Peter Lawwell has finally apologised for Celtic’s Training trip to Dubai- then gone on to justify every aspect of it.
The club CEO has been under incredible pressure from supporters to come clean, accept responsibility and for many resign.
On Sunday, Celtic announced through Twitter that one player had returned a positive test result, by noon on Monday 13 players were self isolating as well as Neil Lennon and John Kennedy. A makeshift team put together on the day were held at home by Hibs to a 1-1 draw.
Lawwell made a five minute video with Gerry McCulloch which touched on an apology then went to lengths to explain and justify why the trip went ahead during a global pandemic. No other top flight club in Scotland or England has gone abroad for training since the season started.
The message from the Chief Executive was very similar to Monday’s statement claiming that the positive test would have been just as likely had the club stayed at home and trained, ignoring the fact that they admitted that the close contacts had been identified from coach and plane travel.
No explanation was given for Chris Jullien being in the squad despite being ruled out for three to four months.
It’s been an extremely difficult few days and on reflection, looking back and looking with hindsight and looking at the outcome of the trip, clearly it was a mistake. For that, I profoundly apologise to our supporters.
We left here and the rationale for the camp was with very much the best intentions. Things haven’t gone the way we wanted to and the outcome is clearly very regrettable.