The board

Believe it when I see it mate

 

No i o ow personally I beleive the players are worth what we paid don’t know why he’s not playing them if he wants the board to spend


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It's comfortable passivity. Since what's worked well so far hasn't broken, they won't change anything. It's not like the fans are putting any real pressure.

 

Source??

 

His gut feeling

 

Engels discussed in his first interview with the club that the first time he heard about our interest was in early July. I think the story broke to the news that we were interested about 3 weeks after that.

One of the journalists, I can't remember who it was, openly talked about the club overpaying on the original price because we left it late. I don't think it was McGowan but it might have been Friel from The Sun. Then, a couple of the podcasters started running with it.

 

The Celtic board are in a race against time as Brendan Rodgers awaits new recruits (Image: NQ Design)

After Celtic’s opening day win over St Mirren, Fergus McCann let the train take the strain. Resisting the comforts of a blacked-out Mercedes, the club’s former MD preferred to mingle with fans on the 5.19 to Glasgow Central.

‘The Bunnet’ hauled Celtic back from the abyss when the family dynasties who ran the club for a century ran out of money in 1994. Gratitude wore thin when he fell out with Tommy Burns and Wim Jansen, and he earned a reputation for being parsimonious and difficult to deal with.

David Murray did him a favour the day he sold Rangers to Craig Whyte. From that day on McCann was free to use his senior railcard on any train he liked. His legacy as the man who saved Celtic was secure.

Dermot Desmond doesn’t seem the type to join fans on platform one of Dalmarnock station for a post-match chin wag.

The Irish billionaire replaced McCann as controlling shareholder in 1999 and time will dictate how his legacy plays out.

Celtic have enjoyed more boardroom stability than Rangers over the last three decades and more trophies. Judging by the Ibrox side’s stuttering start to the league season there’s a few more to come and, some day in the future, Desmond might be given credit for overseeing a period of dominance Brendan Rodgersdescribes as a ‘golden era’.

In the here and now, people are more concerned with what the manager has to say about a transfer strategy doing him no favours

After a comfortable win over Aberdeen, Celtic’s directors might be asking themselves what all the fuss is about. All that pressure, all that grief over transfers comes as their biggest rivals spill points against Motherwell and Dundee.

Come August 31, the lead over Rangers could be 10 points if the Ibrox side pursue the option to cancel their game against St Mirren ahead of a Champions League play-off and lose the first Old Firm game of the season at Ibrox. Good luck persuading the Parkhead board to start chucking their money around then.

Rodgers wants to see more ambition than that. The last four windows have ended in some expression of mild public dissatisfaction from the manager and you can put the kettle on for five-in-a-row if the aspirations for this window span no further than taking part in the Champions League and being slightly better than Rangers.

Despite signing seven players, only two of Celtic’s new bhoys are first-team starters. And when Kieran Tierney and Benjamin Nygren combined for the first goal at Pittodrie it illustrated the point that, in football, you get what you pay for.

Five minutes into his second stint as manager Rodgers was asked for his thoughts on the window which delivered Nat Phillips, Paulo Bernardo, Luis Palma, Gustaf Lagerbielke, Maik Nawrocki, Kwon Hyeok-kyu, Yang Hyun-jun, Tomoki Iwata, Marco Tilio and Odin Thiago Holm.

“I think if you ask any manager they will always be wanting more,” he said diplomatically. Two years later, Yang and Bernardo are the only two left in the same postcode as the first team.

Nicolas Kühn was sold this summer but has not yet been replaced (Image: SNS Group)

The following window passed with just two new signings. Adam Idah arrived on loan from Norwich and Kühn signed in a permanent deal. Once again, supporters – like the man who signed them – felt short changed.

Rodgers offered the view that the club “could be a little braver in terms of bringing in another level of player,” adding “you bring in players for a minimal fee and then they make the club a lot of money.”

Persuading them to reinvest it is the hard part. Last summer, procrastination over signing players provoked some exasperation from the manager heading into the final days of the window.

“We shouldn’t have been getting into this last week in the position we’re in,” said Rodgers in the midst of a late scramble to sign Idah, Arne Engels and Auston Trusty for a total of £25m. “That’s the reality.”

Engels and Trusty arrived for over-inflated fees on August 30, taking a hammer and chisel to the boardroom view that the best deals are done in the final days of the window.

At the beginning of this year, Celtic sold top striker Kyogo Furuhashi and failed to replace him. Rodgers acknowledged that the window, “wasn’t ideal,” adding, “we have to, as a club, now go away and look at that like we do every window.”

The champions reported cash reserves of £65.4m last December and, two months into this current transfer window, have raked in around £25m from sales. As yet they have spent around £3m on new players and while they’ll bring in more in the final weeks, it’s far from clear that they’ll do it in time for the Champions League signing deadline.

The failure to get a couple of wingers in the door already is hard to fathom. They lost Jota to serious injury and sold Kühn to Como for £17m. And as soon as the football department identified Jakob Breum of Go Ahead Eagles as a player worth signing, it was up to the men in grey suits to get the deal done instead of sucking in their breath and kicking the tyres like time wasters on the forecourt of the local second-hand car showroom.

Fixated with securing ‘value for money’, offers of £1.5m, £1.75m plus add-ons then £3m went in for a player valued somewhere between £5m and £6m. As yet, Breum is no closer to moving to Glasgow and and he’s not the only player to be scouted, approved by the football department then vetoed by money men who don’t appear to trust their judgement.

The seventh anniversary of Terminado Day passed on Saturday. In August 2018 Rodgers sat, arms folded, in a breeze block changing room in the Lennoxtown training centre and began the Long Goodbye.

Failure to land John McGinn from Hibernian was less significant than what it said about the bigger picture. Asked what might happen if he felt the club were failing to move forward and progress Rodgers was emphatic. “My job is done then. Terminado. Gone.”

A niggardly reticence to get deals over the line nudged Rodgers towards the exit once before. It’s not difficult to see it happening again.

Asked if he planned to extend his contract beyond next summer, he said that he would only do so if the club continued to move forward and show some ambition. The clock is ticking.

Celtic will spend money between now and the end of the window, probably on four new players. As things stand, however, they’re giving the impression that they’re hardly bursting a gut to keep their manager. If that’s the case then fans can hardly blame Rodgers for bailing out again. He deserves better.

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When it's McGowan trashing the board you know things must be a *.

 

See being fair I think McGowan stopped getting info after he dared question Lawwell or the Board previously and as such now uses what he got from previous dealings to stick the boot in.

 

Wonder if anyone on here owns shares and goes to the AGM. Think ill buy some then try get a seat...curious.

 

Used to go until it became an obsession over slagging huns and pre screened questions and celtic da patter trying to be making jibes at huns

 

Aye that sounds like a pantomime

 

Honestly at the point where I feel the current board are sucking the life out of the club. We’re being run like a business with the inconvenience of having to field a football team a couple of times a week.

 

Honestly, at this point there must be some reason behind it. The negligence is off the charts given our financial state.

 

A huge part of the issue is there is no transparency in how club operates. Nobody really seems to know who calls the shots on what and how the inner workings function. Which is strange for a club with such a large fanbase. A club, especially a plc, you would expect to have a pretty clear inner structure and defined responsibilities. But its never very clear who is calling the shots on what and who answers to who behind the scenes.

Its hard to feel there isnt a concerted effort from the club hierarchy to deliberately keep things as opaque as possible and to try and keep maximum distance from the fans. They dont engage with fans at all. theres no real outlining of what their thoughts about the club are. what their vision is, what their ambition is, what their long and short terms aims are. They are happy to let article after article pile up questioning the clubs strategy. Ex players, pundits, journalists, supporters all completely in the dark asking for some kind of information. Sending the manager out week after to week to face questions with no answers while they seem to have no inclination to say anything themselves. Its a bizzare code of omerta that you have to conclude is done deliberately.

 

We all know who calls the shots, without any question about it - Dermot Desmond

Anyone questions he calls the shots, hasn’t been paying attention the last 25 years.

 

Former Celtic goalkeeper Benjamin Siegrist claims that there were 'things going on' internally during his time at the club.


The Swiss stopper revealed that he was getting a different message from Brendan Rodgers than the board.

Brought in by Ange Postecoglou in the summer of 2022, after Rodgers came in the door a year later, he told Siegrist that he wasn't in his plans.

As a result, the 33-year-old wanted to depart.

"I had an offer from a team that I was willing to go to," said Siegrist on The Bondi Podcast. "They said yes initially, then they changed their mind. Then I was stuck with the transfer window shutting.

"I felt like I needed to play to get my confidence back.

"In January... I had another team going for a league in another country, a top division, playing European football. I was on holiday, actually. Everything was agreed. Then I found out that Celtic hadn't responded to that team in four weeks.

"I did everything, pushed everything. I spoke to Stevie [Woods]. He said, 'In January, you can go'.

"I spoke to the new team, spoke to everyone. It was a done deal. I was ready to pack up.

"Some people on the Celtic board just didn't respond to any of the enquiries from the other team."

When asked why the board went silent over a move, Siegrist simply replied, "Good question."

"There was never a problem between me and Brendan Rodgers," the goalkeeper continued. "It was always very respectful. But there were things going on internally.

"The message I got from the manager wasn't the same that I got from the board.

"That was very frustrating because all I wanted to do was play. I was denied that opportunity twice. It felt like a lost year.

"It wasn't right the way it was handled.

"It just felt like a kick in the teeth."

 

Nothing is going to change until the board are ousted. Nothing. Too many stories talking about their gross incompetence and general unprofessionalism.

How do we go about getting some traction on a movement to get the support on board (pardon the pun) with this?

 

That interview from Siegrest there, snippets from other clubs dealing with us, the snails pace we operate at in the market and what’s been said from guys who know how the club operates about everything needing Desmond rubber stamped approval. And that taking however long Desmond feels like. He’s not the only problem, our negotiations with Breun shows another large issue that’s only returned since Lawwell has…. But that’s the issue we have. Desmond.


I’ve always been a guy erring on the side of better the devil you know, because doubtless under his control of us we have been the most domestically successful and the best financially we have ever been, through credit crunches and pandemics.

But, it’s beyond my support now. Interviews like Siegrests there and the way we go about business, and that’s confirmation of the rumoured way we do… thats * incompetent

 

Gross negligence
Gross incompetence

 

For a club * bent on saving money, that's some story. Boardroom full of ego's using the club as a power trip.