Celtic briefed us on Friday about why the Howe deal collapsed.
At the time we made it clear, this is what the club were putting out and it wasn’t gospel. We shared it with our readers and our followers on social media.
The crux of the explanation came down to Eddie not being able to get the staff in he wanted [Not through Celtic’s doing] and it quickly fell apart after that.
Since then, we’ve heard noises from the Eddie Howe camp bemoaning a lack of planning.
Oliver Kay wrote a great piece in The Athletic about the whole situation and the uncertainty around a longterm plan was spooking Eddy. Kay wrote that the conditions would not have turned off a ‘Celtic man’ but Eddie was truly clinical about the process and when things got down to the nitty gritty the Englishman wasn’t convinced.
Add to that Phil Mac’s piece on Saturday evening who writes a well placed source told him the agreement between Celtic and Howe wasn’t as tight as one might think these deals are when it came to the detail.
Phil wrote there was ambiguity over what and who was paying for Eddy’s staff to be released from their Bournemouth contracts. Eddie believed Celtic were picking up the tab and it wouldn’t come into his rebuild budget – Dermot was not of that opinion.
He then writes, at the eleventh hour, Eddie wanted a ‘substantial uplift’ in his rebuild budget to which Celtic were not receptive.
If these sequence of events took place, it looks from the outside like a game of chess. Eddie and his representatives knew how far down the line this job was and the anticipation from the Celtic support about his imminent arrival, they could have conceivably used that information to try and secure more funding for the rebuild.
There was no checkmate from either side and in that case Dermot has walked away from the game.
This deal has many layers, of which we won’t ever get the full picture. Maybe one day when Eddie brings out a book we’ll be a small chapter as he describes his time in football.
Celtic are a big club come on have some ambition.lets get a manager in to take us to the very top no one can touch celtic football club.
If any of this is truie, then what stands out is two things – Howe’s understanding that getting his coaches contracts paid wouldn’t impact his budget and when he realised it would, he asked for a bigger budget. But to even get to that point, why didn’t anyone at the club, or Howe question this major detail?? In hindsight, Celtic must recognise that the reason we are at this juncture is we were content to wait in hope for Howe to consider being manager. That’s not how things should be done at a big club and it should never happen again. Perhaps with Lawwell gone, McKay won’t be so naive on any future dealings. As for Howe, it’s glaringly obvious he saw the job as a clinical process and was not plugged into what a big opportunity for success it represented, compared to say Crystal Palace who I don’t think have won any major honours