AS a season-ticket holder at Celtic Park and having held family shares at Celtic Football Club for the past 50 years, it is with much regret that I find myself having to write this letter in the week in which Celtic FC won their first league trophy in 10 years.

I do not think that the way in which Celtic FC announced the resignation of head coach Wim Jansen was in any way professional.

Despite the difficulties which Fergus McCann and Jock Brown obviously both had with Mr Jansen's style of coaching, I found it very distasteful that they felt it necessary to spell out in great detail the litany of these problems at the press conference, at a time when Mr Jansen was out of the country and not able to defend his actions or give his side of the story.

Throughout, Mr Jansen has conducted himself honourably and with dignity and has never given so much as a throwaway remark to the denigration of any Celtic office-bearer or to the media regarding his own situation - a trait which some of the Celtic directors should perhaps note.

There can be no doubting the effort and improvements that Mr McCann has made since coming to Celtic four years ago but his comments that should Wim Jansen not have resigned the club would have dispensed with his services anyway I feel are not worthy of him and it should have sufficed that the club purely announced his resignation.

The comments made by Jock Brown regarding Mr Jansen's inability to grasp the long-term strategy of the club also leave me puzzled. Perhaps you could correct me if I am in any way mistaken but if a coach and his team do not concentrate on the short term and channel their energies into winning their matches each and every week then, surely, there will be no need for a long-term strategy for the club?

Does the fact that Celtic FC now have to find a fourth coach in four years pose any questions to the men in charge at Parkhead?

Gerald Boyle,

29 Bathgo Avenue,

Ralston, Paisley.

May 12.

ONE must agree with Mr James Lay (May12) in regretting any discourtesy shown to Mr Bertie Ahern. Nevertheless Celtic are correct to worry about their Irish image: they are not an Irish club but a Scottish one, and Scotland has every reason to be proud of them.

Perhaps the best course would have been to welcome Mr Ahern and take the opportunity of explaining this to him, and that the club proposed to discontinue flying the Irish flag and to fly the Saltire in its place, and that they would continue to fly only the Saltire (along with the Union Flag as at present) until the supporters also displayed the blue and white (no English red) of the Saltire to a greater extent than any other colours.

For far too long it has been possible for the club's enemies, and no club is without them, to say that the IRA and Celtic FC unite under the traitor tricolour.

M D Thornton,

12 Bellfield Road, Stirling.

May 12.