Club chairman Rob Gorski will be at Bower Fold on Saturday, having arranged to fly in before Keith Briggs had announced his decision to quit. In the meantime, however, coach Dave Sullivan and team captain Scott Kerr will be in charge of the team for the game against Gloucester City.
Gorski said: “Several people have already shown interest in applying for the job and we’ll be holding a board meeting to look at the candidates. I would hope to make an announcement by early next week.
“I can genuinely say my attendance at the Gloucester game was arranged some time ago. Briggsie’s decision was a complete surprise, but he’s a passionate and loyal guy and was hurting massively after the result and the performance against Bradford.
“He was desperate to do well and I couldn’t fault his preparation or the way he took training. He left nothing to chance and got the players some fantastic facilities at Stockport Sports Village.
“Briggsie gave his all but, sadly, it just didn’t work out. I’m really sorry to see him go because he became a mate. But you could see he was suffering. He decided he had taken the team as far as he possibly could and all credit to him that he’s gone with his head held high.”
Whoever takes over as manager will have to continue with Celtic’s full-time youth project although there will be a review of the system and the way it works over the close season.
The chairman explained: “Some of our fans seemed to think the project should have been axed after Jim Harvey resigned but Keith Briggs was more vociferously positive about the full-time thing than even I was. He was adamant that it was the right thing to do.
“Having said that, with hindsight maybe Alan Hansen was right when he said you don’t win things with kids. This season Briggsie tried to get an experienced spine in the team with Lewis King, Matty Hughes, Scott Kerr and Liam Dickinson.
“We need to review the way the project works – to analyse everything from top to bottom. Clearly teaching good football to inexperienced kids isn’t going to cut it. We need more wise heads in there and a greater physical presence.”