Mondays Meeting

Has anyone heard any more details about the meeting on Monday? Who’s attending, etc.?
I hope the individuals chosen by the groups are fully prepared with sensible questions and ready to respond to the obvious answers the board will give.
The meeting shouldn’t end on Monday without a solid agreement on improvements and a clear plan for moving forward.
And will not accept the board’s plan of being just slightly better than Rangers.

 

Waste of time they have a complete disregard for the fans. They said they would improve their recruitment procedures last season and this season has been the worst I can remember for a long time. It will be all speech play and no action.

 

Hope the guys are thinking about good challenges for this mob on Monday. Perhaps consider pressing them to agree to capping the amount of profit that can be banked/paid out in dividends each year, and seek guarantees that they will spend the rest. If they can’t get the players they want, (option number 1), then the excess profits should be spent on stadium upgrades/ticket price reductions/new infrastructure projects like the fabled museum etc. Secondly, look to get them to resolve the managers situation one way or another early. We need certainty, as the misery of uncertainty will affect the team as the season progresses. Let’s not waste this opportunity and allow them to get off the hook they are currently on, hit them, (Desmond), in the pocket.

 

Whatever they say or promise to do there's more chance of a flying pink elephant flying by your window.
It's all just delaying tactics and fill you with false promises as these * have no intention of resigning or leaving they get a nice salary and bonuses.

 

@Mr Shelby if youre attending pls throw a pie at Nicholson.

 

Unless they serve Lawwells head on a spike this is a waste of time.
The general consensus from the fans groups after the last meeting was Nicholson was a bumbling idiot so don't see what good it does him or what confidence it's gonna give the fans spending more time in the * company

 

gonna be weird telling them the need to resign and them saying no

 

Probably wishing it went ahead now.so they could blame the loss on fans.

 

I wish there was a way this could be recored for us to watch/listen to

 

Just don't buy it from a Celtic kiosk

 

Should be demanding the name of the scab (lawwell) that released that story of Rodgers working his ticket.

Plenty more ammunition to talk about following recent results.
Were simply not good enough and taking the fans for a ride.

 

What's the main thing that would give the whole club a massive boost and enable us to modernise and move forward?

Lawwell out.

That would give the fans, the players and the manager a massive boost.

In the COVID season, it was so obvious we needed shot of Lennon - we did that far too late. Lawwell then stepped back for a while.

Now, it's painfully obvious we need shot of Lawwell asap. There are others who should go too. Lawwell needs to be first out, or he'll just end up appointing the replacements.

I hope those going to the meeting don't get sucked in to discussing details, like the club looking for a new head of business operations. Nothing will really change until we have new leadership, and that starts with the Chairman.

 

I'm kinda worried about the meeting on Monday, to be honest.

I just hope that the Collective are actually together in what they want to happen and are realistic about what the club are willing to do to satisfy the fans. It's not like they're going to sack themselves, is it.

It breaks down into 3 main parts for me where I feel like the fans would be happy as a collective if the following happened.

The Board

Someone has to go. We are never getting rid of Lawwell, Nicholson and McKay. That being said, it would make a significant start if Lawwell was to go, for good. However, Nicholson and McKay aren't going to tell the collective anything when it comes to what the plans are at boardroom level. Fans will rightfully be asking for heads to roll but I think it's very unlikely that any of them leave. Maybe Desmond convinces the board to punt Lawwell but even that seems unlikely. Unfortunately, I just don't think we are going to get the change at boardroom level that we want and I'd be very surprised if we seen any of them leave their roles within the next 12 months.

Footballing Structure

This is the biggest problem I have with the club, at the minute. Absolutely scandalous that Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay were leading negotiations for players, with very little experience when it comes to transfers, players and recruitment in general. This summer was utterly shambolic, that we bid 30% of the value for Breum, with GAE footballing director embarrassing the club publicly about the way we went about our business and then the rumours of a £3m bid for the Rapid striker, who went for £9m. It's embarrassing and screams of individuals making decisions who don't know what they're doing and don't know who/what they're bidding for. Even the Tounetki deal was * shameful. How many bids was it? 3? Before we were forced to pay over the £5m initial price, because we had left it too late again and the club wanted properly compensated and held us to ransom. How many times has this happened over the years. Let's not even get into the * shambles that was the Dohlberg deal.

That being said, I do think that this is where the Collective could actually get some sort of success. It was common knowledge that the club were actively looking for a Director of Football, the year Ange arrived, with Fergal Harkin heavily linked before he moved somewhere different. That coincided with Dominic McKay coming in as CEO and wanting to progress the club and bring it into the 21st century. He was a rugby man, knew * all about football. Did he make mistakes that summer? Of course he did but he seemed * bent on changing the way the club carried out their business. He wanted to be a CEO, he didn't want to be negotiating with clubs for players and I think the majority of us in here are in agreement that transfer business should not be left to anyone at boardroom level, especially the CEO, the Chairman or the CFO. We seem to be one of a very small percentage of clubs who operate in this way. Of course, the reality is that the search for a DoF/Sporting Director stopped as soon as Dominic Mckay moved on and we went back to the same way we ran for years before.

Dermot Desmond said in a sit down interview a number of years ago that the manager was the figurehead of the footballing operations. I don't think he's lying when he says that. I think they believe that's the way the club should be ran, that the manager decides who comes in. They got so lucky with Ange, in that sense. He managed to exploit the Asian market, which was incredibly undervalued, to bring in significant players for relative pennies. Of course, there is a great deal of revisionism when it comes to Ange and his transfer business as a whole but no one can deny that he used what he knew well, and it was successful. That's where it's a bit of an internal struggle with Rodgers. He's got no league to exploit. He wants ready made players from bigger leagues and they come at a cost. I think making Rodgers/Ange or any other manager the figurehead of the club is wrong. Of course, if they see a player they like the look of, or they know a player from previous experience that can come in and do a job for us? Absolutely, bring them in. In the vast majority of cases, we have scouts and we need to trust these scouts. If they're not doing their job properly, you sack them and bring in other scouts, who have been successful elsewhere. Scouts are there to target players. Scouts are there to watch players. Rodgers is there to manage a football team. Be the face of the club from a media perspective. He's not got time to watch the * Hungarian League games to see some star winger, who the scouts have identified. It's about time we trusted the scouts but we also need to bring a figurehead, who can be trusted by the board and the manager/coach to spend the money wisely. That brings me to the final part of this, the manager.

Manager

I * love Brendan Rodgers. I wanted him to stay. A small part of me still wants him to stay because I can see in his eyes that he WANTS to stay, under specific conditions. He's here. He loves the club. He's successful and he loves being here, from a personal perspective. His wife and step-daughter love it here, apparently. I think he's a very principled man. He will leave if he doesn't get the conditions he wants and I think it would devastate him to leave, again. Especially when he made so much progress in the biggest stage of all, last season and he finally managed to win the vast majority of fans round.

That being said, I do think that, regardless of the success of this season, he needs to leave at the end of his contract. One thing we can all agree on is that Rodgers has an ego. That's fine. I have no problem with that whatsoever. In fact, I like it. However, the importance of upgrading the footballing structure and bringing in a real figurehead, who manages it all is far too big to keep Rodgers, when I think it would inevitably lead to clashes. It was common knowledge that the club, for a certain time period, prioritised International capped players, for under £4m in positions of need. I think under Lawwell Jr. That was the remit he was given by the board. I don't like that. It's too much. What I would really prefer is that a DoF is given a budget. £15m. He's given a weekly wage budget. There's an additional £40k in it. They need a percentage of sales. Ok, if the profit of a player is £10m, you get 50% of that to add to your budget. What that does is create a healthy incoming and outgoing environment. The club actively let's players move on, whilst promoting to the youth of the world that we do not stand in their way, if they want to leave and the club have a good offer. We will replace you. We trust our Scouts and our talent spotters to bring in a replacement easily. I think Rodgers would want too much control over that, which leads to the clashes. People keep harping on about specific money being spent. We don't need to. We just need to be better when it comes to scouting. You look at the transfers made in the summer for under £5m, to clubs outside of the Top 5 leagues and you're telling me we couldn't have created a team that would have won us the league, with the ability to play fast, attacking football and gotten into the Champions League? Bullshit.

I'd be looking to bring in a young, hungry coach who plays attacking football, has showed levels of success already in their career and is looking for the next step up in their career. Whilst they are absolutely part of recruitment, they're not the end point of the decision making. A coach who trusts the scouts and DoF to provide him with the sort of players he asks for, whilst also trusting his own ability to coach and manage football games to push the players to the next level of their abilities. For me, that's not Rodgers. I don't think it ever will be, either. People like Klopp, Howe, Amorim... they all have people above them having as much a say on transfers. *, even Pep has a DoF/Sporting Director at Man City. Look at all the clubs we are trying to compete with. Feyenoord, PSV, Ajax, Porto, Benfica, Sporting, Club Brugges, Anderlecht, USG, Salzburg, Copenhagen, Bodo/Glimt... every single one of them have a DoF or Sporting Director. We need to get with the times, urgently.

 

All this crap could have been avoided if the Board had chose to do the right thing and replace our top players, they chose not to and this is where we are now at, angry supporters, a manager going through the motions and a team who appear to have chucked it.

Can see this season being a trophyless one unless the manager and team start to really put something together but have no idea where its coming from.

 

Please can you be the DOF! @celticdaft_1888

 

If all those attending are expected to be seated and waiting for the board members to enter
I really hope they take the opportunity to all stand there scrolling on their phones.

 

We definitely do need a DoF and Rogers should move on at the end of the season.

And maybe it will be incredibly difficult to get rid of Lawwell. But we should pull out all the stops and exhaust every option to get him out.

If I could, I'd tell Nicholson and MacKay we weren't interested in discussing anything else other than getting Lawwell out.

I know they don't have the authority to do that, but I'd want them reporting back to Desmond that nothing other than Lawwell out the door for good will cut it.

 

I would be asking the * what they have done to merit the wages they are stealing from the club.

 

I don't think anything will be answered. I imagine there will be a promise for more communication and potentially a fans forum style thing set up quarterly or twice a year or something.

Nothing will change in terms of personnel. Nobody will put their name to the statement put out and nobody will put their name to briefing against the manager to the sun

 

It’ll go along the lines of

‘Oh hi *insert fan affiliation* sit please can we get anything coffee, tea, water etc. Right listen you’re right this window didn’t go as planned and we’re working day and night to put it right in January’

Fast forward 5 months and we’ll get the obligatory it’s hard to do business line and rinse and repeat.