John Kennedy has explained that it is business as usual at Celtic following the departure of Nick Hammond.
After 16 months and three transfer windows as Head of Football Operations the former Reading keeper decided to leave Celtic- following in the tracks of Peter Lawwell and Neil Lennon.
Hammond’s grand title covered a multitude of areas but the main focus and area to be judged on will always be the transfer market.
Celtic face a massive summer of turnover within the squad but despite the loss of Hammond Kennedy believes that most areas will continue to function even without the ultimate decision makers.
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We still have our Recruitment Team, we still have a Chief Scout (or Head of Recruitment). All the processes and personnel are still there.
The Heads of those Departments, whoever that may be, Peter, Neil, Nick, are changing, but underneath that the work still goes on and the club will decide what is the best way moving forward in terms of who they replace and how they structure that. If they want to make structural changes or just replace like for like in terms of personnel.
That’s at board level, that’s above me, they’ll make the decisions. Very much behind the scenes things will very much things will keep moving forward the way that they do and then when decision time comes there will be people there to make those decisions.
Dom McKay takes over as CEO on July 1 but there is clearly scope for that date to be brought forward.
Putting the jigsaw pieces together is a tough task with the appointment of a Director of Football the next obvious stop but with Season Ticket sales due shortly a big name manager is needed to win back sceptical fans.
Prior to Hammond Lee Congerton and John Park had been involved in similar recruitment roles.