The board

I’ve given my tickets away for today. These * have sucked any feel good there is out the club. Had there been a walkout or protest organised I’d have gone, but given that most of the supporters midweek chose to stay silent when “sack the board” was being chanted, I think we are still a long way off change. A lot of our support are as gullible as the huns are.

 

Chris Sutton in his latest column for the record


The Celtic board can’t say they weren’t warned.



The supporters let their feelings be known the other night after a dismal performance against Kairat Almaty.


And it was blatantly obvious the chickens have come home to roost.


Michael Nicholson and Peter Lawwell found themselves in the firing line – but they could have avoided all the abuse if they’d been reading this column in Record Sport .




I’ve been saying for weeks this shambles of a transfer window could seriously come back to bite them on the backsides.

And yet here we are.




Don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here wearing my I Told You So T-shirt. Believe me, it doesn’t give me any pleasure.

In fact, I can’t actually get my head around how Celtic got themselves in this position.

There are people who claim the Parkhead board are too cautious. I don’t see it that way.



Not when they are taking the biggest gamble of them all by refusing to give Brendan Rodgers the proper tools going into this Champions League play-off.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. That’s the phrase that came to mind the other night.


It was always going to be a tricky tie no matter who they got at this stage. But failing to replace Kyogo, Jota and Nicolas Kuhn was a self-inflicted own goal that’s now left them facing a huge task of getting away with it next week in Kazakhstan.

Celtic might still get through. Even with the lack of attacking signings, they could still find a way of squeezing past Kairat.

Yet the job has been made far tougher than it needed to be. It’s mind-boggling how they got here.



I can’t work out if it’s complacently or incompetence, or maybe even arrogance.

Did they think this squad was going to have enough to get through the tie and then they could go out and spend for the group stage?

Did they not see the Scottish Cup Final? Did they fall asleep during the last three Rangers games?



Have they not heard Rodgers talking about taking the club to the next level after pushing Bayern Munich close in February or talking about needing fresh faces after St Johnstone? Obviously not.

For whatever reasons, it’s a dereliction of duty.

You can’t say Celtic are not a well-run club given their stability and resources. But supporters have stumped up good money to watch their side in huge numbers.


They deserve is their club to at least attempt to put the best possible team on the pitch.

To have their Champions League fate in the balance when they have tens of millions in the bank is frankly ridiculous.

I felt sorry for Rodgers the other night, and in recent weeks in general. He’s the one who’s had to front up and try to explain the indefensible.


He’s been begging for new signings in the forward areas – and yet look what he was left with the other night.


Rodgers has often said a team is only as strong as the XI that finishes a match, not just the one that starts it.


Well, have a look at what was out there at full-time against Kairat. The board must have seen it too. And this is a year on from them saying lessons had to be learned from last summer’s blundering window.

What’s happened to the so-called football doctor in all of this?

Paul Tisdale came in last October but so either the recruitment department has failed to find the replacements the team needs or the club failed to get the deals done.







Something isn’t working.

Rodgers’ comments about Hayato Inamura before the game were incredible. If he’s not up to the job then why was he signed – and by who?

When you take out Jota and Tierney, it’s like Tisdale’s department are unearthing lots of hidden gems.


The likes of Benjamin Nygren might come good, but that wasn’t an area of the pitch that needed attention anyway.



I’ve got no doubt we’ll be told it’s tough to get players to come to Scotland, or you have to wait to get quality. They might say clubs are holding off selling until they bring in replacements. Yeah, that is how most of them operate – apart from Celtic.

No, they are happy to flog their best assets without a contingency in place.




A player wants to go? No problem, we’ll take the money.

How about they get sold when it suits the club?

The club would say it would have been a gamble not taking the money but it’s an even bigger risk when there’s £40million from the group stage at stake.


All of it is utter nonsense.

It’s Celtic that clearly have an issue and there’s an obvious disconnect between the board’s thinking and the ambitions of the manager and the support.

On the manager, you can forget about Rodgers signing a new deal. Why would he?


He’s been sent into a Champions League play-off with both arms tied behind his back.

He doesn’t need this grief. He must have looked at his bench the other night and wondered – f*** me, what is the point?




Rodgers had a centre-back at left-back, Daizen Maeda bouncing between the wing and up front, Yang – who Rodgers admitted is only still at the club because no replacement was signed – sent on to try to turn around the game.

He machine-gunned Adam Idah with the decision to hook him at half-time and then took a baseball bat to the board after the game.

He’s not going to stick around any longer than he has to if this is the club’s idea of progress and his message afterwards was clear.


They’ll have their work cut out in Almaty, that’s for sure. Kairat were a lot stronger than some expected. They were defensively superb, well organised and posed a threat.

There were plenty of warning signs from them the other night – but Celtic have become experts at ignoring warning signs, haven’t they?

 

100% bang on in that assessment

 

Only the fans can bring down the board. But the same fans are ultimately, content as long as the bare minimum is met - domestic dominance. I guarantee that a win over Rangers will stop any openly aired anger towards the board which could materialize if we lose to Kairat. Most here hate the notion of the Old Firm, but fail to detach themselves from the concept. Only if the fans treat Europe as more important than prevailing against Rangers, would the board have to change.

 

It’s him that’s hiring the people who make the decisions, he makes sure they are like minded that is very clear. Desmond is the root of the problem, he goes and the rest will fall.

 

Boyd is a mongo

 

Boys is only defending the board as the bitter hun * knows they’re doing a great job from a rangers perspective.

 

The board are the only reason why once again this summer we didn't firmly pull away from them when once again we had a golden opportunity to.

 

No question Desmond is at the heart of the problem. Like so many on the board he has been around for so long and still there is no plan either short or long term and no vision at all to develop and grow the club on and off the field.

 

No Plan either!

 

That’s pretty much it. Looking in from the outside with envy. Wishing they could have the means. And within context of the league we’re in, our opposition, every single other clubs fans will be playing the worlds smallest violin because we have vastly outspent the rest.

We’re better than the rest and in a better position than them, but that’s our frustration, that’s not the bar to use as a measure. We haven’t done all we can. Far from it