What’s our scouting and recruitment plan?

I think we have this conversation every few years when things aren’t going well.

Fundamentally the problem is at the C level.

Nicholson is just a continuation or a conduit for Lawwell.

People need to understand what happens in corporations. When someone gets in some position they empire build and consolidate themselves. I’ve watched managers not hire people because they’re too good, and will lead the project / company down a path the manager either can’t follow or a path the manager will lose control.

The C-suite at Celtic won’t bring in a proper DOF or expand the recruitment team because they’ll lose control. We’ll start signing players the football team needs instead of focusing on players that will drive profit.

It’s very clear that this season has been sacrificed to some degree to get everyone away from the lofty ideas we all had at the start of the season.

I mean, come on guys, take a step back. We changed CEO and Ange came in, he took the opportunity to modernise our approach and our way of thinking. He even said it at the AGM, that recruitment and selling had to change. They looked so uncomfortable.

The minute he’s out the door we bring in a ‘year-out’ Rodgers and get him singing the boards hymn sheet for £70k a week.

The entire forum made up some personality for Rodgers that doesn’t exist that says he is some guy that won’t tolerate us not signing quality. Clearly he’s on board with it and just using his usual bullshit to muddy the water.

The last two transfer windows have been a re-calibration by the board. It’s the reason they brought another knows-the-city guy in and it’s the same thing they done after Rodgers himself left the first time when they re-calibrated us with Lennon.

I have a nice analogy for our recruitment plan.

See when I want my toddlers to eat an apple, I offer them an apple or a banana.

If they take the apple that’s great, if not, well at least they got fruit and not chocolate or cake.

This is how our board work. If they brought in people to build up our infrastructure, the manager would start to get choices the board don’t want them to have. They keep it tight and under control so the manager will need to approve that the board want to buy - players that will drive profits.

 

Agents recommendations and whatever cheap football manager esque punts we get from the chairman’s son … who is obviously the best man for the job.

 

@JamesM09 interestingly, Mark Guidi’s said there looks to be a power struggle behind the scenes. Which was my worry with Lawwell coming back

 

I think there must be a lot of nuanced struggles going on to be honest.

I’m speculating that Rodgers has come in to sing the boards hymn sheet, but at the same time it’s well know he hates Lawwell and Lawwell hates him, so it’s difficult to see how it all hangs together - although I’m sure we’ve all worked on situations like that before so it’s not impossible to imagine.

Edit: I’ve said ‘hates’ there but it’s probably the wrong term to use to be honest. I think they probably have an inconsistent and difficult professional relationship.

 

We need gutted from the top down, not bottom up though. This shitshow started last summer with shocking recruitment and key positions ignored.

 

That would explain a lot and it’s seemed fairly obvious to be honest. It’s the Lawwell show. As I’ve always said. Rodgers has a huge ego. There is one man at Celtic whose ego dwarfs him though.

 

Bottom up for me.


Have a guy in charge who does the business and make the background changes in the meantime


Funny enough, what we done under Ange. Then majorly reverted

 

Nah. Bottom up would likely mean that the person would run into the same problems. We need forward thinking men at the top of the tree who will then bring in a DOF and a manager who will work hand in hand. The rest falls into place after that.

 

I agree we need that but we need to do it while not being * useless on the pitch first things first.

 

Exactly. Which is why the recruitment has to be right. We could have the best manager in the world in the dugout, if they are working with most of the players that we have brought in under Lawwell Jnr, it wouldn’t matter a jot.

 

Sounds nailed on in my opinion..

I'd be flabbergasted if there wasn't due to how incompetent we've looked over the last 6 months or so..

 

Ange done it well

 

I hear that the young lawwell uses the, ‘eeny, meny, minny moe selection process with the list of players his da gives him, quality professional set up. My *.

 

I'm more of a 'ip dip dog *' man myself.

 

Initially yes. Transfers went to * in the end as well though if we’re honest.

 

The main problem is that we just don't know and the club don't want us to know. Most clubs shroud this stuff in secrecy.
Otherwise there would be direct accountability for the blazer clad, zero football knowledge, decision makers.
I would love to see a fan representative on the board for transparency reasons alone.

 

It’s this that is a problem to me see the clubs that are doing well at this sort of stuff you would think they are the ones that would want to be secretive about it but they are not. Brentford, Brighton, Red Bull teams, USG that are all lauded for their approaches are all happy to outline what they do to a high level.

It’s the sort of thing that should be available to shareholders, what the actual plan for the football club is, and I am not talking about brass neck statements about keeping money for not qualifying for CL because we failed to do so as often as we should have in the past. All while bumping up exec and non exec director remuneration, surely if we are * bent on fainting fiscal control on the footballing side we should be doing the same in our C suite and Board positions not offering 50-100% rises?

The full club seems shrouded in secrecy about any sort of strategy or plan to move it forward, what our KPIs are, where we want to be in 5 or 10 years. It just reeks of cowboy like performance where we would be happy to stay where we are and occasionally make unrelated investments.

I standby given or academy, scouting department/ approach, and analytics all seem in disarray yet we invest £20m in upgrading training facilities for our academy and training woman’s team. What’s the point if we aren’t producing players for the first team?

You would be better doing something like taking that £20m and buying or starting a footballing academy in Africa or any destination with the purpose of looking to bring them into Celtics first team. Using the partnership with Admira to bring players into Europe before keeping the best for our first team and moving others on. Sign similar deals with clubs in the likes of Slovakia, Switzerland, Croatia and/or Serbia and bring players through there too with the aim of having within 3 years a flow of 3-4 first team players every season, coming through that system aged 18-21 ready to contribute to the match day 18 and supplement that with a core of decent signings.

A club like ours should be producing a Tierney, Forrest or McGregor every other year not getting 3 in over a decade. Use that money to get a good level of coaching staff in to supplement these academies or clubs as well as our own. Bring someone in that has done this sort of thing elsewhere successfully to set it up.

 

For people on this * board to be infighting with one another for personal gain or power while we fail on the pitch and maybe hand that lot over £50 million needs * chased out the club and the support need to protest to * to get at least the two lawwell s out the club as soon as possible.

 

We don't have one.

I think we essentially relied on contacts from Ange for 75% of our transfers during his seasons. The likes of Scales, Hart, Abada, McCarthy and Juranovic came from the club, but I honestly think the rest came from Ange, both * and good.

There was a working relationship between Nicholson, M Lawell and Ange. Transfers weren't always good, in fact they were poor over-all during Ange's second season, but it did feel like we were trying to sign players for the System we played.

The relationship is completely non-existent between Rodgers, Nicholson and M Lawell, no rhyme or reason to any of our transfers. Kwon, Bernardo, Tilio and Yang were clearly players Ange had identified during his time here, Lagerbielke was a recommendation from Starfelt's agent and the likes of Idah, Kuhn, Nawrocki, Holm and Palma are the only ones who I'd say we scouted (I use that term very loosely for Idah, I don't think he signs if he isn't Irish)

The board have thought all we needed was Rodgers this season, and it almost worked with Beale's Rangers, but it's completely backfired on them. They went out and got what looks like a decent manager, and now we're behind them after being 8 points clear.

Rodgers has a plethora of issues himself, terrible football and constantly dropping points at home against dross, and I'd much rather he left, but our recruitment and over-all scouting has been absolutely abysmal.