Kerry Mayodi
Dermot Desmond has denied that the board has ever been involved in the signing of players in an interview conducted in-house.
When asked about signing Marian Shved from Karpaty Lviv in January 2019, Brendan Rodgers was surprised.
Soon after, Celtic signed and loaned back the Ukrainian winger, and in less than a month, Rodgers had left for Leicester City.
In addition to the aforementioned, Celtic have had a number of players whose careers were cut short due to a lack of interest from the club’s hierarchy, including Vakoun Bayo, Patryk Klimala and Hatem Abd Elhamed.
In an interview Celtic TV, Desmond said:
“The manager of the club over the last 20 years has always decided on the players to bring in. Not the board, not anyone else. Researchers provide information for the manager, the manager the decision, maybe in conjunction with his coaching staff, he makes the ultimate decision, he is the chairman of the board.”
“Ange is the Chairman of the Board of Celtic as far as football recruitment is concerned, and all things football are concerned. He is the person and he is the person that takes the brickbats and takes the credits. So that is the recruitment policy, it is not the board that decides yes or no. What the board does do it will set out the budget that we can afford so that we can be financially prudent in the way that we run the club.”
“We do not want the club to get into a financial state where the club goes into liquidation and there is going to be a new Celtic. We want our history to be continuous, not to be curtailed through mismanagement.”
