Celtic fans will remember the summer-long debacle of the club chasing Eddie Howe as their next manager in 2021.
The shambolic COVID season saw Celtic end the year trophyless, managerless, CEO-less and captain-less as the roof caved in on the Parkhead club.
Neil Lennon was sacked after finishing 25 points behind Rangers in the league and losing in the League Cup to Ross County and the Scottish Cup to Rangers.
Peter Lawwell resigned as the CEO and Scott Brown decided his Celtic career was over and moved into a player-coaching role with Aberdeen.
Players like Odsonne Edouard were looking to move on and Ryan Christie and Kristoffer Ajer were also moved on from Celtic.
Writing about it now makes that season come screaming back but the man Celtic identified to take over from Lennon eventually turned down the club after a summer-long courting session where it looked like Eddie Howe was set to become the next Parkhead boss.
And here, Howe shares exactly why he rejected the Celtic hot seat and reacts to Simon Jordan’s accusation that he ‘bottled’ coming to Glasgow.
Newcastle boss Eddie Howe admits ‘no downside’ to Celtic job
Jordan said on the Up Front podcast, “You get a big opportunity, with all due respect to Bournemouth, you get Celtic coming in the door.
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“And I remember pining on at the time. I didn’t pine on in a very complimentary way because I felt that you bottled it. It’s one way of putting it.
Howe: “Say what you really think.”
Jordan: “No, no, absolutely. I felt that the Celtic job is a massive job in football. It comes with its own pressure that you’re in a two-horse league and ultimately you’ve got to win.
“There’s no alternative. And it felt to me like you didn’t fancy it for that reason. Celtic obviously thought quite highly of you and if you look at what they said at the time, they were, it looked like, alighting upon you for a big job.
“A job with European football attached to it, a job with scale and recognizability around the world. So put aside the baiting observation of me saying that you bottled it. What was the reason that you wouldn’t have taken on such a big job like Celtic?”
Howe: “Yeah, so during that period that I’d had out, I’d had a few job offers, but I’d said I’m not considering anything to a year. That year had passed and Celtic came up and I was immediately attracted to the job. I thought, ‘Wow, what an opportunity. What a football club’.
“Great people as well. The people I met were unbelievable. So there was no downside for me, but I had to get my staff together.”
Eddie Howe rejects Simon Jordan’s accusation of bottling the Celtic job
“For me, if I was to go into a football club,” continued Howe, “I could have gone in on my own and worked with the staff that are there.
“I felt I needed to go in at my strongest. My strongest would have been with my team, so that’s Jason Tindall, Steven Purchase, Simon Weatherstone, and Dan Hodges. These are important people to me.
“So I’d sort of made my decision. I was really keen to go. Jason had left Bournemouth, but I couldn’t get them together. I couldn’t get the team to all agree. And it wasn’t necessarily I needed every single one of them. But of course, that’s an important dynamic.
“And I didn’t feel that was right for me to take the opportunity. In that moment would have been wrong for Celtic as well, I think. So I declined the offer.”
Jordan: “So it’s grotesquely unfair, my observation?”
Howe: “Well, it is, yeah. But that’s what happens in the media, doesn’t it? You jump to conclusions. And I heard that, and you have to accept it. You can’t fight it.”
In the end, it all worked out for Celtic because in came Ange Postecoglou and the rest, as they say, is history.
However, it doesn’t stop 67 Hail Hail from wondering if Howe did take the Celtic job, would the man who was once the youngest manager in the English Premier League have enjoyed the same success as Postecoglou did?
Callum McGregor and Angelos Postecoglou, Manager of Celtic lift The Cinch Premiership trophy after their sides victory during the Cinch Scottish Pr...
Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images
Would Howe have brought the same style of football the Australian did that made every single season ticket holder barely miss a home game at Celtic Park?
Unfortunately we will never know and probably more unfortunately for Howe, he is likely to never find out what it’s like to manage one of the biggest clubs in Europe because if and when the Celtic job comes up again, the Newcastle boss is unlikely to be ever offered it again.
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