SCOTTISH PREMIER LEAGUE:CELTIC ARE likely to wait until the end of this season to name a permanent replacement for Tony Mowbray after sacking their manager just nine months into his Parkhead tenure.
Last Wednesday night’s embarrassing 4-0 defeat at St Mirren proved too much for the Celtic board. Mowbray won 17 out of 30 Scottish Premier League matches in charge of Celtic, who have fallen 10 points behind Rangers in the championship with the Ibrox team holding two games in hand.
Statistically, Mowbray has the worst record of Celtic’s last eight managers.
“This is a very sad day for everyone at Celtic,” said Peter Lawwell, the club’s chief executive. “Tony is a very fine man and someone who I know is passionate about the club he served so well as a player. Clearly, we have had a difficult season and results have not been as we would have hoped.”
Mowbray’s assistants Mark Venus and Peter Grant have also been jettisoned. Neil Lennon, a former Celtic captain who was also part of the former manager’s coaching staff, will take charge of first-team affairs until the end of the current campaign.
While Lennon, who will address the media today, has been installed by bookmakers as the favourite to replace Mowbray permanently, it is understood the 38-year-old believes he lacks the experience to take on the role beyond an interim basis.
Nonetheless, if Lennon can oversee a winning end to the league season and claim the Scottish Cup then pressure will be applied to the Celtic board to retain the Northern Irishman as the manager given his revered standing among supporters.
Those directors may now find the Celtic post lacks the allure of previous years, not least because Champions League football is no longer guaranteed.
Paul Lambert and Mark Hughes are among those who have been named as contenders; Lambert, a former Celtic player now in charge of Norwich City, ruled out a return to Parkhead recently while the out-of-work Hughes is likely to seek a return to England’s top flight.
Wednesday’s defeat was Celtic’s worst outside Old Firm fixtures since 1980 and their heaviest to St Mirren in 51 years. Fans awaited the team bus upon its return to Parkhead in the aftermath of that game in Paisley, where they called for Mowbray’s removal.
The manager was summoned to a lunchtime meeting with Lawwell at the training ground during which Mowbray’s fate was sealed.
Thereafter, the visibly upset 46-year-old said his goodbyes to staff.
Mowbray’s attacking ideology ultimately proved at odds with trying to gain success in Scotland, just as it did as West Brom stumbled through season 2008-09 in the Premier League, returning a goal difference of -31.
Lennon, pertinently, will look to add the former Celtic centre half Johan Mjallby as a coach.
Some questioned at the time what qualified Mowbray for the Celtic post given those struggles in the Midlands, while others highlighted the refusal of Owen Coyle and Roberto Martinez to entertain the club as the latest illustration of Scottish football’s diminishing standing.
Mowbray proved unable to deliver short-term success in a time of radical personnel changes. Quite what the €76,000-a-week loanee Robbie Keane thought as St Mirren rattled in goal number four is anybody’s guess.
Keane was one of six Celtic strikers on the field at the time with Aiden McGeady, the team’s most creative talent, apparently playing at left back. Mowbray’s troubles were further highlighted recently by steeply falling attendances.
Although Mowbray objected to what he perceived as agenda and spin within the Scottish media, the blunt truth is that he was subjected to no more criticism than other coaches who have toiled in Glasgow; Paul Le Guen and John Barnes among them.
Celtic’s inability to keep pace with a Rangers team who have not been supplemented by new arrivals since August 2008 mattered more than column inches. Against such a backdrop, Mowbray could barely disguise that intensity levels were affecting his well-being.
Mowbray held more than a simple football association with Celtic after the tragic death of his then wife, Bernadette, while he was a player there, in 1995.
The closeness of her family to Celtic coupled with Mowbray’s bond to them, to this day, meant this was a job that mattered more than most.
That it ended in failure will hurt Mowbray to a far greater extent than anyone who has watched things unravel in Glasgow’s east end in less than a year.
Guardian Service
Tony Mowbray
1981Signs for Middlesbrough as an apprentice.
1982Makes debut at 18 years.
1991After 419 appearances and 30 goals, he joins Celtic.
1995After 93 appearances and six goals, he moves to Ipswich.
2000After scoring eight goals in149 appearances, appointed full-time coach of Ipswich.
2003Caretaker manager for four games between sacking of George Burley and appointment of Joe Royle.
2004New manager of Hibernian.
2006Appointed new manager of West Brom
2007West Brom lose their Championship play-off final.
2008WBA win the Championship.
2009West Brom finish bottom and are relegated from the Premier League.
(June) Mowbray confirmed as the new manager of Celtic on a 12-month rolling contract.
2010Celtic confirm departure of Mowbray, assistant manager Mark Venus and first-team coach Peter Grant.
