Writing about Celtic at the moment is hard. Trying to make sense of the club from the perspective of both a supporter and a journalist is doubly hard: readers tend to shy away from negative stories about their favourite team, which means that any story you write will either be met with abuse or not read at all.

I can assure you firsthand that, if you’re the sort of fan who hates to read horror stories about the club that you love, you can imagine what it’s like to have to write them.

That’s why, instead of the typical handwringing think pieces that accompany low periods such as these, or the standard “that was the year that was” articles that emerge at this time, I’ve decided to take a different tack.

The idea that Celtic need to modernize their structure and update their business model are hardly new—tweet me and I’ll happily point you towards work by myself and other, cleverer people on the subject—but few have considered what that might feel like as a supporter. I’m going to do that right now.

Celtic fans like to see the club as a special case. We’re not. Well, we are, because of the history of the club and the culture around it, but in general, we’re not. Celtic play football and football is a global game that exists within a global ecosystem. The quicker we learn this and implement it, the better we will be. Winning in Scotland is shallow. Not that shallow can’t be satisfying, as plenty of Celtic supporters discovered in the horrendous, yet rewarding Scottish Cup win a few weeks ago.

Celtic need to change their benchmarks, however, and with that will come differing expectations. Here’s a coping guide to what 2021 could (and should) look like, if Celtic are to progress to being a better club overall.

Fans need to get used to losing games

The principal tenet of football is that you play to win. That’s not going to change. But there is going to be a period in which we need to take one step back to go two forwards. What I mean by this is that we will sell our best players and replace them with ones who aren’t as good, or at least, aren’t as good yet. The signing policy that will see Celtic grow to become a solid Champions League regular will involve selling players for upwards of 20 million pounds and replacing them with people who cost a quarter of that. Invariably, some of those won’t come off, but if you get enough over time, then the club as a whole progressed.

That means that, for some periods, Celtic will lose games. Young players have huge variations in form. It takes them time to get used to playing permanently against low block defences, to playing a club whose supporters demand so much, even to playing regularly against men. Celtic got Moussa Dembele, made him better and then, when it was time to sell him on, had Odsonne Edouard ready to take over immediately. That isn’t going to happen every time. There will be duds. As a support, we need to give them time to fail, learn and come back better. Our constant obsession with being one better than our rivals has led to (and will always lead to) short-termism. Commitment to long-term success requires learning to lose sometimes and still having the confidence that the process works and is working.

Players playing their way back into form and not shifting about

To follow on from the above point, it also requires us to play players who are out of form. If we have invested significantly in players as projects, then they need to be on the park accumulating the experience that will increase their value to the team. That means that they need to be in their best position, even when form temporarily fails.

To use the current squad as an example: Kris Ajer has been used covering for Jeremie Frimpong at right back while Frimpong moonlights as a right winger. This simply cannot happen, for economic reasons. Ajer excels at centre back and will be sold as a centre back, therefore he has to play and he has to play there. Frimpong is a right back and will be sold as a right back, so will have to play there. Unless we have a serious reassessment of their value to the squad (and I mean monetary value) then that is how it has to be. Three week periods of changing around will have to stop. If we need a right winger, then we go into our youth team and promote the best player in that position there. We’d have seen Cameron Harper or Karamoko Dembele play much more under this policy.

That’s how Ajax do it, it’s how Salzburg do it, it’s how Benfica do it. If the player isn’t up to it, we’ll have learned something and so will the player, who can come back stronger or be found out and moved on. If we lose a game because of it, refer to point one.

We need to segment our team 

When fans consider their team, they generally split it into positions. Instead, we have to learn to segment our squad into what we want from players and what they can get out of us. It might help to think of it as three key groups: starlets, stalwarts and short-termers.

Your starlets are those that you sell on, who will play for a few seasons, be brilliant but probably a little inconsistent because of their age, and then move on. This is Virgil van Dijk, Moussa Dembele, Kieran Tierney and likely Odsonne Edouard, Olivier Ntcham, Kris Ajer and Jeremie Frimpong. It’s a business model we already understand.

The stalwarts are typically going to be Scottish, a little older and the sort of player that we can count upon to stay at the club and see it as the best level that they’re going to reach. Callum McGregor, James Forrest, Nir Bitton and Christopher Jullien might be the best examples that are currently fulfilling this role. They form the culture of the club.

The short-termers are the loan signings, those that we can cherry-pick for holes in the squad and to improve the team from a level that would be impossible to sign permanently. This is Moi Elyounoussi and (at least we thought) Shane Duffy.

That might not be anything new, but the way that we think about it should be. In salary capped sports, the first thing a Sporting Director does it to work out what they should be paying per player in every position. Strikers are more expensive than defenders, full backs are more expensive than goalkeepers. Then, you work out what your playing budget is and where best to allocate it, especially in relation to the players you already have and the areas that need improvement. Do we need a stalwart defender or a starlet winger? Do we have an 18-year-old striker who isn’t quite there yet, so would we benefit from a short-termer who would happily play 20 games from the bench? Once you have a defined goal and buy to that goal, you can plan not just this season, but the one after and the one after that.

Coaches, not managers

Obviously, that point above doesn’t work under the traditional manager system. As it stands, the manager is responsible for results and results only, and a string of bad results will likely have fans wanting them out. Again, this just engenders more short-termism and makes long-term progression impossible, particularly at a club like Celtic that plays 60 games a season. There isn’t time for training ground work or proper coaching.

What might work better is a system where the coach exists to win games, sure, but also to improve the players. At the moment, it’s 90% win and 10% improve, but a 50/50 split might be more in order. A model based around young players intrinsically involves variances in performance levels, because that’s what happens with young players. If we’re serious about becoming a team that advances itself through youth, then our focus has to be more weighted to making those players better, giving them live match experience, then coaching flaws out of their game on the training park. If fans saw players progressing over a season, they’d be more inclined to forgive the occasional defeat.

Enjoy Celtic on our own terms

How do you enjoy a team that doesn’t win every week? Well, ask a fan of literally anyone other than Rangers and Celtic. I, for my sins, have spent a lot of time watching Rochdale play football, and while I want them to win, it isn’t the reason that I go. The players aren’t either, because they turn over so many that faces come and go constantly. It’s the experience, the culture, the thousand other things that are enjoyable about the club and the match that go far further than the result. If you want to know what this looks like, imagine every European away game you’ve ever been to. I’ve been going for a decade and have yet to see us win – in fact, we’ve only ever scored three goals. I’ve enjoyed every trip regardless, even Utrecht.

As a club, Celtic have more about them than most. The songs, the atmosphere and the solidarity goes deeper than football and, indeed, has kept us going when we were rubbish in the past. A long-term plan for success will mean bumps on the path towards a general upwards trajectory that can see the club become something and bigger. We think we are unique and we think that we have an identity that nobody else does. It’s both true and untrue. If it is true, it is the fans who make it so. It’s incumbent on the fans to celebrate Celtic regardless of results, because they believe in Celtic and where it is going.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Celtic are (as you bring to our attention) a fish in a very cold small pond, and if they wish to mature into captains of the sport they contend within.The time for a revolution is now.
    As much as I agree with most of what you type, somewhere I the back of my brain, the quotes of the teams (yes good, bad, desperate) of yesteryear appear, I do see Celtic through Emerald Green Glasses, as a fan of Celtic I have seen more pish negative defencive, derisive football played as of late. Celtic way or not. I like a bit of Jinky Johnstone, cavalier football, played. But not this defend, slot it to Calum or
    Wee jerimie, attack, attack ohh fuc& they have caught Celtic on the break and scored. You would think it never happened and Celtic would learn from their mistakes. Well they don’t. A team is only as good as its parts, baby steps into walking to betterment of balance and running (all with or without the ball!!) A stout defence is only good, if you have players who can master the art to take the ball into the openents half and either thread a pass or continue on, find a more apt attacking option to score, that opens up to them. Celtic have shown nothing like that lately and get stuck (and booted fuc&en back) into midfield or caugh to high up the field. As said Celtic need urgent new rules and players who know their place within the team. And they don’t take take a master of footballing ways, to dig out a dirty, sloppy win. Those days are as distant. Football has moved on (I think).

    Celtic (like most Uk based teams) have their best years in front of them. Behind is for wiping when you finish.

  2. Good article, well written; I concur with a lot of it and yes, the reality is we are about to enter a transitional phase and patience is required, foresight and planning. As for planning….something I don’t understand but want to see is building from a younger age up. We look at teams in Europe who bring through stars, we know top clubs (and mid tier ones) in England have centres of excellence. If 2 things happened, it would make a difference. 1 – put more emphasis on skills and less on just winning, from an early age. Build up from the youth teams, hire a top scout and sell a 10+ year vision about rebuilding the club that they can be an integral part of, imbue the excitement. Then mix the blend of promoting from the youth squads and sourcing players of potential (or emergency cover needed) through a good scouting network. I’m sure we hope or assume that this would happen or has happened anyway but evidently not, or not to the standard we could reach. Benfica don’t win European titles but they’re well respresented and sell on good youth players. Same as Ajax although they’ve done better in recent years. We could try modelling ourselves more on that, rather than the ‘tried and tested’ but evidently hasn’t worked Euro formula. 2 This is a wider Scottish malaise. We need to (as a nation) invest more in youth coaching and development, across the board. I still think we would benefit as the biggest team in the country but it would lift the sense of excitement and young prospects being developed at more than just one club, which would benefit us anyway

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