The board

DD basically isn’t involved as he’s letting his boy take control Ross



Wants him to prepare for the job early when Dermot steps down

 

why do these * have to be so * useless

 

If that!

All they have done is manage to turn a Champions League team into an Europa League outfit.

 

Feel that’s it’s going to get hostile come next home game , I dont rate idah but I think the heat that will come his way due to not being allowed to move because of the board will be frightening and even worse if we lose tomorrow, is it going to take getting beat for the board to make moves or if we win will they think the squad is good enough !

when is the next agm ? Really needs to be serious questions answered and not just puns about rangers to side step the questions ! The fact that we are going into this game with no serious striker is appalling.

 

Another unmitigated disaster of a transfer window and still the board are continuing to make a laughing stock out of our club.

Celtic will never progress as a football club under Dermott Desmond and Peter Lawell.

 

umm ,what does dermot do

 

Plays golf drinks champagne from his house in the Bahamas

 

i hope ross is up to it!

 

Big boots to follow

 

So I’ve kinda switched off a bit since the champs league exit. What have I missed?

 

Not a * thing m8

 

Just the blue balls they gave us with Idah potentially leaving and Brodge letting us know they all want the best for Celtic in the presser.

They all want the best for Celtic but trying to do something about it is another matter

 

And so the Kellys become the Desmonds. * me.

You can only hope his son is more interested in football than golf. We can't go on with another absentee landlord.

 

If this were true, we'd be seeing that son more frequently around CP, seated next to Nicholson etc.

 

At least Ross turns up to the office

 

Groundhog Day.

 

It's the conservatism of the board that is the issue, they don't understand football or football economics and that's what it boils down to. They seem to think football runs in sync with the world economy and the hoarding of cash is probably something the envisage in a world crash scenario that will then yield far more value for money but football is immune to recession really - it's a billionaires play pen.

What has exasperated the issue is the transfer market has gone out of control. It has been spiraling that way for years but I think it's reached a new level, possibly all the money from the Saudi leagues funneling its way into Europe through transfer fees etc. We can see it in this window, guys from Scandinavian leagues routinely going for 8 figures sums after a decent season. In some ways I can understand our caution here but it's a failure to understand the wider football environment that is our boards biggest failing and I think Kuhn is the perfect example this summer.

Kuhn was 25.
He was close to a German call up last summer
He had 4 years left on his contract.
He was shortlisted for player of the year in Scotland.
30+ G/A from play last season
Starred in the CL particularly in big games against Leipzig and Bayern.
Yes his form dipped in the latter half.

We had no financial pressure to sell yet we had him out the door in early July for £16.5m. I don't buy into the narrative that he had thrown the towel in or his head had been turned. I just happen to think his form dipped, same as happened with Kyogo and same as has happened with Maeda presently. I don't believe its anything to do with transfers - more just general confidence when players have a few bad games or the team is not playing as well in general.

In today's market we should have been looking for £25-30m for Kuhn. I think that's a fair price when you see what's happening out there when you see some of the prices we are being quoted for players. Instead our board are still back in 2020 or that where they think you can use that £16.5m on another Kyogo for £5m or another Jota for £6.5m - those days are gone and that's why our board are hapless in dealing with the situation at the minute. The Kuhn sale was an absolute *. The fact is when the likes of Kvistgarden and Orjasaeter were available for £10m and £6m last winter - we should have bit at the price and we should have been demanding £25m minimum for Kuhn but we didn't and the rest in history. We have to start valuing our own players in line with the current market first of all.

We're in big trouble if they don't get their heads around the current market very quickly as the market is only going to get worse. It's actually very worrying what is being allowed happen with football right now. A club like Chelsea had won nothing in their history about 25 years ago, they've won every European trophy on the go since then, it started with Abramovich era but this new regime over them now has reached a whole other level. They are able to buy up every young talent in Europe, sign them on 7 year contracts and clear huge profits on players without them ever doing much in a Chelsea jersey. They effectively have talented players on their roster who will never kick a ball for them and they have hoarded all the talent and can gouge clubs who are in need of a bit of quality. They have already sold about £300m of rejects this season that did nothing for them.

 

I agree with what you're saying about the transfer market and their conservatism. Hoarding cash is effectively losing money because of the insane inflation player trading is undergoing. It shows they've no clue what they're doing in that regard, 100%.

However, I don't think £25-30m for Kuhn is realistic. The fees you can command are to some extent relative to the status of the club and league. If Kasper Dohlberg played in England rather than Belgium, he'd be going for a lot more than ~£10m. If Kuhn had shown more consistency during the time he was here or was willing to stay another season, perhaps that's realistic, but assuming he was looking to get away, I think we got more or less what we could for him.

The ones that were really criminal were GG and JJ. They should have both gone for far more than they did. Some of the sales we made under Ange were bad business and in part I think that's because when a player started to grumble, he insisted they were immediately sold. He had a role to play as well as the board.

 

I begrudge Lennon one thing above all else: being subservient to that shower of * who had shafted him so badly when we had a great team.