Dom McKay on Friday afternoon gave an interesting insight into how Celtic will look and feel as a modern football club under his direction and in doing so he name checked both Brendford and Seville as club’s who are achieving high performance results from following a strategy that he seems to be bringing to Celtic.
The new CEO wants Celtic to be world class in eery area of the club and that incidentally includes engagement with the support – a major failing at Celtic under Peter Lawwell’s time as CEO.
“My job as the leader of the organisation is to lift everybody’s heads back up again: the staff, the supporters and the players,” McKay said at Celtic Park on Friday afternoon. “To say this is an unbelievable club, it is global club which attracts unbelievable talent and we are going to go again. We are going to have a great journey going again.
“My challenge is to make sure the future is really positive building on these great foundations put in place by Peter (Lawwell) and the rest of the team previous to my arriving. That we modernise and build those foundations out and that we benchmark ourselves, whether that is against Brentford or Seville or Manchester City or Liverpool. That we take the best parts of European football, world football with Ange having been in Australia and Japan and make sure it works for Celtic.”
McKay also name dropped both Brentford and Seville at the fan media conference earlier in the afternoon. These two sides he reckons substantially punch above their weight in terms of size, structure and performance and both seem to have successfully implemented a signing policy where recruits are turned into big stars and sold on for hefty profits. That was a model that Celtic tried to implement but along the way things went off track and we ended up bringing in unsuccessful projects and costly loan signings, that reaching its peak last season with the likes of Shane Duffy, Diego Laxalt and Jonjoe Kenny adding very little on the part and costing a small fortune in wages.
Hopefully those days are gone. McKay will be aware that for instance Ivan Toney was in the building at Lennoxtown last summer prepared to sign for Celtic but the deal mysteriously fell through and the Peterborough striker ended up at Brentford. Incidentally Toney’s old club have apparently been claiming that they have a 30% sell-on clause in that deal so if he gets a move this summer – as rumoured – Peterborough should do very well out of that deal.
McKay also spoke about his own personal Celtic journey. “My first game was the Cup final in 1988, Dundee United against Celtic in the centenary year. My father took me to that game and at that point I fell in love with Celtic.
“I am deeply in love with Celtic as a club that can do great things because I had seen the joy and success in the hugs on the terraces at Hampden. I saw it in my father’s face. I thought I want to be part of this going forward.
“Then you get the opportunity to become a season-ticket holder, which I have been for the last 20 or so years. I have not been to as many games as I might like – rugby got in the way a bit – but it didn’t stop me wanting to be a season-ticket holder. It is that emotion and connection I got with the club.
“But it was a big decision for me to come to Celtic because I am a fan. It needed to be right for me from a business point of view. I thought about that pretty seriously because once you are part of something you are really passionate about then you need to make sure you are adding value constantly.
“My fan bit really stops when I walk through the front door. I am in here to make sure I set the standards, set the culture, set the organisation on the right footing to make sure we are as successful as we can be in the years ahead.”
McKay certainly appears to have a vision for the club going forward and there was nothing that would indicate that the stale, stand-offish attitude that the former CEO allowed to develop over perhaps too many years at the club, is going to remain.
McKay admitted that he was surprised by the level of season ticket renewals that were being reported to his throughout last week. He said that by Friday lunchtime they were off the scale, as the silent minority of the support stepped forward to back the club in a way that perhaps McKay genuinely believed would not happen after the troubles and discontent among the support to the club over the past year.
Step by step that is changing and the club yesterday announced that the season ticket deadline had passed and that any unsold tickets would now be offered to the waiting list. No supporter could or should be criticised for not renewing after last season, it is entirely up to them to decide and it is McKay’s job to win them back, with the support of his new manager Ange Postecoglou – who is very much McKay’s man and his choice for the job.
Interesting times ahead folks.
