Rookie boss Liam Brady was never going to succeed at Celtic

The Celtic Star

·19 August 2024

Rookie boss Liam Brady was never going to succeed at Celtic

Liam Brady was the successful candidate but as it turned out the wrong pick from a strange four-man shortlist for the Celtic manager’s job in the summer of 1991…

Liam Brady Celtic football manager August 1991

In the summer of 1991 Celtic were on the hunt for a new manager after the shameful dismissal of club legend Billy McNeill and unsurprisingly more than a few names were touted in the media as Cesar’s successor. Ultimately the old board had their own candidates in mind and complied their own four-man shortlist.

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The names of Frank Stapleton, Tommy Craig, Ivan Golac and of course Liam Brady were the ones deemed worthy of an interview, and all four were given a chance to impress the club’s hierarchy. Rather bizarrely all four candidates were to be interviewed on the exact same day, a strange but unsurprising decision from the train wreck that was the Celtic board of that time.

Frank Stapleton like Brady was a superb footballer and Republic of Ireland international, but was a mere novice when it came to football management. The same could be said of Tommy Craig although Tommy had several years of experience firstly as a number two at Hibs, and then of course as assistant to Billy McNeill during Cesar’s second spell in charge of Celtic.

Ivan Golac was something of a surprise name. The flamboyant Yugoslavian had a season in charge of Partizan Belgrade and was in charge when they put Celtic out of the Cup Winners Cup two years previously after a dramatic night at Celtic Park which saw the Hoops win 5-4 on the night, but crash out on the away goals rule.

UEFA Cup 1 FC Cologne Celtic Glasgow 15 09 1992 2 0 team manager Liam Brady Celtic

However Brady was the one who impressed the club the most and was handed the job, his first ever in football management. Brady’s appointment also made him the first man to manage Celtic without having actually played for the club.

The board would no doubt have been looking at events at Ibrox and the success Rangers had under Graeme Souness who had just left Liverpool. Souness like Brady took the leap from great player to management with the Ibrox post being his first job in management. However Souness had the advantage of a seemingly bottomless pit of cash, something Brady was definitely not going to enjoy at Celtic in the early 1990s.

I don’t need to tell you how Liam Brady’s time at the club panned out, and it was typical of the board of that time to mess things up. They couldn’t get anything right and failing to pick the right man to replace the legend that was Billy McNeill, the ever so experienced Billy McNeill, was yet another example of their failings.

Davie Hay’s name was also touted as a potential candidate, but he wasn’t even deemed worthy of an interview. There was also a few other experienced names at that time who would have jumped at the chance to take the mangers job at Celtic Park. Yet we got stuck with the inexperienced and as it turned out, an out of his depth Liam Brady. Oh how different things could have been had we made the right choice.