Ange Postecoglou's old comments emerge amid Mark Lawwell's Celtic exit

Changes seem to be underway at Celtic Park, with the first being the departure of Mark Lawwell. The club announced that he had resigned as Head of First Team Scouting and Recruitment, as had their Lead First Team Scout, Joe Dudgeon. The two will be on a period of gardening leave. Hopefully, this will end up having a positive impact on the Hoops' recruitment and transfers moving forward.

Lawwell had arrived at the club during the summer of 2022. It would be safe to say that the four transfer windows since then have been disappointing.

The club's best signing since then has probably been Aaron Mooy and the Australian retired after just a season at Parkhead. Players like Alistair Johnston and Luis Palma have had positive influences but are yet to convince that they are long-term solutions in their positions.

Interestingly, in the statement announcing Lawwell's departure, Ange Postecoglou has been named as the person who recruited him to the club. The two had worked together in the past under the City Football Group umbrella.

Postecoglou's old comments emerge amid Lawwell's Celtic exit

Considering the history that Peter Lawwell has at Celtic Park, most fans have felt that that is just the club trying to not take full responsibility for their decision, as it has not worked out well. But some old comments from Postecoglou suggest that he did have a hand in the recruitment.

As reported by the Glasgow Times back in 2022, Postecoglou had said about Lawwell:

"I just wanted to get the right person. And for me, and for Celtic supporters, Mark, like myself who wasn’t a popular pick to start with, will get judged on the work he does and I’m sure they’ll be super pleased once he gets up and running.

“I worked with Mark for three-and-a-half years. Obviously Yokahama [are] part of the City Group and Mark’s responsibility there was to help us on the recruitment side and transfers, particularly with overseas players.

“I worked really closely with him for almost four years and we worked really well together. He understood me, how I want my teams to play football, and identified the right type of players for me and we had great success at Yokahama.

“So when I came across here to Celtic, when we were talking about adding staff he was one person I was really keen on bringing across. But he was already working for a really good organisation in City Group and they were pretty keen to hold on to him, so I knew it wouldn’t be a simple task getting him across.

“So I’m absolutely delighted we’ve managed to bring him to the club and he’s going to be an outstanding asset for this football club because in that space - that area of recruitment, the ability to scout the right kind of players and the analytics behind it - he has been at the cutting edge working for one of the best organisations in the world at identifying players.

“To bring that skillset to our club is brilliant."

It would be safe to say that Lawwell was not able to win over the supporters with the job he did during his time at Celtic. It is not like the Hoops were not linked with some good players while he was Head of First Team Scouting and Recruitment. But those transfers did not end up transpiring. The ones that did, did not really work out.