The ultimate tribute to Celtic’s £20m man- the ‘departing’ Peter Lawwell

Many tributes have been paid to the ‘departing’ Peter Lawwell. Apparently December 31 was his last day as Chairman of Celtic.

His legacy over the club runs deep and may take a decade or more to finally be extinguished.

When Lawwell joined Celtic in 2003 there was genuine ambition about the club.

Therun to the UEFA Cup Final had given a new generation a glimpse of what the club could achieve.

When the former Clydeport accountant arrived Martin O’Neill’s side were in the middle of a Champions League campaign.

LAWWELL MASTERMINDS THE EUROPEAN DEMISE

Celtic then were the equals of Bayern Munich, Lyon and Anderlecht, champions of three respected UEFA nations. Bad luck, injuries and Magnus Hedman cost the club a place in the last 16 of the elite competition.

Demotion to the UEFA Cup resulted in knock-out victories over Teplice and Barcelona.

Twenty-one years on Celtic are European also rans, 58th in the co-efficient table. Without a UEFA knock out victory since David Marshall and John Kennedy were emerging from the Nou Camp as heroes.

Lawwell, then the CEO was applying the handbrake and looking for reverse gear.

Through a network of media messengers Celtic fans have been told that they’ve never had it so good. Apparently we are one of the most admired and best run clubs in Europe.

Unfortunately for Lawwell, just like his close friends Dave Murray and Martin Bain, the truth is out there.

SHINING THE TRUTH ON HIS RECORD

In 2025 you can’t control the truth by throwing a few transfer crumbs at desperate mouth pieces.

Fans can access information, draw conclusions.

Being the hero of Hugh Minestrone Keevins no longer influences half of the nation. Especially not Celtic Fans.

The Celtic Thick News blog is a monument to Lawwell’s influence. Once it was a must-read site, now it just rhymes with that phrase.

It is the only fan media website that hasn’t signed up to the CelticFans Collective.

On December 24 Thick News carried a gushing tribute to their inspiration and hero. Maybe around 55% still follow follow the brilliance of their leader.

Others, the enlightened 45% share a different view.

Reggie was absolutely spot on as he took both P67 and his departing hero to shreds with the great feared enemy. Not The Pledge but The Truth:

Ah Paul Brennan. The Nadine Dorries to Lawwells’ Boris Johnson. Finally wiped those tears away to write this tripe. Where to start???

If Lawwell was so active in preventing Newco being parachuted into the Scottish Premiership, why was it left to Dundee United, then Hearts and Aberdeen to say so publicly?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/18539483

41 out of 42 clubs in Scotland live within their means in this country, yet one was allowed to rack up huge losses year after year, culminating in them winning a league title in 20/21. If Lawwell was so influential in the FSR reform of UEFA’s FFP (that was brought in around 2010 long before Lawwell made his way to the ECA), why did he not seek to introduce FFP to Scotland?

Lawwell’s legacy is:

– The luckiest CEO in history. His only domestic rivals were liquidated whilst they were going for their 4th title in a row, thus presenting the guarantee of a league championship for 5 seasons, in reality 7. When measured against our European contemporaries, he was a complete failure.

Why? Because his policy, championed on here and continued through his puppet, the spineless Michael Nicholson, breaks one simple old adage: Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And by god did we fail to prepare, under multiple managers, for all 7 out of 9 Champions League qualifying failures against teams, many of whom have a fraction of our budget, because Lawwell know better.

He thinks he’s gonna get bargains on deadline day, the ‘formidable operator’ coming out on top… yet we continually find ourselves in the worst place a team can be at the end of the window; cash-rich and desperate. This season alone, we tried to sign Dolberg for £8m, which would have taken our spending to approx £18m

AFTER we’ve been papped out of the Champions League qualifiers. Gross incompetence from the boardroom that has once again cost this club tens of millions of pounds. And they and they alone are to blame. Just like when we had Bitton at centre half, McGregor at left back or Forrest as the lone striker.

They sold our number one striker in January, before our biggest game in 12 years and replaced him with no one. Can’t keep an unhappy player? Well we did that just 8 months later with Maeda. They sold Kuhn in mid-July and replaced him with.. no one. Knowing full well Jota was out for most of the season.

It seems the chat from your host that Johnny Kenny and Yang were future Ballon d’Or winners and would have fired us into the Champions League if only the manager would develop them has died down. I wonder why that is. And then they release a tone deaf statement, in a season of tone deaf statements, blaming FSR and subsequently European tax laws for their incompetence.

You could attribute FSR as a valid excuse, as Auldheid on here seems determined to do, but you would have to ignore the decade plus of the same people making the same mistakes when there was no FSR to consider and in the last few years when the board have hoarded cash when they could spent more, much more, front loading contracts if need be, whilst the FSR limits were high. Apparently, we had inside knowledge, so a competent board would have been proactive.

-Out of those 38 trophies, 11 of them came under Brendan Rodgers, who Lawwell allowed a non-executive director to use the official club website to launch a bitter, spiteful, highly unprofessional rant at the former manager. Brendan Rodgers came from a working class Celtic supporting background as well, so why is that not presented in mitigation of his mistakes??

– Lawwell completely neglected his duties as chair of an AGM to dismiss a motion from Jeanette Findlay of the Celtic Trust to bypass the Celtic board’s propaganda video so they could be held to account by shareholders’ questions. Anyone here think Jeanette Findlay isn’t from a working class background? And yet Lawwell treated her with the same utter contempt he shows for the entire support.

-Do you know who definitely didn’t come from a working class background? The born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth son of a non-executive director, who Lawwell allowed to launch into a pre-prepared tirade -deliberately designed to be inflammatory- against the club’s support, despite having no business whatsoever in being at that table.

He leaves Celtic as, in your own words Paul, “the laughing stock of the football world”. Your tears for him are not found anywhere else in the Celtic world. He is the chief contributor to the toxic atmosphere he leaves behind as a result of treating the support with nothing but contempt, right up until and including his resignation statement. His removal is the first step in the healing process.

“We will likely pass from an time of Celtic fans in executive roles, to being another step on the football exec train.”

One can only hope that the jobs for the boys/family members era is over, and that in the next one, we seek out the very best people in their fields that we can afford.

Reggie, the majority of the Celtic support salute your brilliant summary of P67’s hero.