Dominic McKay plans to “Surprise and Delight” the Celtic Support – New CEO calls The Celtic Star

We told you several weeks ago that the word was that Ange Postecoglou would be working with John Kennedy and Gavin Strachan as his first team coaches and that Gordon Strachan was being lined up for the Director of Football role. The papers have picked up on this DoF story today.

Whether the Australian, who arrives at Lennoxtown this week, will fancy bringing in a few additional hand-picked members of his backroom staff remains to be seen – a fitness coach is surely going to be a priority after the way the team faded continually in the second half of matches last season – remains to be seen.

Kennedy will surely accept nothing less than remaining as Assistant Manager, a position he’s held since February 2019 when he decided to reject a chance to join the mass exodus of Celtic backroom staff heading to Leicester City with Brendan Rodgers to instead become Neil Lennon’s assistant, both initially appointed on a temporary basis.

It all became permanent in the showers at Hampden after Celtic’s Scottish Cup win against Hearts a few months later and when Lennon left in March this year, Kennedy stepped up to become the Interim Manager but did not instigate an improvement in results or performances in a season that had already been written off by everyone, including of course a large number of Want Away players who had effectively downed tools.

Postecoglou has a decent reputation of working with meagre resources and still creating a winning side. Improving the fitness will be his priority and he’ll want to look carefully at the reasons why that was allowed to slip last season. It could be that the in situ Celtic coaches will be given their chance to work under Postecoglou very different style of management and if he’s not impressed with what he sees then he’ll instigate changes down the line. That seems fair enough.

On Gordon Strachan coming in as the Director of Football, or Technical Director, that too has some merit. Strachan arrived as Celtic manager after the extravagance of the Martin O’Neill years as Celtic realised before it was too late (unlike others, Rangers FC, RIP) that we’d have to rein in the over-spending and live with our means.

Strachan despite an awful start in a European qualifier, had a very decent record, winning 3 titles in 4 seasons and punching well above our weight in the Champions League. His appearances on Celtic TV last season shows that he really ‘gets’ Celtic and many supporters were impressed with the genuine affection he has for the club. As an ambassador for Celtic, Strachan senior is excellent and given the career he’s had, he clearly knows the game inside out. Here’s his Celtic side in action…

Gordon Strachan has also been doing a similar type of job in the background up at Dens Park for the last few seasons, so he’ll have a decent understanding of the difficulties in trying to pull the various departments in a football ball club together, while keeping those in the boardroom well away from the football operation, a costly error Celtic allowed to creep in over the past number of years.

Dominic McKay called various members of the Celtic fan media last week to introduce himself and to have a brief chat about his plans and the way he sees things going forward. He also wanted to listen and I had a twenty minute conversation with him in which he said that he plans to “surprise and delight” the Celtic support. The new CEO understands that the relationship between the fans and the club is nowhere near where it should be and he plans to rectify that as a priority.

Already the Celtic fan media have been given similar access to Celtic press conferences and media releases as the mainstream media – and we discussed the rapid decrease in circulation levels of the printed press, accelerated by the Covid crisis – and how they essentially were morphing into online sites, like much of the Celtic fan media, including The Celtic Star.

We discussed our Want Aways (my advice was clear out them all) and the problems caused by a blurring of responsibilities when it comes to dealings in the transfer market. We also discussed the need for investment in the Women’s game, noting that we have an outstanding talent in Fran Alonso and I made sure that the new CEO know that the club’s most outstanding employee, certainly over the last year has been John Paul Taylor, the Celtic SLO.

Dominic McKay will no doubt have heard very similar thoughts from other Celtic fan media sites who I know also received calls from the new Celtic CEO.

That brings us back to Gordon Strachan. Having him involved in the football operations as a bridge between the boardroom and the manager with his staff is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. There’s nothing to suggest Gordon Strachan couldn’t do this job and it would make sense if Ange Postecoglou also sees the merit in it. This may well have been discussed and decided when McKay and Postecoglou met in London on Friday, ahead of their evening together at Wembley., where incidentally Callum McGregor was outstanding (despite the 6/10 rating dished out by (a blue-nose reporter?) on Sky Sports.

Here’s your Captain, Ange…

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