JOHN PARK has opened up to The Athletic about his time at Celtic and how the club conducted their dreams get business with him in charge of unearthing talent.
Park helped bring in players like Wanyama, Hooper, Forster, Rogic and Virgil van Dijk.
The head of recruitment spent around nine years at the club between 2007 to 2016. Celtic headhunted John from Hibernian where he was head of youth development back in the day.
Celtic’s recruitment since he left has been a bit more sketchy at times. Lee Congerton was a disaster for the club and Nick Hammond only had a short stint before moving on.
Speaking about his time at Celtic – Park discusses how he and Peter Lawwell did business and revealed surprisingly that our former chief exec never asked him to balance the books.
Park looked st low cost options and weighed them against what the team already had – analysed their key credentials and took the decision from there.
When asked about Celtic spending major fees on the likes of Jullien and Edouard, Park said: “Never, never in my life. I find it strange that people spend that amount of money on some players when you can find 100 players just as good, if not better, for a portion of that money. Have Celtic spent money and done well? I don’t know. You look at Edouard: £9 million.
“But then you include his wages for a couple of million, and then the sell-on (40 per cent of profit to PSG), is that value for money.
“There are some excellent young players out there that you can find through the right tools and processes, which the right scouting team can deliver. I’m totally convinced of that.
“That’s the part of it I love.”
“I was never asked by Peter (Lawwell) to balance the books. We never once spoke about it. If the right type of player was available at a good price for each of the coaches, for each manager I worked with, then Peter was happy to work with that.
“We were ahead of the game. We had our own data analysis department back then, with Craig Dunbar and Paul McLeish.
“They ascertained the facts from the data to compare players and value them against what we’d got in the club at the present. When you look at the stats and leverage them against the scouting reports, you come to the conclusion that they can be the right ones for the club.”
“It’s a lowball game, a Moneyball game, but it’s down to the staff behind the scenes to spot these guys approaching the end of their contracts, and knowing they’re good enough for Celtic, or at least being confident of it. You can talk about the Virgils (van Dijk), Moussas, but those bread and butter players who have come in for little or nothing have done every bit as much for Celtic as the big names.”
We have no idea who is heading up Celtic’s recruitment at the moment. There’s nobody in a John Park like position at the club. The scouting team who are there will still be working but with no change to the structure and Dom McKay out the door after 72 days – Celtic really need a scouting guru who can give us fresh impetus and unearth new talent.
