McCann found that fans do like change – for the better

IN FOOTBALL, the most significant intentions more often than not are left unspoken. However laudatory and optimistic the tone of Celtic chairman John Reid's and chief executive Peter Lawwell's talk in defence of Tony Mowbray's management may have been the other day, both men are worldly enough to know that the actions of directors are, ultimately, governed by two inviolable truths.

The first of these is that, when the board start to take the heat from disaffected and hostile fans, they quickly deflect their own discomfort in the direction of the cause. This is invariably a manager whose team's results do not conform to demands.

The second – and the most relevant in the context of Celtic's disquieting half-yearly returns this week – is that, when the company takes a financial hit and the source of the damage can be identified and isolated, remedial steps soon follow.

The substantial reduction in turnover and profits for the first half of the current fiscal year are not, of course, attributable to Mowbray's work, since they are almost exclusively the consequence of the team's failure under Gordon Strachan to win last season's SPL title and qualify for the Champions League.

What will almost certainly trouble Lawwell and his colleagues, however, is the prospect of an appreciable drop in season ticket sales in May. There is already enough evidence, from the hotlines, phone-ins, and forums that now saturate the newspapers, the airwaves and cyberspace, to suggest that an appreciable number of the club's followers are sufficiently disillusioned with the manager not to renew their subscriptions.

A pronounced loss of income from season tickets directly impacts on other revenue streams, such as catering and merchandising. In this respect, supporters of large, expensive-to-operate football clubs can effect change much more quickly than the general populace is able to achieve through the electoral and parliamentary process.

Mowbray's apologists appear to dwindle by the week and he will have done his cause further harm on Thursday by proposing a ludicrous comparison between his work at Celtic and that of Fergus McCann in 1994. "Change needed to happen and nobody likes change," said Mowbray. "And yet here we are going through change. Fergus's five-year plan built the stadium and gave fans ownership of the stadium. Sometimes it's difficult for people to see the long-term picture."

Actually, people do like change – for the better. And Mowbray isn't charged with rescuing the club from bankruptcy, restoring financial stability, building a new stadium and, finally, producing a successful team. The first three of these colossal achievements had been completed long before he arrived.

He is being asked to take the championship back from Rangers and re-establish the team's pre-eminence, an assignment successfully completed by his immediate predecessors, Strachan and Martin O'Neill. Of course, it is preposterous to suggest that a manager should be sacked simply for failing to win a league championship.

Mowbray's problem – as it was with John Barnes and Paul Le Guen in the recent past – is the perception of him as a loser, with no prospect of recovery. Ditching Barnes and Le Guen, even after less than a season, proved to be a solution for both Celtic and Rangers.

Rather than change for the better, Mowbray's influence often seems to have had a deleterious effect, with a number of players, already only average, actually deteriorating since his accession.

Apart from the regular good fortune which seems to have made Rangers immune to domestic defeat, the most noticeable difference between the Old Firm partners is that the Ibrox side consistently appear better coached, the Parkhead team often bedraggled by comparison.

What seems unarguable is that Walter Smith gets the best out of moderate performers, their results often exceeding their talents. Mowbray's players, on the other hand, often look as though their heads have been over-filled with the manager's "philosophy", resulting in bafflement and disorientation. It is what Strachan would call "spooking" them with too much information.

These differences not only explain Rangers' ten-point lead in the championship, but are the reasons why the pathetic performances of both clubs in Europe have already been forgotten; at least, at Ibrox – and, it appears, in certain quarters of the media.

Perhaps there is a widespread reluctance to remember a Champions League campaign from which Scotland's representatives took no victories, two points and an aggregate 4-13 scoreline from six group matches. This selective amnesia would be understandable as a form of denial, but it cannot camouflage a painful reality.

Celtic supporters' disenchantment is deepened by the realisation that their team are so far behind such mediocre rivals.

When the anger manifests itself in greatly-reduced income, Mowbray's projected "big picture" is likely to be de-commissioned.