvious the club had significant assets that could be exploited to make considerable amounts of money. And McCann did just that, walking away, a few years later, with £35m generated by the supporters.

However, he failed to fulfil one of his major promises to those supporters: that the club would never again be run by a cabal. In fact, the club today is under the control of a single large shareholder over whom the fans who were persuaded to buy shares can exercise no effective constraint. McCann could have avoided that if, on departure, he had gifted his shareholding to the other shareholder supporters.

For all the fuss about a bungling board, it was not the old regime's inability to run Celtic as a business that irked the fans. It was the lack of performance on the field that caused the unrest. Celtic in the late 1980s had to contend with a Rangers team which, though cowboy-built on borrowed sand, proved too strong an outfit for Celtic on the field. The very fans who now laugh at the demise of our rivals were the same people who wanted Celtic to follow the same road.

The discontent was exploited by a group who saw the chance to profit from the situation. Their plan was to drive down the value of the club by a campaign, which included a boycott, to create even more antipathy towards the directors. This scared the Bank of Scotland into stepping in, forcing the shareholders to sell despite the fact the club's own plans for recapitalisation were only six weeks from fruition.

It is no surprise, looking back, that the bank Celtic had used for 106 years behaved in such an immoral and cowardly fashion. A few years later, they raped the whole of the British economy in the same way.

So the fans got their wish. Celtic would be run as a business. However, they confused that with success on the field. McCann delivered one but not the other. He presided over a series of results that represented all-time lows in Celtic history. There were many embarrassing defeats. But one result stands out: Celtic losing to Raith Rovers in the League Cup final. It was the first time Celtic had lost in the cup to a club from a lower division. Sadly, that result has been repeated against a series of minor teams until the present day. So poor was McCann's record that he left Celtic Park not only with a bulging bank balance, but with the boos of the fans ringing in his ears. The club had been re-financed, the stadium transformed, yet the fans' major aspiration had been left unfulfilled.

Since McCann left, thanks to a more balanced approach, trophies have been won, and prestigious results have been recorded in Europe. Indeed, for the level of its revenues, Celtic could be said to have outperformed every other club in Britain.

However, what has kept the fans in raptures is the slow, lingering death of Rangers. The outcomes of the battles between the two have always been the yardstick. Now Celtic have won the war. In my view, it is a mistake to continue celebrating because it was that competition that kept Scottish football alive. The lack of it has already led Celtic to sell marketable players. It is satisfying that the league will still be won but if Rangers were still in contention would Celtic fans be tolerating the level of performance seen this year?

The dilemma facing the owner of Celtic - though a millionaire, he is still not wealthy enough to kiss goodbye to the kind of money ploughed into Chelsea or Manchester City - is whether success in Scotland alone will in the long run be enough to retain the fan base. As football is now structured, the significant funds needed to make Celtic competitive in Europe could never be recovered through trading. Such an investment requires an act of heroic charity.

Celtic's only hope of being in a position to repeat the glories of 1967 is to gain entry to England's Premier League. Revenues would be dramatically enhanced. More importantly, though, money could be risked on additional annual investment in players. There are billionaires interested in the prestige - not available in Scotland - that comes from owning a top English club. The fact that Celtic in England could always be sold on would embolden the current owner.

Yet a move to England is almost inconceivable as things stand. Too many English clubs have a vested interest in keeping Celtic out. And if Scotland were to vote Yes in September, even the dream would vanish; England would not admit a foreign club to its league. The logic is unavoidable: the existing conservative financial policy dictating that any footballing aspirations are limited is correct.

That is the long-term outcome of McCann's intervention. Had the club not been attacked so viciously all those years ago and instead been allowed to pursue its own plans, would things today be materially different? I doubt it.

 

Absolute maniac!

 

Who's a bit of a moaning Michael!

 

surprised he could get all that out with that stick lodged firmly up his *.

 

I can't stand the *.After the mess he and his family had let the club slip into he should be hanging his head in shame instead of gubbin aff and trying to slag off the man who saved it and the men who have got us back to the position we are in today.

 

Bitter man indeed.

 

Long winded pish

 

* him.

 

I think the guy comes over as pretty bitter and still angry.

It is a bit of a long-winded ramble, but the 3 parts above I think are the most interesting.

The first part is nonsense, because simply put Celtic were not only failing to compete with Rangers, but they were failing to compete against even the next best teams. In the 89-90 season we were 5th in the league, 3rd the year after, 3rd the year after, 4th in 93-94 and 94-95. So while we lost to Raith in 1994, the embarrassment over that period was not one game against Raith in a cup final. It was the continual underperformance against teams like Motherwell, Aberdeen and Hearts, never even mind what Rangers were doing.

By 95-96 and 96-97 we were back to finishing comfortably second only a few points off the top, and of course we finally won the league in 97-98. It is simply daft to conclude that the McCann era was a failure on the pitch because we lost a League Cup final (what would he say at losing to Morton in this year's league cup I wonder?). It is sheer arrogance to even talk about Celtic in the context of Rangers in the early 90s when we couldn't even beat next 3 or 4 teams in Scotland.

The last point is interesting as regards what would have happened if McCann didn't appear. I do think that Celtic were in such a unique position that another businessman would have seen the opportunity to flip the club. So in that sense, the way football was going meant that we would eventually have been turned into a bigger more business minded club. But it certainly wouldn't have been achieved under the Kellys and looking back at both results and business developments I see no reason to assume things would have got better. I certainly don't think we would have stopped 10 in a row.

All in all, he seems like a very angry man. Sad that he still cant see that what happened was for the better of the club even after all these years.

 

Dry yer eyes, Kelly. Yer a * * of a man.

 

We would not have had a club or a stadium, if it had been left to him. I have listened to him a couple of times, someone should tell him to shut up. Still giving it the poor me's, I was robbed after all this time.
He left people with no option, but to buy him out, when he have been shot for what he was doing to our club.

 

A totally pathetic appraisal from a man who failed the club and the fans.

This outburst just comes across as bitter nonsense from a failure.

Thank * he and his board were ousted.

Due to his lack of business acumen, he is missing the point that McCann had to totally rebuild the business, team and club after his stewardship.

The future of the club is development. Invest in players that can be improved. It has been witnessed in other sports like baseball and NFL, the philosophy is money ball. Teams like Porto have recently beaten the odds and won the CL, Dortmund is another example of this practise. A small club from a large league.

A club run on the right business model, good manager, great development and effective player recruitment can over achieve.




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* up Kelly, you bitter careerist *.

 

This. we were an absolute shambles under the old board.

 

Fud

 

It's the memory of Kelly and his ilk that makes me angry when people talk about having non "Celtic men" on the board being a bad thing.

That entire mob was made up of longstanding "Celtic men" and look what happened! We need businessmen with sound financial acumen first and foremost!

Thankfully we seem to have that now, even if I don't always agree with their policies.

 

Kelly is a fool, a unionist fool, * him.

 

Kelly still comes across as one bitter *.

 

Wallaper.