You have to be pretty desperate to turn to Keith Wyness for an attack on Celtic, earlier this week the former Aberdeen flop revealed that he thought Brendan Rodgers could be gone in a year or two.
Only a truly desperate publisher like Football Insider would return to the wisdom of Wyness for a follow up, then publish a claim that the next Robert de Zerbi is the ideal man to manage Celtic.
Between 2000 and 2004 Wyness was CEO of Aberdeen, back in the days of dual contracts, Alex McLeish, Setanta Sports and people buying newspapers, one front page about Thugs and Thieves didn’t stand up to scrutiny.
These days Wyness apparently represents a consultancy that advises elite clubs, and shares his brilliant insights to the football industry with Football Insider where Frank McAvennie and Alan Hutton are their go-to guys for Scottish football.
Every club in Europe is looking for the next de Zerbi, appointed 18 months ago by Brighton as an upgrade on Graham Potter despite the dinosaur views of Graeme Souness.
That sort of selection and recruitment requires special skills starting with an understanding of football, players and managers. Something that Celtic have repeatedly demonstrated they have no grasp of. Unless your surname is Strachan or Lawwell the chances are Tom Allison has never seen or heard of you.
Despite the wealth of experience on the Celtic board where the average length of service is 12 years, backed up by a chairman that has been dominating for 20 years the recruitment of managers is incredibly restrictive.
The classic was in May 2019. Four months after banking the compensation for Rodgers Peter Lawwell didn’t bother looking at applications and gave the job to the caretaker that knew the city and had an eye for a player.
Lennon wasn’t even trusted to bring in a coach as assistant so it is difficult to see how his eye for a player was trusted unless it was looking at the same targets as the CEO through a few select agencies.
Jumping on the bandwagon against Rodgers and knowing that they are presenting the mainstream with the content they depend on, Football Insider reports Wyness saying:
I think Celtic would be looking outside of Scotland if they were to replace Rodgers.
They should go for a young, European manager. I think they’d want to go back to that sort of route.
They obviously see themselves as a progressive, forward-thinking club. I don’t think they should go for a stop-gap.
For me, they should target someone like Roberto De Zerbi. Not him, of course – but someone like him. There are a few around who could be looked at.
For now, if they win the league – I’m sure it will be business as usual at Celtic and Rodgers will probably remain in post.
And so Wyness joins the Brains Trust at Football Insider led by McAvennie and Hutton.
Changing one individual at Celtic will never make much difference. Whether it is John Park, Lee Congerton, Nick Congerton or Mark Lawwell in the recruitment seat the strategy will always be towards signing the cheap and cheerful and hope that one decent player in six or seven can deflect from the in-house flaws.
Meanwhile Wyness, who replaced Ebbe Skovdahl with Steve Paterson while pulling the strings at Pittodrie can get back to consulting with elite clubs.
Earlier this week in yet another Football Insider scoop from a top Celtic source they exclusively revealed that Steven Naismith isn’t a candidate to replace Rodgers.
Celtic 365 can exclusively reveal that Alfredo Morelos, Ryan Kent and Allan McGregor WON’T be joining Celtic this summer.
CLICK HERE as Tom English hits out at media cheerleaders!
CLICK HERE as loyal Justin walks away from Ibrox
