I understand that criticism is part and parcel of football; I have been on the sharp end of it myself many times throughout my career and if you are at a club the size of Celtic’s, you simply accept there will always be flak.

But last weekend, when there was clearly still lingering anger over the defeat to Rangers at Hampden, I felt that the criticism directed towards the board and to Peter Lawwell and Dermot Desmond in particular crossed the line into a personal attack.

And before anyone brings up the fact that I am a Celtic ambassador, anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not an apologist for the club. I like to think that I can call it as I see it and my honest belief is that Lawwell is the best chief executive the club has had.

I don’t say that lightly, I don’t say it to curry any kind of favour – I don’t need to – but I say it because it is a genuine belief.

Surely the financial restraints that the club have operated under have not gone amiss? Without Rangers in the league, revenue has diminished.

And all in all, if you add it up, Celtic have spent a fair sum of money on bringing players into the club. Not all of these signings have worked out and it is the forward positions in particular where they have toiled to really find success.

Criticism is always justified when the team are not playing well. But to me there has been a small band orchestrating some very personal criticism and to me that crosses the line.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion and some flak is justified.

It does of course mean that the managerial appointment is going to be huge – but the bottom line is that whoever you appoint, you cannot guarantee that they will be a success, regardless of how good a fit they appear to be at the time.

One way to minimise that and give yourself more chance of success is bringing in someone experienced, someone who knows what it takes to manager a club of this stature.

And to me one of the first questions that any prospective manager has to address is the recruitment of players.

We can all appreciate that the club are now operating in a very different market from where they were not too long ago, but there remains a significant perception that Lawwell has had a considerable hand in transfer activity at the club.

Sometimes perceptions can be well wide of the mark, but what I would say is that to me it would be beneficial to have some kind of transparency over how p[layer recruitment is done.

When I was working in Norway we had a European where there was someone responsible for player recruitment and they worked directly with the manager. It is a good and sensible system and one that the club could do well to adopt.

When I returned to Celtic as chief scout and worked under Tommy Burns it is the way we worked. I would use my contacts to shift through for players and I would then recommend them to Tommy.

Sometimes we would all go – myself, Tommy and Billy Stark and look at the players in question – other times, Tommy knew he could trust my judgement.

I went to a UEFA Cup quarter-final between AC Milan and Bordeaux in 1996 to watch Paulo di Canio. Bordeaux won the game 3-0 – with guys like Zinedine Zidane and Christophe Dugarry in their line-up, while the Italians had Franco Baresi, Paulo Maldini, Roberto Baggio and George Weah in their team.

Di Canio came on for the second-half and that was all I needed – I knew he would be a hit at Celtic and Tommy knew he could take my word for it.

And it is trust that underpins a relationship like that.

You have to have a good working system in place and when Tommy left, I was able to pick that up with Wim Jansen.

Wim and I hit it off very quickly and I recommended guys like George Burley, Paul Lambert, Stefane Mahe, Marc Rieper to him.

It is a system that works. I don’t know how it is now with John Park and whether that is the same way the club operates, but the one thing I would say is; make it clear.

Also, you do have to place the club in its current context. Ronny Deila was in Manchester on Tuesday night at the Manchester City game – but you can guarantee there isn’t a chance Celtic will ever bring in a player from that kind of first-team environment again.

Celtic won’t turn up at the quarter-final of a European tournament to scout an established player, so you have to be smart with how the network operates.

I had a great relationship with a Dutch scout who opened up a lot of doors – Bob Maaskant – and he actually had a hand in setting up the meeting with Rob Jansen that subsequently led to Henrik Larsson heading to the Hoops. We all know how well that one worked out.

It is difficult nowadays to source bargains when you are operating under such tight financial restrictions, but it is possible.