I make no apology for re-raising this issue. It’s important.
Tomorrow our shareholders will face the board of directors at Celtic’s 2016 AGM. It has been a tumultuous year, and important one in our history, one which has changed the face of our club, for the better. This time last year I think the general mood was pessimism and gloom. The fans were on edge. Discontent was growing in the stands.
Dermott Desmond finally took on the role of providing a vision for our club.
Now Celtic is unified as it hasn’t been for a long time, and the strength of our club can be measured in full houses, the league table and the bulging bank book. All of this is pleasing, all of it has helped create and sustain the feel-good factor.
We have a top manager and some exceptionally good players. Dembele and Sinclair have elevated our team to a new level, and Brendan’s tactics and approach to the game have changed our fortunes immeasurably. Things on the pitch are rosier than they’ve been in an age.
Now it is time for us to play the role this moment demands, to change the way the game here is run.
Before I start, it has to be said that the AGM is being held at a lousy time. Why aren’t these things held at night, so that more people are able to attend? I’ve spoken to half a dozen people who would attend tomorrow except they can’t get time off work. Most people do still work during the day; a Wednesday morning is a terrible time for one of these.
That gripe aside, it should be a thoroughly positive event.
But there are still issues our supporters want to see resolved, but they aren’t at Celtic Park.
They are at Hampden, where a lot of us feel there’s an administration which doesn’t take seriously its own roles and responsibilities, which plays favourites and which is impervious to criticism, especially from the fans who they treat with utter disregard.
Celtic cannot change that on its own; we realise that, and we would never expect our club to try and whip the rest of Scottish football into line. But I firmly believe that if we take a lead and present change as something positive – and it is – and reform as something necessary – and it is – that the rest of the clubs will take us seriously and help us achieve these things.
It has to start at Celtic, though. We’re the only people who can do it. It’s the downside of being the last remaining superpower, the burden we have to carry as the biggest club in the land. It is not born of arrogance but necessity.
There are key areas where things need to change.
Financial fair play rules are the most important. They will restrict clubs to spending only what they can afford to and prevent sides from using the lack of a regulatory framework to take chances with their future. This will benefit the whole game. It will put clubs on a firm footing. It will restore sanity and order to our game.
Celtic has never expressed a preference for these rules, but we voluntarily comply with the UEFA standard. Our shareholders should be pushing the club to making sure that this standard is implemented as part of the SFA’s licensing criteria so that it becomes the minimum required standard before a side can compete in the SPL. It already governs whether a club gets a European license, to a certain extent, although one gets the impression that will be ignored in one case.
Regulations governing the way football treats administration should be tightened considerably.
Those which exist clearly don’t work. Our shareholders should be insisting that the club pushes for a proper SFA plan for circumstances where administration events happen, and which seek to protect the other teams in the league from the consequences of them.
In addition to that, Paul Murray and Dave King sit on the board at Ibrox despite rules which should have seen both men banned. The media and the SFA are quick to point out that an actual “fit and proper person” test does not exist; that’s the problem. Our shareholders should be pushing the SFA to legislate for one that does what it says on the tin.
Lastly, and most important, the club has to take a stand on the findings of the Resolution 12 campaign. The guys behind it have brought forth the evidence that something untoward occurred in 2011, and the club has made a commitment to act on that.
They must be held to it. They must push the SFA through official channels, and take the matter to UEFA if that’s what’s required. This is not interference in the running of a club, this is holding the governing body to account.
On top of all this, Stewart Regan has to go. It’s important that our shareholders express their dissatisfaction with him, and make it clear we’d like to see changes made.
Celtic fans have taken a lead in keeping Scottish football on the straight and narrow.
I firmly believe that we’ve done more than those of any other club.
But we’ve now reached the end of our influence when it comes to reforming the game. Only the strength of the club can move things forward on the issues that matter, but fortunately we still have influence with the club itself.
Tomorrow the shareholders need to use it.
All the best to everyone who attends.
You are the voices of us all.