Peter Lawwell has claimed that he always has six candidates in his top drawer to take over as Celtic manager.
That news will come as a surprise to the Celtic fans that witnessed Lawwell appoint Neil Lennon on a permanent basis in 2019 apparently on the grounds that he knew the city.
In 2010 and 2019 the Irishman had been conveniently been appointed as Caretaker Manager before getting the job on a permanent basis.
With Lennon toiling badly in the first half of the 2020/21 season Celtic announced that they would carry out a Managerial Review. Two months later the conclusion was that Lennon was the best manager for the club, a fortnight after that Lennon resigned after losing to Ross County for the second time in four months, being outsmarted by Stewart Kettlewell and John Hughes.
Lennon’s resignation left John Kennedy in Caretaker charge for 106 days, losing valuable time for a rebuild with Champions League qualifiers looming in mid-July.
After embarrassingly issuing a club statement about failing to recruit Eddie Howe attention switched outside of the UK with Ange Postecoglou appointed as Lennon’s successor.
Explaining that process that led to Postecoglou’s appointment to Australian website Keep Up, Lawwell said:
He first came to my attention via my son Mark, who said guy called Ange Postecoglou is manager of Yokohama. This guy’s the real deal. That got my interest
I watched him carefully over that period. As CEO, I’ve always got a list of six names in top drawer – you never know what can happen with the manager.
Ange was on the list for three years – just before he won the league (with Marinos in 2019). I watched him, liked him. He won the league and had great success.
In my initial chats with Ange I got a really great impression. He was experienced, mature, had courage in his convictions. And having watched him over the years, he played football the right way.
He was a football enthusiast, a football nut. He not only knows about Japanese, Australian and European football, he knew about Scottish football and Celtic, he knew the task that was (potentially) ahead of him. He knew Celtic.
I’d spoken to Frank (Trimboli, Postecoglou’s agent) a couple of times in the process to gauge Ange’s availability and interest – we were looking (for a manager) from February onwards. Frank said he’d be interested, so we kept him in mind.
After 16 years leading Celtic it seems incredible that Lawwell required a junior member of the Manchester City Scouting team, Mark was the Scouting Information and Content manager.
With the SPFL title returning to Celtic it is hardly a surprise that Lawwell is back praising himself in the media, last season he kept a very very low profile despite fans calling for change from the moment that Ferencvaros knocked Lennon’s team out of the Champions League.
Four successive home defeats prompted the Managerial Review, had Postecoglou been brought in six months or a year earlier Lawwell’s Legacy may have been very different.
Unfortunately his drawers are in the showers apparently.
He obviously didn’t wanna get wet when he went to look, NL was nearby and….you know the rest.
Couldn’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth (mostly guff), he shouldn’t be back at the club in any capacity.
How many European knockout ties have celtic sussesfully navigated in the last 19 years while he’s been CEO?
Editor: He came in October 2003, we beat Barcelona five months later……….. since then we’ve won the same number of UEFA knock out ties as Gretna and Clydebank #fivewayPeter