An open letter to Tony Mowbray

"It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty."

"Hold it the greatest sin to prefer existence to honour, and for the sake of life to lose the reasons for living."

Juvenal

Dear Tony,

I rarely like to call for a manager's head, especially one that is such a short time in a job. However, the time has come for you to make your most important contribution to Celtic to date.

Tomorrow morning, I would urge you to call for a meeting with Peter Lawwell. At that meeting you should hand him your letter of resignation, stating only your willingness to remain in position until such time as a replacement can take up his new post. You should also make it clear that you will not be swayed on your decision.

I bear you no ill will. I remember your playing days and, though they were largely unsuccessful, you were always a committed professional and a credit to Celtic. In fact, that has been true of your behaviour as a manager and, while I believe your position to be untenable, I would also insist that you should feel no shame in failing to produce even a competent Celtic team.

I suspect that you have been working with one hand tied. Despite your claims to have wanted to sign Zheng Zhi – a decent footballer who nevertheless rarely plays – it was remarkable how quickly the Celtic marketing people produced a Chinese language version of the club's website after he signed. It was also a surprise that he made his debut in the most televised game of the season – against Rangers – given that he had come from a radically different footballing environment and local culture.

Strangely, when we signed Ki – another talented player, mind – there was apparent disappointment that he was ineligible to make his debut against Rangers in the next most televised match.

Okay, I'll come out and say it: I don't believe you have full authority in recruitment or even in naming the team. I believe that Celtic have maintained Japanese, Chinese and Korean players largely for the purposes of brand exposure and that these factors have directly influenced team selection.

It has been widely rumoured that you were unaware that Celtic had agreed to sell your then captain Stephen McManus to Ipswich and it is abundantly clear that you had no part in the signing of Robbie Keane. Of all the club's recent signings, I believe Keane to be the best and I for one am happy to have him.

However, it would be naïve to believe that this particular deal was not made at the behest of Dermot Desmond, who is assuredly culturing very influential alliances that may be extremely useful to him in the future.

Apparently you did want to sign Danny Fox, who was then sold in record time to be replaced by a loan signing, Edson Braafheid. Had you ever seen Braafheid play? He is certainly talented but far from being an assured defender. Had you ever seen Rogne, Hooiveld or Rasmussen? I am not saying that any of these are bad players. However, as I am sure you are aware, there is more to building a team than collecting players.

Who is the leader? It appears to me that it has been years since we had one. Surely any manager realises the wisdom of having “old heads” to help younger players learn some game craft. A loose association of individuals rarely succeeds at anything.

You are not alone in facing this problem. Gordon Strachan had Marc Crosas, Roy Keane, Thomas Gravesen and Du Wei, among others, foisted upon him by a coalition of scouts and executives. It was clearly this he was referring to when he insisted that at Middlesbrough, he was certainly not going to sign players he had not seen. For that he has been scorned in some quarters for signing players from the likes of Hibernian and Dundee Utd.

There are some who believe that the role of manager is unimportant – that he should just make the best of the materials provided to him. Those who believe that are at best fools and at worst cynical elements who will damage our club.

But, for all my sympathy – and I believe you should protect your reputation by revealing this, if it is true, rather than signing a confidentiality agreement – you have to take a major portion of the blame. The last straw was the substitution of Robbie Keane with 20 minutes remaining against Aberdeen. You must have been the only person watching that match who believed the points were safe at that point.

You had only to look at the fact that Aberdeen had been allowed to score twice already - against an allegedly full-strength side – to conclude that there was a clear danger that they might do so again. Before that, I thought that you would never make a more bizarre decision than to replace Aiden McGeady with Lee Naylor. How little I knew!

You have consistently shown yourself incapable of putting out a team that can control a game at its most crucial moments. Brian Clough always said that a team is at it's most vulnerable either side of half-time and just after they had scored. Why have you consistently failed to realise this?

Who told you that Marc-Antoine Fortune – again a decent footballer who panics when he has time on the ball in the box – should be your main striker? Why do you change the few functioning areas of the team from one week to the next? And do you really think that it was wise to mention Alex Ferguson's five lean years at Manchester United? Perhaps you have forgotten that we expect to win the league every year – especially against a club that is so debt-ridden that it is unable to sign players.

There is much that is rotten at the heart of Celtic and I feel sorry that your period of tenure is being tainted by it. I also sympathise with your disappoinment and it is clear that the Scottish officials are conspiring as never before to further hamper your ambitions. You are worthy of better. But so are we.

It seems that you are incapable of fielding a team that can match flair with the most meagre form of expediency. The problem is that someone else could yet win this league, even given the absurd points differential accrued on your watch. That is why it is important that you go now, while there remains a faint flicker of hope.

I sincerely hope that you will do as I ask and, if you do, I will wish you well. Don't let the fans' disappointment turn to bitterness.





--

Time for recriminations? Damned right!

As the improbable became the inevitable, Celtic's capitulation to arguably the worst team ever to be Scottish champions presents a clear case for a change of personnel. That starts with the manager.

For three and a half seasons, this blog supported Gordon Strachan. Recent months, however, have raised questions about his attitude to the job, his ability to field a winning team and, frankly, his loyalty.

That Strachan was not accepted by a section of Celtic supporters is old news. In that, he was often a victim of fans' ridiculous petulance. But he also occasionally fed the critics through gross immaturity.

Few Celtic supporters had any sympathy for the journalists he sent packing with fleas in their ears – we know they revel in criticising all things Celtic. But Strachan failed to grasp the fact that he was also addressing the fans. Snippy one-liners directed at hacks may be well and good if he was communicating with the supporters elsewhere – for example through Celtic's website. Failure to do so seemed to indicate a lack of respect for the people who, for good or ill, make Celtic what it is.

The closing of ranks between manager and players might also be admirable in its own way if it was accompanied by acceptable results and performances. Unfortunately, though, that was not the case. Continually defending players after draws and defeats leads a club perilously close to accepting second-best. Not good enough for Celtic.

Furthermore, there were some absurd decisions over the past season. Squad rotation of middleweight players was an abject failure. Keeping faith with the talented but increasingly out of his depth Marc Crosas was as ill advised as was the bizarre decision to play Gary Caldwell in midfield. Dropping Aiden McGeady in favour of Shaun Maloney (whose return has been shown to be a mistake) at Ibrox was just one more unfathomable move that was an utter failure.

Even yesterday, needing a goal for some semblance of respectability, he replaced Scott McDonald with Maloney, one of the most absurd decisions of his managerial reign before he reached for Willo Flood, a move that was symbolic of a man who had run out of ideas long ago.

True, he was badly let down by directors and a Chief Executive, who were too damned smart for their own good in trying to keep Celtic a hair's breadth ahead of an abysmal Rangers team. Peter Lawwell, Dermot Desmond, John Reid and all their apologists fully deserve every bit of the abuse that will assuredly be hurled in their direction. Their briefings to certain supporters' websites in a transparent attempt to manage information have represented an underhand tactic that insults the intelligence of Celtic fans. They have failed the club and would do us all a favour by moving on to pastures new.

But there comes a point where the manager must stop meekly accepting under-investment because of his great friendship with Peter Lawwell and demand the best for the club. The world and his wife could see that we needed another striker and a left-back yet we spent an entire season with the most ineffective front line we have had since we were relying on the likes of Tommy Coyne and Andy Paton for goals. Still, he loaned out Cillian Sheridan though he has no time for Ben Hutcheson, leaving us with hopelessly inept forwards. Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink has shown that his race is run as a footballer while Georgious Samaras would be better taking up a career on the catwalk where his aimless strutting would be more appropriate. Scott McDonald found some form but far too late for the campaign as a whole.

It was naïve to say the least to rely on friendship with Lawwell, who would cheerfully hang Strachan out to dry if it made his life easier (and there is good reason to believe he was using at least one of those supporters' websites to do just that). Lawwell is a survivor and such people rarely reciprocate loyalty when their neck is on the line.

The country will now be represented in Europe by a club known as Scotland's Shame and one which is a national embarrassment. Finishing second to such garbage makes Strachan's position untenable.






--

Three key players who wrecked Celtic’s European dreams

Celtic fans have rightly sneered in recent times at the increasingly crude media management employed by David Murray and his Media House cronies, using second-rate Play-Doh hacks to deflect attention from the behaviour of Rangers fans.

Celtic have been much more subtle. Peter Lawell, for example, is a much more shrewd operator than Murray (and could teach him a thing or two about dignity). But that’s not to say that certain figures at Celtic have made less strenuous efforts to spin their way out of the public eye when the club’s failings have been concerned.

And chief victim of this is Gordon Strachan. Has Strachan made mistakes? Is he often too reluctant to make attacking changes? Could he sometimes be described as too much a coach and not enough of an old-fashioned manager? Undoubtedly.

Has he been a Chief Executive’s dream? You betcha!

Let’s be clear about one thing – Celtic, above the coaching level, did not plan for the last 16 of this season’s Champions League. The club calculated for a lucrative UEFA Cup run and championship-winning season.

They watched a pitiful Rangers side clump to a final in Manchester and said: “We’ll have some of that.”

How do we know this? Because Celtic’s unofficial channels that explain away policies before they have even become official told us so before a ball was kicked in anger. When the club was crying out for the left back and striker the fans expected, suddenly the focus turned to “cash in the bank”, and “financial consolidation” keeping us ahead of our domestic rivals for the foreseeable future. It was then that speculation turned to the benefits of a UEFA Cup run in comparison to one more round in the Champions League against a club we had little hope of beating. This does not happen by accident.

Well, when you aim for second best, you very often end up with nothing.

Now, however, the same “insiders” are telling us that, whatever else may be wrong at Celtic, lack of investment in the team isn’t one of them. “Net spend” is relatively high, we hear. The implication is clear – Peter Lawwell, Dermot Demond and John Reid aren’t to blame; Gordon Strachan is.

It is a shoddy way to treat a manager who has continually delivered success under extreme financial constraints and sung the praises of his “friends” at the club in the process.

Did Strachan, who maintains the most detailed database of players, say he didn’t want another left-back, additional top quality central defender and proven goalscorer? If he did, he should come out and say so. If instead he was forced to accept that sufficient funds would be unavailable, those who made that decision should be held accountable.

Strachan still has and always will have fans who compare him unfavourably to Martin O’Neill. How would he have reacted to this?

I suspect that he would have publicly embarrassed the officials who were failing to support him. I doubt that he would have quietly acquiesced while players like Du Wei were foisted upon him to “appeal to the Chinese market”. I wonder if he would have sat back while players like Marc Crosas (admittedly a good addition) were delivered in deals that were conducted in the board room without the coaching staff being asked for an opinion.

You can be certain that O’Neill would have raised the roof if he suspected that private briefings were being issued to have the blame laid entirely at his door while those who frustrated his attempts to improve the squad were exonerated.

I suspect that this will be Gordon Strachan’s last season at Celtic, though I hope I am wrong. If that is the plan, then some figures at Celtic may think they have little to lose in feeding him to the piranhas to enable them to hide.

It is true that some fans judge ambition only on the size of the transfer fee paid for “wow signings”. It also appears that, whatever the financial climate, some of the recent calls for prudence would have been more appropriate to the last Chancellor of the Exchequer than the former Home Secretary. There is a middle ground – sign better players than you have and build the squad you need.

Notably, Celtic’s own website has only two news items on the exit from Europe. The names Reid, Lawwell and Desmond are not mentioned. They should not, however, believe that underhand tactics will fool all of the people all of the time.






--