Gordon Waddell: Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell is the perfect man...

[ian1964 10,720]

...to lead the Parkhead giants but he should consider his position at the SFA.

 

GORDON says there is no excuse for the appalling standard of refereeing in last week's Scottish Cup semi-final, but reminds Celtic fans that it's their club's supremo who helps call the shots at the SFA.

 

IF I was head-hunting a chief executive for my club, Peter Lawwell would be top of my list. Numero uno.

 

Driven, obsessively controlling, politically astute, manipulative. A master of the dark arts.

 

There’s nothing he won’t do to get Celtic what they want. No-one he won’t attempt to control to get it.

 

Exactly the right type.

 

Which makes him exactly the wrong type to be on the SFA’s board – because he wouldn’t recognise the greater good if the Green Brigade wrote it on a 40-foot banner and hung it on his office wall.

 

And why the minute he wrote his letter demanding an “explanation” of referee Steven McLean’s decision in the Scottish Cup semi-final, he should have penned his resignation from the game’s governing body right alongside it.

 

Because his conflict of interests is clearly too much for him to handle.

 

Everyone and their auntie knows the ref had a howler at Hampden. Tell us something we don’t know.

 

The Josh Meekings handball, Lukasz Zaluska cleaning out Edward Ofere, the Ross Draper ‘booking’.

 

Shockers, the lot of them.

 

But the standard from almost all of the whistlers has been 90 degrees south of shameful all year long.

 

So as the man with the power, he could have said: “Y’know what, I’m sick of officials getting it wrong. They’re awful. Every week. Time to sort it.”

 

He’s inside the tent, right?

 

A member of the Full Board. An over-arching influence on every facet of the Scottish game. He could have had a crack at sorting it for everyone.

 

But no. That wouldn’t have sold any season tickets, would it?

 

It wouldn’t have appealed to the chip-on-the-shoulder victimhood of those convinced the establishment is out to get the Parkhead team at every turn. Forgetting all along that their man and their club ARE the establishment.

 

Instead Lawwell approved the same read-between-the-lines garbage they trotted out five years ago with the dossier of decisions they claimed had gone against then in Tony Mowbray’s reign.

 

Again ignoring every other decision that had gone for them.

 

And then he trotted out John Collins to pour a little more fuel on the fire in midweek, cast a few more aspersions, hinting just enough that there MUST have been more to McLean’s blunder than met the eye.

 

Presumably because, as was proven on Friday, his manager wouldn’t entertain the idea.

 

The last time Lawwell did this, back in February 2010, he famously said: “We look forward to continuing discussions towards a positive outcome.”

 

And for positive outcome, read “getting our way, every time”. This time, on Thursday, he said: “Probably everyone preferred this not to happen. The unfortunate consequence is we’re now going through this process.”

 

You mean the process YOU set in motion? There’s no way he didn’t know the chain of events he was starting.

 

Celtic claim they’re entitled to question bad decisions.

 

After the precedent they set five years ago, every club is at it.

 

But what exactly does anyone expect to hear when they ask a ref to explain?

 

That they’re corrupt? That they’re looking at split-second decisions trying to work out how they can cheat teams out of points or wins? Really?

 

Can they not just see that the current crop are simply rank rotten? The explanation is clear. They make mistakes. Too many of them.

 

Okay, the SFA and compliance officer have since compounded the mistake multiple times, but the point remains that if McLean had come out, held up his hands and said: “I made an a**e of it” – how much further would it have gone?

 

Sure, that wouldn’t have satisfied the frothing-at-the-mouth merchants.

 

But most sane people would have taken him at face value.

 

As Stefan Johansen says elsewhere in these pages – another voice of reason straying from the party line – he’s human, therefore he’s capable of human error.

 

For some reason, though, that’s not good enough for Lawwell.

 

He needs more than that to satisfy his clientele. And knowing he would never get more, he plunged down the only road he knows, Innuendo Avenue.

 

Events since? Tony McGlennan’s role, the judicial panel’s verdict embarrassing everyone concerned, saying it should never have been brought in front of them in the first place?

 

Cringeworthy. It raises more questions than answers – and it’s all been avoidable if only everyone had done the right thing in the first place.

 

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/gordon-waddell-celtic-chief-executive-5584962

[barca72 440]

...And why the minute he wrote his letter demanding an “explanation” of referee Steven McLean’s decision in the Scottish Cup semi-final, he should have penned his resignation from the game’s governing body right alongside it.

 

Because his conflict of interests is clearly too much for him to handle.

 

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/gordon-waddell-celtic-chief-executive-5584962

 

 

Finally, one of our mhedia reporters has come out from under Peter's blanket and penned an honest piece.

Be warned, GW, that will mean no more trips to Japan for you.

[ian1964 10,720]

Finally, one of our mhedia reporters has come out from under Peter's blanket and penned an honest piece.

Be warned, GW, that will mean no more trips to Japan for you.

 

Decent article,but old news!,still it's always good to see written in public what everyone knows already.