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| AGM interviews | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 17 2008, 11:36 AM (83 Views) | |
| Jinty | Oct 17 2008, 11:36 AM Post #1 |
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celtic agm: chief executive's interview Newsroom Staff CELTIC plc held their AGM today, Friday, October 17. During the event the following interview with Celtic Chief Executive Peter Lawwell was screened to shareholders. How would you describe the past financial year, the highs and the lows? It’s been very satisfactory. We have made a profit for the second year running, we have maintained the financial model that we’ve got, which is self-financing and being self-sufficient. That’s been very positive. We are down on last year, but that’s really down to a lack of trading players. We are very satisfied and it also shows you how important the Champions League is in terms of revenue and also to our long-term profile. We are satisfied and we plan to continue as we did last year. We are told every day that we are in the midst of a world recession, what do you do to try and protect the club from that? At the minute there is definitely a cold wind blowing, but we have not felt its full impact yet. We, over the last few years, have really de-risked a lot of our revenues into long-term deals. We have had up front guarantees and hopefully that will protect us to some extent. We have reached our targets this year, in terms of season books and we have exceeded them in terms of corporate. So in the short term we are not feeling it, but we are not being complacent and need to plan for any downturn and I think we are in a good position to overcome that. Does it become more important then, to get guaranteed entry into the UEFA Champions League? Absolutely. The Champions League is very important for short-term revenue, because it allows us to invest in a Champions League squad. It’s also important for the long-term, in terms of profile and exposure of the club it’s where you really want to be. It’s the best club football tournament in the world, we have been a significant part of that over the last two or three years and that’s where you want to be. There were media accusations that you perhaps under-performed in the transfer window and that the manager, according to some media reports, had a list of ten players that he presented to you and that you failed to deliver? That’s nonsense. The test of a transfer window for me is ‘is the squad stronger going out the window than it was going in?’ I think that is the case and the second most important issue is, ‘is the manager happy?’ and I think Gordon is quite content at the moment with the players that he has. Now, we would all like to give Gordon more players, better players, but we are restricted. In terms of the big markets in Europe, we just can’t compete. If it’s down to finances, we just can’t compete, so we have to be realistic, we will operate in the transfer market at our level and in fact, over the summer, we invested £7million. So we have strengthened the squad, Gordon is happy and we go forward. I don’t know where these stories come from, the way it operates is that we do have a number of options developed by Gordon, these come from our scouting department where, incidentally, we have greater coverage than we have ever had. You never get your first option every time, but I do think that we have a very good or at least a decent track record of delivering what we have set out to do. So I don’t accept that and we will sit down in January and go through the same process with Gordon, understanding what he is looking for and then taking it from there. He has been a delight to work with. We work very closely, we work very well and I think the success on the park demonstrates that. What are the club doing to eradicate political singing by a minority of fans at away grounds and what are you doing stop racist and sectarian singing by visiting fans to Celtic Park? That’s a serious issue at the moment and recent events have brought that to the fore and my view is that it can’t go on. I think the chairman’s statement last week, with regard to the recent racist chant was very accurate in terms of where the club position is. I think our supporters, to an extent, felt slightly adrift, I think that they saw there was very little comment or action from the media or authorities surrounding that event. I can assure them that they are not adrift, the club understands their position while we understand Celtic, its heritage and we support those who promote and celebrate that heritage in the appropriate manner. However, we have to admit that there is a minority within our away support who sing songs and chants that we are less than happy about, in fact, they should be eradicated and our supporters know what they are, we don’t have to tell them. We have made big improvements we have actually, over the years, improved that situation. But we will continue to be vigilant. We steward our own supporters away from home, we will not accept it and those identified and convicted will be banned from Celtic for life. The service at the Ticket Office has been criticised and there are still issues in terms of supporters getting access to tickets for away games, both for domestic and European games. We endeavour to give the best customer service. What happens in terms of the Ticket Office and it’s typical Celtic, if the office is open for ten days to sell tickets for a European game, people appear in the last two days and there is a peak. So what we need to try and do is educate the supporters that there is a 10-day period when they can come and buy the tickets. Now we are not perfect, clearly we don’t have an establishment that operates 365 days a year that allows you to cope with these peaks, which are maybe ten days a year, so we try and manage around that by bringing in temporary resource. So we are not perfect, we understand the problems and indeed, we have made a number of changes in the processes and systems in the present year that will hopefully help next year. So we ask the minority who have experienced difficulties to bear with us, we understand their problems and we will deal with them. But I must say that the vast majority of fans are content with what they have. In terms of the remainder of this season and looking forward, what are your priorities? This season, in a financial sense, we go on. We want to try and grow. We have appointed Jason Hughes as the International Development Director and his task is to develop revenues worldwide and we have high hopes for that. I think we will maintain this sustainable model and we will operate within our means and on the football front I think that we are looking forward to hopefully being as successful as we have been over the past few years, by winning the league, taking us further forward in Europe and that’s everybody’s ambition here. The ambition and commitment at Celtic is as strong as ever, we have high expectations of ourselves, we will determine to take the club forward each year and to do that, although we are at a significant financial disadvantage, we will invest where we have to invest and try to get our edge elsewhere. Namely in coaching, we have some of the best coaches around, we will invest in our scouting to bring forward better players, we will invest in the Academy to develop our younger kids and in sports science, where we will make our players better and fitter. Although we can’t compete with the big nations financially, that doesn’t mean to say that we can’t compete on the pitch and we are all determined here to take it forward. Link |
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| Jinty | Oct 17 2008, 11:38 AM Post #2 |
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celtic agm: chairman's interview Newsroom Staff CELTIC plc held their AGM today, Friday, October 17. During the event the following interview with Celtic chairman John Reid was screened to shareholders. How have you found your first year in office and is the club where you want it to be? From my point of view it’s been great. It’s been a great honour, fantastic excitement. I have shared all the highs and lows that we have had, from the winning of the league on the final night, through to the great tragedies of the loss of Tommy Burns and Phil O’Donnell. It’s just been a great experience and I hope that I have contributed something towards the club, even as I have been learning in the first year. Are we where I would like us to be? I think that’s a yes, but it’s a yes because, as I speak we are back where we belong, at the top of the league. We are the champions of Scotland, the Scottish representatives in Europe, I think we have strengthened the squad, we have had another year of financial stability which helps us go forward as a club and a company, and we have appealed to a new generation of fans, by trying to get the pricing of tickets right. That’s all a big ‘yes’, although the ‘but’ is that we start again every year and none of us should be the least bit complacent. We only get what we work for at Celtic Park, therefore we have to work for what we want, which is another league championship, four-in-a-row, back in Europe again, in Europe this year beyond Christmas. That looks pretty difficult, an uphill task at the moment, the Champions League would be preferable, but if not in the UEFA Cup. We would like to strengthen our squad again, get financial stability again in the new year, to keep us where we are today and where we ought to be, top of the league and champions of Scotland. Why were you compelled to dismiss suggestions recently that the Chief Executive, Peter Lawwell, was linked with a move away from the club? We have a pretty good team here at Celtic and it’s a winning team, I believe. The board want to make sure that we keep that winning team, but we are also a highly successful team and people will come, chasing a player, our management on and off the park and our executives. Peter is a valued and valuable part of that team and a highly successful Chief Executive. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that others try to chase him, headhunt him and that was the case here. He was wanted by a number of clubs, one in particular at that stage, and like everyone else who is a successful part of that successful team, we want to keep him here at Celtic Park. Peter wanted to stay and we, the board, supporters and shareholders, I believe wanted him to stay and we had to respond by making it possible for Peter to stay here by recognising the role he plays in this club and making it sure that he knew it was recognised. That’s what’s happened, I am very happy about that and now we get on, with that successful team, to build the future. With a new chairman in office, is there a new policy on the Celtic Trust’s idea of a fan on the board? Just let me remind you that everyone sitting on that platform, as a member of the board, is a fan of the club and great supporter. We share the passion, the highs and the lows and in most of our cases, we have supported the club all our lives. Of course, you have to be more than a fan to sit on the board because we are the custodians of the legacy of the club, we are the protector of the shareholders’ interests and supporters’ interests and we direct the future of the club. That’s a big responsibility. It means getting the balance right, between being as we are, fans and directors. The balance between our emotional commitment and our rational judgement, the balance between getting everything that we want today, but ensuring that the longer-term commitment is safeguarded as well, watching the minutes and the hours and the years. So we have to get that balance right and I think in the past we have pretty much got it right, certainly since we re-orientated the club under Fergus (McCann). I am sure that we will make mistakes, like any other group of people, I am sure that there will be occasions where a section of the fans will not like what we do and that’s the nature of life. But I think that we have got the balance right over the past few years and I have no plans to change that. Why did you decide to speak out about ‘The Famine Song’ and is it important that the club make sure that our supporters protect the integrity of Celtic’s name? I spoke out about it because this is a pretty vile song and I don’t think that any reasonable person who has read the words of this song can see it as anything other than a pretty vicious, racist song. It combines racism and sectarianism and goes beyond a lot of other things that we have seen in the past. That’s one of the reasons why I spoke out and I also come from Irish and Scottish descent myself, so that’s the main reason. But there is a bigger and wider reason as well and that is, the nature of this club. We are proud of the fact that we have Scottish origins and Irish heritage and we are never going to deny that. We will defend that and that is not a cause for shame, it’s a cause for recognition and celebration. Indeed our very name ‘Celtic’ is about the unity of the Scottish and Irish people. It stands against those who would divide, discriminate and oppose those two entities. And because we start from that basis of the unity of peoples then we have always been open and inclusive as a club. That’s why traditionally we have never discriminated. That’s why our board, our shareholders, our footballers and our footballing heroes come from all sorts of different backgrounds, religions, ethnic groups and do so internationally. That’s why I said last year that whatever differences we have when we come into this club we leave them at the door because we believe truly, in a Scotland that is one bit of many cultures and is way beyond now being Scots and Irish. That is our stance, therefore we have to speak out when we see racism or sectarianism being practised and of course, if we are going to do that we have to practise what we preach. We have to be careful, from our own point of view and that’s why I am absolutely delighted that our fans in recent years have had accolades from the world football authorities, from the European football authorities and let me say when I point out that there may be a minority who are transgressing our own rules, that they are our own rules. I don’t know any Celtic fans who have been chanting racist slogans or anything of that nature, so I am not comparing like with like here. But I am saying that we have got to be whiter than white and that we have to explain to and educate everybody at this club, including that tiny minority which at away games sometimes leaves us exposed to those who would attempt to say that we are all the same. We aren’t all the same, but we have to make sure that that is evident to everybody. That’s the nature of Celtic Football Club. Will there be a lasting tribute to Tommy Burns? Yes. We are going to look at that. Let’s say right away that we haven’t waited to do something for Tommy. Of course his funeral was a fitting tribute, people from every walk of life and indeed from our opponents, the players and supporters of Rangers and thousands and thousands of Celtic supporters and others who made it a tribute to Tommy. After that I hope, that by changing the traditions of the club when it comes to the flag unfurling and recognising not just who happens to be the chairman at the time, but important people who have made a contribution to this club, from all walks of life, rank and status, then we couldn’t have had anyone more fitting than Rosemary Burns and her family to do that. So we have recognised Tommy there, the family is looking at the possibility of establishing a cancer charity and we will certainly be contributing towards that, there will be a benefit match next year for the family and any charities that they denote and in addition to that, the board will be looking at something that will be a lasting tribute to Tommy. What will be deemed a success for the board, as far as this season goes and in the longer term? I think that the bottom line is to maintain the position that we have as we meet here at the AGM, which is top of the Scottish Premier League and champions of Scotland again. That is the measure of our success. Why? Because it not only makes us top of our own league, in our own country but is obviously the key that unlocks the door to Europe. That is the next stage of success, to maintain our position in Europe. I think both of those will get harder and I would like to see us strengthen the squad again and that depends on three things. The first is developing our younger players through the Academy and picking young players up and coaching them in the best way, with sports scientists and so on. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction in seeing McGeady, McManus and Maloney there, but also Caddis and some of the other young players coming through. The second thing it needs is financial stability. There is good purpose for wanting to be in the black, quite apart from the fact that shareholders have got money and the supporters, over 27,000 of them, have an interest in this club. The board and shareholders know that at the end of the day we want that to produce a better football team. That’s what Celtic’s about, success on the park and that’s why it is absolutely essential to keep the company stable, in order to provide the money to buy the players, to pay for the Academy, to bring young players into the team. When you are doing that, you also have to think about the new generation of fans and as the years go on and as the average age of the fans gets older, we have taken an intentional decision as a board to try and share in last year’s success, by freezing most of the prices for most of the fans and also introduce a whole range of cheaper seat, so that young people find it easier and the Mums and Dads find it cheaper to bring their children to Celtic Park and introduce them to the traditions of previous generations. What that means is on the park with young players and off the park, in the terracing with younger fans, that we are building the future of Celtic. The third thing we have to do is our scouting system and we have ambitions for that and would like to see it develop. Another thing that I would like to do, because we talk all the time about success on and off the park, in business and football and they play into each other, but this is more than just a football club, more than just a company. Celtic has a set of values, we have a heritage and we have done a great deal, since we were formed, to help the underprivileged. I think we should set ourselves a little target to do more than that. The United Nations recommends that every government should put 0.7 per cent of its gross domestic product towards the underprivileged of the world every year. That’s a target that very few governments meet and I think that we should set that target for this club. I think that’s in keeping with our tradition and why shouldn’t Celtic be the first club in Britain to say, ‘we will raise, through our efforts, 0.7 of our turnover every year’. That’s about £500,000 this year and I think that would be a fitting ambition for Celtic. Link |
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| Mainser | Oct 17 2008, 01:36 PM Post #3 |
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"we have got to be whiter than white" - is that not racist???? |
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| tigergerry | Oct 17 2008, 02:28 PM Post #4 |
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tigergerry
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not even a fucking left back purchased and he comes out with that :banghead: |
| tigers gonna get ya | |
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| desachi | Oct 17 2008, 02:50 PM Post #5 |
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walking barefoot
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It is truly amazing how vocal and eloquent these two become at three times in the year, surrounding the AGM, and the two transfer windows. It is to be expected I suppose but for me, what stuck in the throat so much was Reid's answer on the representation on the board, which was..
Two fingers up to any change on that score then. Truly, what these people are going to do to the club puts lie to this whole "fans owning the club" nonsense. So, we should all be happy with a talentless sycophant who has never actually marched to the beat of his own drum in power then? The rottweiler marches well to the sound of the drum of his master, be it Blair or Desmond or whoever. "Whiter than white?" You "Mr. ID card, police state" Reid? :rolleyes: The man who took an entire month to make a statement about the Famine Song? A politician who is renowned for being a rottweiler suddenly tongue tied,? Perhaps he had no advisor to tell him what to say. Or does he only have a voice when condemning the points of views held by minorities. Shameful so he is. A disgrace that this man is at the helm of Celtic Football Club. Oh, and sign a leftback before coming out with all that nonsense about being "ambitious." :rolleyes: |
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In the nation of the blind the one eyed man is king. All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing HWEUCSC & Chicago CSC Buena Vista Celtic Club, Keeping the Green Flag Flying High | |
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| groucho bhoy | Oct 17 2008, 06:55 PM Post #6 |
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UnrepentantFenianBastard - RespectToAllWhoRefuse ToBeMastered
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is reid a vile man or what? and what about lawell? i'll have you know, peter, that that 'minority' is actually a majority, and not only that, the majority is the core of the club that pays your exhorbitant wages. listen tomorrow morning, ya dumb fool. |
| [COLOR=green][SIZE=14]ARTUR BORUC - POLISH PROVO #1[/SIZE][/COLOR] | |
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| buckfasthero | Oct 18 2008, 03:50 AM Post #7 |
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Let the people sing Yer a fud, Mr Reid. And Lawwell has wen down in my estimation in the past few seasons, I used to think the guy was great. But still no left-back, and the shite about this minority who knows who it is? Proudtobeaminority.csc |
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| Jinty | Oct 18 2008, 10:20 AM Post #8 |
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celtic agm: manager's interview Newsroom Staff CELTIC plc held their AGM today, Friday, October 17. During the event the following interview with Celtic manager Gordon Strachan was screened to shareholders. The loss of Tommy Burns hit everyone at the club very hard, how did you cope through that period? It’s hard. How did I cope? I just tried to immerse myself in football, but we couldn’t get away from it. It was without doubt the most difficult part of my footballing life that I have had to deal with, particularly someone who was that close, that we still miss every day when we come through the training gates. But we had to deal with it and there were games coming fast and furious, which helped us in a way and kept our minds on something. We dealt with it and looking back, if you ask me to analyse it, I really don’t know how. Somehow we dealt with the football side. Did we deal with Tommy passing? I don’t think so. I don’t think that anyone could deal with it properly. There was no way of dealing with it. What did winning the league mean to you last season, particularly in the way that you did win it? This might sound strange and you’ll probably look at me and think ‘you are mad’, but there was a kind of numb feeling at the time because of what happened the week previous. It was a case of winning the league and thinking ‘great, but let’s all disappear now and get out of the limelight, the lot of us’. We needed time on our own - myself and the people who were close to Tommy. If we wanted to talk about Tommy we could do that in private, among our friends. So it was a case of ‘right, we’ve won this, but let’s get out of here now.’ That’s the way it felt. I enjoyed watching the players celebrating, but I just couldn’t get my mind around the whole thing. I don’t think I’ve really celebrated it yet to be honest with you. In years to come I’ll probably celebrate it more, I might have a drink somewhere along the line, but at that time my emotions were still numb from the previous week. Going forward, do you feel that we have the personnel that we need as we chase four? Yes I do. It’s a squad that has changed. There are three or four lads who have played through all the championships and have handled that very well. They have been the mainstays of our teams over the years, but we have changed a number of players to keep the squad fresh and I am really happy with the freshness of the squad. At this moment in time I am pleased with the football that I am watching and there were times, especially in the second season, where I thought, ‘yes we are winning games, but it’s not really exciting me that much’. The professionalism was good, we had some good games but I really wanted to get the Celtic fans and myself in a frame of mind that every game that we go to, there’s a right good chance that we’ll see some smashing football. That’s what I have to try and achieve and although that might not be possible all the time, I know that we have the weapons in there to try and do that. That keeps us refreshed. Do you think you will have funds to strengthen the squad in the new transfer window? I have been asked that left, right and centre and when I came to the club there was a remit which said that there was a certain amount of debt and that we had to bring that debt and the wages down and get a younger squad. We have done all that and if you ask Peter (Lawwell), I don’t think I’ve ever asked him for cash. I’ve never said that I needed X amount of money to go and buy this or that. We try and find players and if we can’t afford one then fine, we go to the next one. We try and find bargains and that’s why you’ll discover now and then that we take players for a certain price and are gambling. Some work and some don’t, but we have to put up with that. You even hear people say that Robbie Keane at £20million is a bit of a gamble and we are gambling way, way below that. That’s why you find that there’s a changeover of two or three players over the transfer window and that some of the gambles don’t work. They then move on and we try and gamble with the same money that’s been come back in. But in terms of finance, I know where we work and how we work, so it’s not a problem. Anything you see about finance is greatly exaggerated in the media, but we know that we want this club to be self-sufficient, rather than have a mega-benefactor and that’s what we are trying to achieve. So the future of the club, long-term, is going to be safe. Because as you know, there are a couple of clubs in England which could actually go bust because of the wage structure and the way they have dealt with things. Here, we run it properly. Tell us about squad rotation. Is this a conscious decision or is it just how things have been, depending on the competition? There’s a couple of things I thought about and this has come up again recently. I sat a lot of journalists down about six weeks ago and said that we are coming up to a real period of high-tempo, high-intensity games and I do feel that I now have the squad to change it and give the guys a bit of a rest, whether that’s mentally or physically and I explained that I hoped that would help us at the end of the season, when we will hopefully be going for a lot of trophies. I explained that to everybody and two or three weeks later there was a big song and dance about it and this is after I have sat the same guys down and explained it to them. One reason was that if I used the same guys all the time there were players who wouldn’t get a game and then when I called upon them through injuries, they’d have been sitting on the bench for eight games. I just thought, ‘give them a game, let them be part of it and their fitness will be good as well’. We also have players travelling around the world for internationals now, so we had a conscious thought about it a few months ago and I do feel that I have a squad now where I can change three or four players and not worry too much. In previous years, if I left two or three real good players out, I didn’t feel totally comfortable that we were still as strong. I think it’s definitely helped, because the lads who have missed out on a game and I always tell them the reasons, they have come back stronger. You listen to coaches, good coaches in the Champions League and ask ‘why did you do this or that’, they give you answer and if it’s a good idea, you might take it on board. That’s basically it, there’s nothing cosmic about it, but I do want to try and win everything we go in for. Having enjoyed phenomenal success, reaching the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League in consecutive years, how do you manage expectations? I can’t. I can’t manage anybody’s expectations. I can deal with the players and tell them what we are going to do and how we are going to go about it and as you saw the other night there against Villarreal, we had a different system, which we had worked on previously in the friendly wins over Porto and Feyenoord. It nearly worked again and it’s probably our best performance away in Europe since I have been here. We had a real gritty performance against AC Milan away, the 0-0 draw and into extra-time, but as a team and as a shape, in terms of keeping the ball and being a threat, I think that’s the best, in that first hour, that we have been. That was good, so I said to the players, ‘there’s a problem, we are not winning away from home, but all we can do, first of all, is perform’. I asked them to perform, they performed and we just didn’t have the ability on the night to finish them off when we had the chances. The expectation? I cannot deal with that, that’s something that’s created outside and has been created by the players over the last couple of years. And quite right, expectation is good and it’s better to have high expectations, rather than a low ones where you get depressed about what’s coming round the corner. Through everybody at Celtic, we have created this expectation and quite rightly so. We must try and achieve more and more. People say that by getting to the last 16 we are maybe over-achieving, with the budget, the teams you are playing against, but if you can achieve, that’s not over-achieving, that’s where you can get to, where you have pushed to. Then, if you can push yourself to the next level, we will try that as well. Finally Gordon, what are your own expectations for 2008/09? When I came here at first, I thought ‘Celtic have a tradition of attacking football, let’s go for it’, but then I realised that you have to win first, to buy yourself time to keep yourself in a job, keep people happy and then try and get to where you want to get to, in terms of watching top, top football. This season I have seen a lot of great games that we have been involved in and I’ve seen a lot of good football and I want to continue that. I want a football team that myself, the players and especially the fans, when they are building up to a Saturday, they know they are going along there and will have a great chance of watching some smashing football, simple as that. Link |
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