Brady, Liam

Managers | Liam Brady Pictures

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Personal

Fullname: William Brady
aka: Chippy, Liam Brady
Born: 13 February 1956
Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
Position as a player: Midfielder
Internationals: Republic of Ireland 72 (9) 1974-89
Celtic Manager: 19 June 1991 – 6 October 1993
Succeeding: Billy McNeill
Successor: Frank Connor (interim) / Lou Macari

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Biog

“To be allowed to manage a club like that [Celtic] is something special.” Liam Brady

Management Career at Celtic

Before any of you read any of the following, a note of caution, some of it can be painful reading covering a very poor period in the club’s history. However, not all was the fault of Liam Brady nor should the ails all be pinned on him, and the good points have to be highlighted as amongst the gloom there were some very good moments and great entertainment too.

The Start
Liam Brady was given the job straight through an interview process, after Terry Cassidy (Celtic’s then Chief Executive) decided to not headhunt for a new manager but rather to advertise to invite potential managers for interviews. This lack of initiative ended up leading to Liam Brady being picked as a manager against little competition.

Liam Brady, appointed on 19 June 1991, was the first Celtic manager who had not previously played for the club, and also the first since Willie Maley in the 1890s to have had no prior experience of football management.

On paper it was a gamble, Liam Brady had no managerial or coaching pedigree or experience, and he was coming to Scotland with not having played in the Premier Division at any time. On the other hand, his appointment was a welcome change, having completed a successful playing career in England with Arsenal (where he is still hailed as a favourite) and then in Italy.

He broke the mould for players from the UK and Ireland by being that rarity of a player from these isles to have been able to actually settle down successfully in Italy and make a go of it, unlike say Denis Law or Ian Rush. His undoubted talent as a skilful player definitely marked him out as playing “the Glasgow Celtic Way” augured well, whilst his Irish background was obviously a bonus too for some.

Management
Things didn’t start off well on the pitch, and the first team didn’t do well in the league. Brady seemed to be very naive about the Celtic/Rangers derby remarking at first that it was no different to any other such as the Arsenal/Spurs derbies he had played in. It only took his first Glasgow Derby game to show him that this wasn’t the case, and it was a real baptism of fire for the Irishman.

His first season was to be a difficult one and he couldn’t piece together successfully a team to challenge Rangers’ increasing confidence bolstered by heavy financial backing.

It was too much to turn around for a novice manager in his first year, and Celtic finished third behind Rangers and Hearts. Ignominiously, Celtic would have finished second but lost the last game of the season at home to Hibs 2-1. Only one more point was needed to come second. It summed the whole season up, and Celtic were out of Europe until troubles in the former Yugoslavia gave the first team a back door route into Europe, so finally some good luck at the end on a footballing front for Celtic.

However there was one result that stuck out more than any others and has been little forgotten. Celtic were to play Neutchatel Xamax of Switzerland in the UEFA Cup in what should have been a straight-forward two leg victory. Embarrassingly, the first team posted missing and were humiliated with a 5-1 defeat away. Celtic recovered with a 1-0 win at home but it was too little too late. The 5-1 defeat was Celtic’s worst defeat in Europe until the embarrassment of the 5-0 loss to Artmedia under Gordon Strachan in 2005. It was made all the worse coming against relatively poor opposition. The First Team had really sunk in European terms. For Liam Brady it was a result that hung over his head for the rest of his time at the club (and some would argue even beyond).

His second season was an improvement but still unsuccessful. Less naïve and more experienced about management (especially about Scottish football), he finally had a better grasp of what to do. In later interviews, he admitted that he only realised once he had become a manager just all the things that he had to contend with, whilst as a player he was mollycoddled having it all done for him and his colleagues by others (it’s even more so now for players with agents pandering to their every whim).

Football under Liam Brady was generally very good to watch and there were patches of some great results. He liked to get the players to not be afraid to use their skills with one-touch football. However, little went to plan as Rangers romped to the league title and Celtic were unceremoniously dumped out of the cup competitions (no finals) and out of the league reckoning by the turn of the New Year. Being knocked out by Rangers in the Scottish Cup was the worst part as Rangers had gone down to ten men even though Celtic were on top for much of the game yet Celtic still lost.

Discontent from the supporters was brewing despite the general high regard that the fans felt about Liam Brady as a person. Celtic finished the league season as far behind as they ever were as when Brady had taken over, and really at the end of the second season he should have stepped down as manager but he carried on for longer than he should have. The board should have moved him on, but as they didn’t it likely was another example of their lack of backbone and judgement.

Signings
Once he did start to spend money, things actually worsened surprisingly. A number of his major player purchases during his time with Celtic proved to be flops, most infamously the purchases of Tony Cascarino, Frank McAvennie and Gary Gillespie.

Tony Cascarino was bought in the belief that he would be a great purchase for scoring and providing goals as he knew the player well, having previously been his agent. Tony Cascarino was a disastrous signing and ultimately laughable, and their relationship deteriorated during his short time at the club which saw the player happy to escape at the first opportunity to Chelsea whilst Celtic got Tom Boyd in exchange (best piece of business Brady did).

As for Gary Gillespie, he was by his own admission a failed signing. The then Liverpool manager (ex-Rangers manager Graham Souness) was said to be laughing at how much he got out of Celtic for the perennially injured player. Gary Gillespie was way over the hill and made a number of avoidable errors on the pitch which cost Celtic points and too often he was out injured. He had a great start but rarely got close again. It just piled on the pressure for Liam Brady who couldn’t solve the defensive problems.

In a similar vein to Tony Cascarino, Liam Brady having played with the mercurial Stuart Slater, thought that he could bring the best out of his undoubted natural skill. Stuart Slater was a great skilful player but he never delivered enough on the pitch for the talent he definitely had. He lacked confidence and direction, and Liam Brady has to take the criticism for his lack of development in the side. Sadly, whilst other players either had a successful career beforehand or after to look back on, Slater’s career never recovered even away from Celtic.

The most embarrassing transfer was buying back Frank McAvennie. By this time, McAvennie had sunk so low having hit the nadir in his career, and was about to sign for Partick Thistle (he even waved a scarf above his head for a photo shoot) before Brady for some reason nipped in to buy him. McAvennie was a shadow of his old self at this point, and had just gone through the height of his ‘coke and burrdz‘ phase of his life at West Ham. He was being pulled out the bargain basement bin, simple as that, although admittedly he got a handful of goals but he wasn’t the answer to what was needed. It was a step backwards.

Other buys were poor or basically not good enough. In fairness, buys like Andy Payton and Rudi Vata weren’t bad but they were hardly great players although they did the best they could in the circumstances. Andy Payton did a fine job with a number of goals into the bargain but family reasons forced him back down south when the support wished he could have stayed with Celtic for a bit longer.

There was poor luck for Liam Brady in the transfers too. Tony Mowbray was bought to help bolster the Celtic defence. A back-to-basics defender, he saw the malaise at the club and set about rectifying it where he could. However, injuries put paid to his involvement from practically the start, and Brady’s curse continued. Nevertheless, for Celtic Tony Mowbray’s purchase turned into much more than expected, as Tony Mowbray experienced the whole Celtic club culture, and after some successful stints as a manager at Hibs and West Bromwich Albion, in 2009 was announced as the new manager of Celtic. Sadly that stint wasn’t too successful, and crudely some people were paralleling Mowbray’s reign with Brady’s, which was wrong as they were both under very different environments.

In a frank admission in an interview reflecting back on his time as manager, Liam Brady admitted: “If I’ve made excuses with regard to how difficult it was with the board then I have to admit that my signings didn’t really come off, and on the pitch is where I failed.” A genuinely honest admission of his time at the club and marks him above others who he had to work with at the time (e.g. the board).

Any positives or was it all just bad luck?
Not being too negative, it has to be said that as a manager he did make Celtic play some great football. With players like McStay and Collins in the team it was not too difficult, and he imposed on the team to play a passing game, likely matching his own philosophy on how to play the game to mirror his own style as a player. No matter how poor Celtic’s results were in some games, the first team were still entertaining to watch (far better than the turgid rubbish the more successful Rangers teams were getting away with).

Another important point is that it should be said that contrary to popular belief that actually Brady was not a large net buyer (taking in transfer fees). A round-up of “ins and outs” to provide a net figure showed that he was given a measly sum overall to spend, and he actually did well in getting rid of surplus players. This doesn’t take into account upfront transfer fees or wages but it’s still something to note. In fairness, the board did give funds to Liam Brady to build a new team as can be seen from the outlays on Cascarino and Slater but it can be argued both ways.

The only trophy Celtic won under Brady was the winter Tennents Sixes tournament in 1992. A good fun win in the mini indoor football tournament (which is really aimed at kids for viewing) but embarrassingly was played on by Celtic board member Michael Kelly in a radio interview as vindication that Celtic had achieved some kind of success, and it cringingly took the shine off the win in part. Nice win but nothing significant.

The End
It has to be noted that most of his time at Celtic was overshadowed by rumblings over the direction in which the club was being taken by the board management (it was the days of ‘Sack the Board‘).

The whole situation was a vicious circle, with off-field affecting on-field and vice versa, although it could also be a convenient excuse for some to deflect attention away from the failing first team on the park. Lack of success and an inability to get into any finals (including losing ignominiously to Falkirk in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup) long saw the writing on the wall for Brady. Sad trivia fact was that he was the first Celtic manager to manage a Celtic team to lose both legs of a European tie (v Borussia Dortmund), although by that time the Celtic first team were far from their old European superpower days and all knew it, so it was no great surprise.

He tendered his resignation following a league defeat v St Johnstone at Perth on 6 October 1993, which not surprisingly Kevin Kelly (the Chairman at the time) took without any attempt to convince him to stay. He was the first Celtic manager ever to step down entirely of his own volition, however it is fair to say that he should have left earlier for his own sake at least. The job was simply beyond his ability and experience at the time. He was out of his depth at a club going through crisis both on & off the field.

Curiously, Joe Jordan who was Liam Brady’s assistant claimed in his biography that there was an unwritten working rule that Brady would pick the team but it was Joe Jordan who would be in charge of training, coaching and team talks. If a true reflection of the team management at the club, then the real question that needed to be asked was possibly what was Liam Brady actually doing and did he actually understand the responsibilities needed to be in charge?

It could also be asked if Liam Brady actually even grasped what was required to be done in the role, and could the board not have sensed this early on and have brought in an older head to help teach him the ropes. Everyone from the time of Liam Brady’s tenure come out of it badly if Joe Jordan’s comment has merit to it, as it just seems hard to fathom it could be entirely true. The last time that Celtic were in as close to a similar situation where the first team had a near impotent manager was under Jimmy McGrory and his tenure ended up with a barren spell of no trophies spanning 1958-64.

Post-Celtic
A further foray into management at Brighton was also unsuccessful (ending any managerial ambitions). Since then, he rejoined Arsenal in July 1996 as Head of Youth Development and Academy Director (he oversaw the club’s FA Youth Cup wins in 2000 and 2001), and he admitted in interviews that he was not interested anymore at all in being a club manager ever again. However in 2008, he joined the Irish national side as the assistant manager/coach to Trappatoni to help guide them in their failed attempt to reach the World Cup in 2010.

He then became a regular & respected analyst on Irish football shows.

Since leaving as Celtic manager he had only once been back to Parkhead over the following ten years or so, such was the hurt and disappointment from his experience due to the press and the board. However, he did contribute an interview to a classic set of DVDs on the club’s history and he was very candid on his time, even able to joke and raise a smile whilst displaying a still honest love and respect for the club and support.

Despite the heartache of his tenure, he definitely represented dignity personified throughout his difficult time at the helm, and we wished him all the best for the future.

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Management Career at Celtic

Honours with Celtic

Tennant Sixes tournament

• 1992

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Clubs (as a player)

• 1973-80 Arsenal
• 1980-82 Juventus
• 1982-84 Sampdoria
• 1984-86 Internazionale
• 1986-87 Ascoli
• 1987-90 West Ham United

Teams managed

• 1991-93 Celtic
• 1993-95 Brighton & Hove Albion

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Pictures

• Liam Brady Pictures

Links

• Misc Articles

KDS

• Thread (2013)

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Quotes

“I was told when I joined about Celtic’s ”paranoia”. Now I know it is true. We are hard done by. Religiously and politically, there are people against us.”
Liam Brady, Celtic Manager, October 1992

“To be allowed to manage a club like that [Celtic] is something special.”
Liam Brady 1992

“Celtic should be in Europe every year and win at least one domestic trophy every season.”
Liam Brady 1991

“I couldn’t have imagined the intensity of feeling in this city [Glasgow]… The shock of how big the thing [Celtic v Rangers] is, of how everyday it is, is hard to overcome.”
Liam Brady (The Guardian) 14 Mar 1992

“In my eyes the most important aspect of winning is to reward Celtic supporters. I have come to understand why our supporters are so exceptional and so attached to this club… I am under no illusions of what is required.”
Liam Brady

“Winning trophies is a necessity for this club. It is necessary to maintain the club’s high profile and reputation worldwide. It is necessary too for financial reasons: a winning team attracts bigger crowds, better sponsorships and lucrative television deals.”
Liam Brady

“At the end of October we travelled to Switzerland to play Neuchatel in the second round of the UEFA cup…It was one of those awful nights when anything that can go wrong does go wrong; and when I wasn’t giving the ball away, I was tripping over myself … Liam pulled me off early in the second half. We were hammered 5-1 and the fans had a real go as we walked from the pitch. Liam was incensed in the dressing room. His team had played shamefully. His first managerial signing was making a mockery of him.
‘What the **** is going on, Tony? You were a disaster! I’ve never seen you play so badly!’
‘Yeah, I dunno… I just… I was just crap.'”
From Tony Cascarino’s biog after the 5-1 defeat to Neutchatel Xamax in the UEFA Cup

“He has done the honourable thing in resigning.”
Celtic chairman Kevin Kelly on Liam Brady’s resignation 1993 (shame the Celtic board didn’t follow him at the time also).

“When Cassidy eventually left, Celtic put in Michael Kelly to handle the club’s Press Relations department and things didn’t get any better. It all became a bit intense and it got to the stage that you had to continually look over your shoulder. So much for team harmony and pulling together! Yes it was quite an experience managing Celtic Football Club!”
Liam Brady (1998)

“If I’ve made excuses with regard to how difficult it was with the board then I have to admit that my signings didn’t really come off and on the pitch is where I failed.”
Liam Brady in an interview for the book “Head Bhoys”, a very frank and honest admission marking him a step above certain members of the board he worked with and who still don’t admit faults

“You need to be on the inside to realise how big the expectation is … which I discovered during my two and a bit years there. It is like leading a community rather than just being a football manager.”
Liam Brady (2009)

“Celtic fans are great when the team are up against it. There´s nothing like the Celtic support.”
“I’ve worked at Celtic Park and I know that when the team is up against it, the fans respond by making the kind of ear-splitting noise that shows they want to help the players.”
Liam Brady (2013)

“It’s a great club and if you want to work in management you want to be at a place like Celtic.”
Liam Brady (2013)

That 1980-81 Serie A title meant the following season Juventus were back in the European Cup. And the first-round draw meant Brady was back in the Irish, and British, public eye. It was Celtic versus Juventus.“I couldn’t wait to come back,” Brady said, “to show myself playing in this team. It was great. I got an unbelievable reception in Glasgow when they read my name out in the team line-up. My folks were over from Ireland, relations, all that. Great. Celtic beat us 1-0.“It was a night that certainly left a mark on me. When I was offered the Celtic job [a decade later], I remembered.”
Liam Brady in The Blizzard magazine (2017)

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Articles

LIAM BRADY & THAT SINKING FEELING

LIAM BRADY & THAT SINKING FEELING

By CQN Magazine on 13th June 2015 Football Matters

Recently I was given a copy of the second edition of the Scottish football magazine FREE KICK, which was published in October 1998 and was dedicated to the Tartan Army.

The BIG interview in this short-lived magazine was with Liam Brady as he looked back on his time as Celtic manager. I was given permission by the author to run parts of this interview in a feature on Brady in CQN Magazine…

Brady’s final game as Celtic manager was on 6th October 1993 when we lost 2-1 at St Johnstone. This was the last ever game I ever went to with my late dad and I had never seen him so angry with a Celtic team. Awful does not describe how bad we were that night.

Brady describes Glasgow as an “intense and aggressive place – unless you are prepared for it, it can overwhelm you.”

Looking back at his time at Celtic he admits he made mistakes. “Yes I admit I made mistakes. I was new to football management and Celtic were one heck of a club to start off with. There were things that didn’t go right immediately and I made an error of judgement in the transfer market.

“I bought Tony Cascarino for £1.1 million and unfortunately, he couldn’t cope with the pressure that is always on Celtic players.”

Brady maintained that he was trying to play football the Glasgow Celtic way, aiming to maintain the Celtic tradition of performing with exciting excellence!

“Yes, that was my ambition. The Celtic support deserved that sort of team, that is what I wanted to give them. I’ll never forget my first game in charge – we won 4-3 against Dundee United at Tannadice. Scorelines like that would have kept those wonderful fans happy, I’m sure.”

So what went wrong? Brady had this to say:

“There were so many divisions at Parkhead and, of course, it was a well known fact that the old board didn’t have a lot of money to spend in the transfer market.

“There was friction around the place and that gets through to the players – of course it does. Anyone who says it doesn’t has got it wrong. You name me one club who has performed well out on the park when there has been trouble at boardroom level.

“It was all so frustrating. The Celtic fans were so unhappy and disillusioned with the old board that they refused to back the team. That affected us too.

“In my days, money was tight and I had to get it right with every player. There was no room for manoeuvre, no way of going out and buying another player if one purchase didn’t work out.

“Stuart Slater was like Cascarino. There can be no doubting his class, anyone at West Ham would tell you how good he was when he played at Upton Park. He was a born entertainer, a typical Celtic player, if you like. However, it just didn’t work for him on Glasgow.

“Once more the strain showed and he never displayed the talents we all knew he possessed and that was a pity. But Glasgow and playing for Celtic can do that to you.

“I’ve got to hold up my hands and say the pressure, without doubt, got to me too. Of course it did. You’ve got to ride the storm and, sadly, I couldn’t manage it. That was why I had to resign.”

Brady, speaking in 1998, had some sympathy with Wim Jansen in his dealing with Fergus McCann the previous season. He remembers his experiences dealing with a Celtic Chief Executive.

“I had to cope with Terry Cassidy during my time and that was not a very pleasant experience, I can assure you. The trouble with Cassidy was that he was not a football man and, as such, did not understand football people.

“We had some stand up rows, Cassidy and I. It did little for the morale of the place with things like that going on. I wanted to manage the team and do my level best to put out a team that deserved to wear the green and white hoops. Simple as that, but there was interference from every corner.

“When Cassidy eventually left, Celtic put in Michael Kelly to handle the club’s Press Relations department and things didn’t get any better. It all became a bit intense and it got to the stage that you had to continually look over your shoulder. So much for team harmony and pulling together! Yes it was quite an experience managing Celtic Football Club!”

Brady reckoned that the luck of the Irish deserted him while managing Celtic.

“We didn’t get much luck when I was there. We seemed to keep tripping over when it came to important hurdles. We played three semi finals in my time and lost them all.

“I’m not going to start making excuses at this late stage, but a rub of the green would have helped us on all three occasions. We didn’t get it and the results – all 1-0 defeats – are now in the history books.

I would dearly have loved to have given the Celtic fans a trophy in my time there. The reason I moved out was to give someone else a crack at providing the goods. When it got near the end for me it was a very, very difficult time. I was aware of what the Celtic fans wanted. I knew about their desires for the club because they matched my own. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.”

Brady had had enough after that dreadful night in Perth – two weeks earlier Celtic had lost to Rangers in one of those semi finals he lost as manager. As the team made its way back from Perth in the driving rain, Brady made up his mind.

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