Celtic chief Ian Bankier on his 'stand-out' club leader and one 'big, big problem' for club

Celtic chairman Ian Bankier has sought to make plain that the club’s board have not taken an emu-like stance to the problems besetting the team this season.

Celtic chairman Ian Bankier (left) with chief executive Peter Lawwell (right) - a man he believes is among the best business minds he has known, despite the criticism levelled at him by an increasingly disaffected support. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

In his video address screened at club’s the virtually-staged AGM, Bankier acknowledged the need to “refresh” a board given a vote of non-confidence by an increasingly mutinous-support. However, he has no truck with the section of the fanbase who want change in the chief executive role that has been occupied by Peter Lawwell for the past 18 years.

“First and foremost I’d like to stress that we are realists. When things go wrong, we recognise things are going wrong,” he said. “If we make bad decisions then we recognise we’ve made bad decisions and we do something about it. We face it. The business of the club has benefited from having a stable, experienced board and we have seen that as a virtue – not a theat to the business. The people on the board have a lot of experience collectively and that’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. Of course, it’s not a fixed situation. We have, and we will, refresh this board from time to time as is appropriate. In terms of Peter Lawwell, I’ve been privileged to work with a lot of very successful people throughout my career and Peter Lawwell stands out for me.

“The way he stands out is he’s a natural decision taker. That’s important when it comes to football because football is all about making the right decision at the right time. In terms of time, you never have any time to make decisions. Everything is moving fast. You need to get it right and you need to get it right now on this day at this time. Peter has an exceptional ability to do that and that’s why he’s so important to us. Everything he does he does for Celtic and he does it in the best interests of Celtic. In terms of the future of the club and the business, we’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing for the last decade. Our strategy is about the long-tern and the medium term. We’re the custodians of this great club.

“When short term pressures come, and undeniably they are pressuring when that happens, we have to think about the longer game to get it right – not only for the business but for the club, players, fans and everything this club stands for. Looking directly straight ahead, we want to get back to where we should be. We must do our best best to win this league. That’s what we’re focused on, that’s what everyone is focused on. Everybody wants the same thing for Celtic and that’s where we stand.”

Rollercoaster ride

Bankier described 2020 as a year “of extreme highs and lows”. Celtic’s current struggles to mount a concerted challenge to Rangers in their quest for a record 10th straight title that he appeared to contrast with their runaway leadership of the Premiership when the world was closed down by the Covid-19 global pandemic in March – which came three months after they topped a Europa League group. ‘It started very strongly, we qualified for the Europa and were in a very tough group with Rennes, who are no pushovers, and Lazio, who would end up being number two in Serie A. So they were a big, big fish. The highlight of that campaign was our back to back games with them. We picked up the Betfred Cup and went into the New Year after having an upset against Rangers.

“But we came back from the winter break very strong and went on a run and were in an unassailable position – 13 points ahead when Covid struck. It shut the whole country down and all our income streams pretty much stopped and of course we’d to stop football. Our deepest desire at that time was to finish off the league but it soon became obvious that this was going to be impossible and we had to take a pragmatic view. We voted in favour of the resolution to allow the SPFL to call the league which they did and we were crowned champions for the ninth season in a row.”

On the hit to Celtic’s income from the pandemic – “it dropped to £70m and our profits came clattering down” – Bankier pointed to the continued “strength of the balance sheet”.

‘We’ve got £144m of assets as of June and had £38m of net funds available to the business,” the Celtic chairman said. “With a strong balance sheet going into the future which is still very uncertain, at least you know you can afford certain things and that gives us optionality and a lot of comfort in terms of the outlook of the club and the business at this time. None of that is an accident. It’s the result of our strategy which we’ve been employing for more than 10 years which is to live within our means, to buy cleverly, to sell cleverly and have flesh on our bone for events like Covid, which might just come along.

“The biggest concern for us over the summer was to get fans back into the stadium. We realised then as we realise now that without fans, it’s a very different proposition. We worked extensively with the football authorities and government in defining what would be safe and how to make football [stadiums] a safe place. We were at the heart of the drafting of protocols which have now been adopted. Yet we are still not there, we still haven’t got fans back. That’s a big, big problem for us.”

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