Since everyone appears to be shy for the minute, I may as well put my Celtic hat on and ask "where do the club go from here"?
Seems to me that the board were always gonna have to face a day of reckoning - TIAR or not - because of their behaviour over the last nine years or so with regard to the Rangers scandal.
This has largely passed without commensurate fan opprobrium because of the reluctance of supporters to rock the boat whilst TIAR was on the go. At the end of this season, that reluctance will have ended whether the league secured or not.
With the fall-off-a-cliff performance of the team in the last few months, and the aftermath of Saturday's Derby, we may not have to wait until the end of the season for the penny to drop that the quest is already over.
Perhaps we should not forget, in the midst of the favourable corporate management comparisons with Rangers over the last decade, that Rangers actually went out of business, and that the successor club was a complete basket case on and off the field. So not a high performance bar then.
The current Celtic board have had a largely free ride over the piece, but as soon as the first real challenge appeared, it became apparent that the mythical 'meticulous' planning was actually an absence of planning, and the self congratulation of the Teenies decade was the sound of the same self satisfied middle-aged to elderly men, unrefreshed by new ideas and vigour, applauding themselves in an empty phone-box.
Real success would have been planning properly for the emergence of a real challenge - a challenge which the Celtic board actively sought to put in place because they saw no way out of a league with little competition other than to assist the one (in their opinion) cash cow working its way up the divisions.
Pretend success is believing the hype. The hype that they themselves put out there, that the achievements of the football team over the period was largely down to them. Having convinced themselves of that, no-one saw that the Chief Executive had surrounded himself with people with insufficient ability to challenge his position. Ask yourself this. Who at Parkhead is a likely successor to Lawwell?
Of course they have now been found out - long before the virtual concession of the league title on Saturday. Brendan Rogers knew it was a car-crash waiting to happen. His light hearted comment that he could have opened a 'wingers shop' betrayed a belief that signing business was not being carried out to the fullest extent of helping the team, but was more concerned with a 'buy low-sell high' strategy designed to make money for shareholders, and enrich executives. And Rogers' experience has gone a long way to ensuring that managers of real quality will give Celtic a body swerve as long as the current Chief Executive is in place - even before they start talking money.
And even with Lawwell gone, the same billionaire interests will drive the club for as long as the fans don't have a say. Of course they like to pretend that the fans do have input, but shareholders representatives who have tried to engage with the club will tell you different. Not only were they taken for a ride by the board, they were lied to.
The way I see it, a properly constructed fans forum is essential. One which can coordinate action amongst fans, and try to shift the debate in football towards a membership model for all of our clubs. As long as there is big money in football, there will be crooks and spivs. We've been talking about the chancers who ran Rangers into the buffers. Time we started to look a little closer to home.
Not a solution I know, but in the current circumstances, perhaps the discussion can be set underway, unencumbered by the TIAR obstacle that has been in its path for so long.
Seems to me that the board were always gonna have to face a day of reckoning - TIAR or not - because of their behaviour over the last nine years or so with regard to the Rangers scandal.
This has largely passed without commensurate fan opprobrium because of the reluctance of supporters to rock the boat whilst TIAR was on the go. At the end of this season, that reluctance will have ended whether the league secured or not.
With the fall-off-a-cliff performance of the team in the last few months, and the aftermath of Saturday's Derby, we may not have to wait until the end of the season for the penny to drop that the quest is already over.
Perhaps we should not forget, in the midst of the favourable corporate management comparisons with Rangers over the last decade, that Rangers actually went out of business, and that the successor club was a complete basket case on and off the field. So not a high performance bar then.
The current Celtic board have had a largely free ride over the piece, but as soon as the first real challenge appeared, it became apparent that the mythical 'meticulous' planning was actually an absence of planning, and the self congratulation of the Teenies decade was the sound of the same self satisfied middle-aged to elderly men, unrefreshed by new ideas and vigour, applauding themselves in an empty phone-box.
Real success would have been planning properly for the emergence of a real challenge - a challenge which the Celtic board actively sought to put in place because they saw no way out of a league with little competition other than to assist the one (in their opinion) cash cow working its way up the divisions.
Pretend success is believing the hype. The hype that they themselves put out there, that the achievements of the football team over the period was largely down to them. Having convinced themselves of that, no-one saw that the Chief Executive had surrounded himself with people with insufficient ability to challenge his position. Ask yourself this. Who at Parkhead is a likely successor to Lawwell?
Of course they have now been found out - long before the virtual concession of the league title on Saturday. Brendan Rogers knew it was a car-crash waiting to happen. His light hearted comment that he could have opened a 'wingers shop' betrayed a belief that signing business was not being carried out to the fullest extent of helping the team, but was more concerned with a 'buy low-sell high' strategy designed to make money for shareholders, and enrich executives. And Rogers' experience has gone a long way to ensuring that managers of real quality will give Celtic a body swerve as long as the current Chief Executive is in place - even before they start talking money.
And even with Lawwell gone, the same billionaire interests will drive the club for as long as the fans don't have a say. Of course they like to pretend that the fans do have input, but shareholders representatives who have tried to engage with the club will tell you different. Not only were they taken for a ride by the board, they were lied to.
The way I see it, a properly constructed fans forum is essential. One which can coordinate action amongst fans, and try to shift the debate in football towards a membership model for all of our clubs. As long as there is big money in football, there will be crooks and spivs. We've been talking about the chancers who ran Rangers into the buffers. Time we started to look a little closer to home.
Not a solution I know, but in the current circumstances, perhaps the discussion can be set underway, unencumbered by the TIAR obstacle that has been in its path for so long.
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