The Ibrox side has a recruitment team in constant dialogue with the manager… imagine that? Celtic could do with one of those

Well, well, well…

Derek Siege Mentality McInnes has been holding court in Spain.

And amongst all the usual guff, one line jumped right off the page and hit me square between the eyes.

A recruitment team.

In constant dialogue with the manager.

Imagine that?

Let me get this straight.

Over at Ibrox, they have a manager who talks to the people signing the players.

The people signing the players talk back to the manager.

And they’re all, in Del boy’s own words, “singing from the same hymn sheet.”

Stop the bus.

Are they for real??

A manager, a recruitment team, and a CEO who all speak to each other

You’ll have to forgive me here, because this is a novel concept and I need a minute to process it.

Because down our way, we don’t do that sort of thing.

Down our way, the manager asks.

Brendan Rodgers asked. Brendan Rodgers got Kairat Almaty, from Kazakhstan, in his Champions League away day calendar.

So you’ll understand my confusion when Del boy starts talking about “constant dialogue and conversations to try and get people in.”

Here’s the man himself, dissected line by line for your viewing pleasure:

“The recruitment team, Dan Purdy and his lads, Jim Gillespie the CEO, we’re in constant dialogue and conversations to try and get people in.”

Dan Purdy and his lads.

Jim Gillespie the CEO.

The manager.

All of them, apparently, in the same room, having a conversation about football players.

Now compare that to Celtic Park.

Silent Mike is in one room, faffing about with the fax machine, waiting on a coded message from the absent meddling golfer in Barbados.

The absent meddling golfer is on the 14th green, treble bogeying an easy par 3, working out how to value a player at £3 million to buy and £25 million to sell on the back of a beermat.

And the manager?

The manager is standing in a third room, ranting into the void, wondering if anybody is ever going to answer the phone.

Constant dialogue???

We can’t even get constant silence right.

Jesus wept.

Six in the door there, one and a half at ours

Let’s look at the scoreboard, shall we?

Six signings at Ibrox, as I was saying only the other day. Shankland, McCrorie, Godfrey, Pandur, Neil and Devlin.

And more to come, because Del boy is talking openly about offloading John Souttar and Danilo to make room for the next lot.

Offloading players to make room.

Planning.

Sequencing.

Doing things in an order that makes sense.

Meanwhile, at Celtic, we’ve managed the grand total of Camilo Duran.

One striker.

For a squad that needs a rebuild from front to back.

And even that one nearly gave the golfing billionaire a coronary, because we committed the cardinal sin of spending before we’d sold.

The horror.

Bollocks to that.

“The board want the best players we can have here”

This is the bit that really sticks in the throat.

Because listen to what McInnes says the Ibrox board told him:

“The board want the best players we can have here. They want the best squad we can put together. And they’ve been very forthright with that support.”

Very forthright with that support.

Read that again.

A board that actively wants the best players, and a board that backs the manager.

A board that says “here’s the budget, go and build a squad.”

When was the last time anybody at Celtic said that out loud?

Granted, McInnes then hedges it with “it’s not unlimited” and “we’ve got to cut our cloth accordingly” – and fair enough, every club has a ceiling.

But there’s a difference, isn’t there?

There’s a difference between a board that cuts its cloth accordingly, and a board that hoards the cloth in a warehouse in Barbados and tells you to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Every pound is a prisoner in Desmond’s world.

Over at Ibrox, the pounds are apparently allowed out for a walk.

Give credit where it’s due – and it kills me to say it

Let’s be honest here.

It absolutely guts me, and I mean guts me, to type a single positive word about the goings on across the city.

The “Staunch revolution” is still laughable. The winning kulture is a myth. And I’d rather chew glass than praise anything with a badge from Ibrox 1872 stamped on it.

But you cannot argue with what’s in front of your eyes.

They have a plan.

In fact, they have people talking to each other.

They have a manager who says the recruitment lot are “singing from the same hymn sheet” and, for once, it doesn’t sound like a lie.

And we have a fax machine.

We have a golfer.

We have silence.

The 49ers walked into Ibrox and started running it like a professional operation. Ruthless. Joined up. Adults in the room.

And our lot, sitting on 34% of the shares, cannot even organise a phone call between the man who picks the team and the man who signs the cheques.

A cardboard cut out would achieve more than Silent Mike.

Levels and all that.

The bottom line

The season kicks off three weeks from now.

Our two main rivals are acting like professional football clubs.

We’re acting like a club run by a man who checks his emails once a fortnight from a sun lounger.

So here’s a thought.

Maybe, just maybe, Silent Mike should give Dan Purdy a wee tinkle and ask how you build a recruitment team that actually talks to the manager.

Because right now, the Ibrox side has one, and we don’t.

And when Derek Siege Mentality McInnes is teaching us how to run a football club…

You know we’re in trouble.

Amateurs.

I rest my case.

Get it sorted.

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