I get some wonderful stuff in the inbox, I really do.
This fine day, there’s a cracker.
An ill-tempered, foul rant from a Sevco fan who claims to be an “in the know” person, and the knowledge he has imparted to me was supposed to be shocking to the core. We will sell Dembele in this window. The manager will get none of the money.
The cash will not be going on players or a new hotel or infrastructure. It will not be salted away for a spending spree this summer. It is for saving the club itself, by paying for enormous, and immediate, stadium repairs without which we’re effectively shut.
“Celtic Park is falling down. It’s a well-known fact.”
That’s what he said.
Apparently, although Celtic has been trying to cover it up this information is … everywhere.
Well, did you know that? I certainly didn’t, and I try to keep abreast of all this stuff.
I thought I would scan social media to see if there was any sign that other people know it. And what I found was not really terribly surprising. There has been some chit-chat about this in various places, the sub-basement of the Sevco fan sites and such like.
And it seems they believe it.
Celtic Park probably has more annual maintenance done to it than any other stadium in the country. This is both necessary and worth examining.
Our ground was built to a high standard, but we didn’t go overboard with the mod-cons and spent the kind of money Hampden did on a single stand. Our ground was done, if you want to put it like this, on the cheap. And that means a higher ratio of repairs and replacements than you’d get with something built out of iron and concrete.
It’s modern stadium design. It is perfectly viable and perfectly safe. We take this stuff seriously. In all the years New Celtic Park has been open there was one incident – the guttering from the roof – which caused us a problem and that saw a game called off. We know which one, and we know what happened in the replay. Those facts aren’t relevant here or to the wider point. Celtic Park has an annual repair and replacement schedule.
There is no imminent problem with the stadium, primarily because we do keep up with these things and we do fix problems when they appear. We don’t simply tape them up and forget about them for five and ten year spells, which was, and is, the problem with Ibrox.
Ibrox’ problems are a matter of public record. They have been admitted to by the club. They have been spoken about in a courtroom. They have been the subject of freedom of information requests. They are not based on rumour and conjecture. They are a fact.
Celtic Park is not “falling down.”
The number of times I’ve heard this over the last five years, it’s incredible. Not this specific story, which is a peculiarly new one, but a variation on the same theme; Celtic stands on the brink of a major catastrophe which will wipe out all our work at a stroke.
Here are the Best of The Rest.
Celtic And State Aid. The Conspiracy Theory That Refused To Die.
It was State Aid that was going to do it at first.
An investigation was going to uncover all manner of corruption and malfeasance and the club was going to have to give back huge sums of money and pay mammoth, debilitating, perhaps even ruinous fines. The allegation that Celtic had benefited from a council-backed sale of tax payers land, seemed, for a while, like the conspiracy theory that simply wouldn’t die, and no amount of laughing at it or the central planks of it being pulled away seemed like it would end the nonsense.
The guy who ran with this – yes, it was one guy, the very epitome of “lives in his mum’s basement” – really put his back into it.
He spent a fortune chasing documentation under Freedom of Information requests, he pored over old maps, he spoke to alleged experts, he compared our deals to various others … it was exhaustive work and I cannot, I do not, believe that he missed the glaring holes in his theory or the various points which underscored the valuation at which we bought the land for Lennoxtown and the parcels around Celtic Park which form the basis for The Celtic Village project.
He just ignored them. He pretended they weren’t there. He promoted his fantasy long after it had collapsed.
The Greater Glasgow Health Board, who had owned some of the land, examined the claims regarding Lennoxtown.
No case to answer.
Glasgow City Council investigated the claims regarding the land around Celtic Park.
No case to answer.
The Charities Regulator looked at the deals.
No case to answer.
The European Union competition commission looked at the whole issue of State Aid involving Celtic.
No case to answer.
Every time one of these bodies opened an inquiry – as all were legally obliged to do – he publicised that as “proof” that the corner had been turned and that the “investigation” was bearing fruit. Every time one of them announced its findings he cried conspiracy. Ironically, he has cost the taxpayer far more money than Celtic have.
And it continues to this day.
Celtic’s Links To The Co-Operative Bank. The “Labour-Celtic Nexus”.
Then it was issues with the Co-Operative Bank.
They had fallen into heavy debts. An investigation would turn up our “crooked” loan terms and reveal that we’d illegally obtained them. You’ve also doubtless heard about the “hidden debts” that those accounts conceal. These things are directly related, and scream “conspiracy.”
Way back when Fergus took over, Celtic were still using the Bank of Scotland, the backers of Murray and his cohort, the people who tried to put us out of business over £7 million. They had allowed MIH to run up sums fifty times as much. At the height of Rangers’ financial trouble their debts were in excess of ten times that figure plus change. McCann smelled a rat the minute he walked through their doors, asked them for an overdraft and was told to offer Celtic Park as security.
He closed our accounts and moved the lot to the Co-Operative.
Bear in mind, this was back in the early 90’s.
The conspiracy theory pays that no heed. In their world, it was our “Labour Party links” which got us a good deal with the Co-Operative, and the loans to rebuild the club. Those loans, according to the theory, are still outstanding and mature … round about now. The “evidence” for this is that we had two former Labour cabinet ministers on our board. The nonsense here is off the scale. The theory further alleges that we used the land purchased in the State Aid case to obtain further illegal loans from the Co-Operative back in the O’Neill era.
When the Co-Operative Bank ran into financial trouble a couple of years back there was a brief flurry of excitement on the Sevco fan forums that this, at last, would offer proof of the Smoking Gun vis-a-vis state aid and our other crimes. Last year, when they were rescued in a £700 million deal the same people who promoted State Aid were telling us that the end of the road had come for their cushy relationship with our club … and it was nonsense then and now.
The Co-Operative did not loan us money because we had politicians on the board. It is a ridiculous allegation. I have no doubt that the makeup of our boardroom factored into the decision to loan us money, but that had more to do with gravitas and professionalism than corruption.
It pains these people to accept we’re well run … so they dredge up this nonsense over and over again.
The Great Child Abuse Victims Fantasy. The Sickest Delusion Of All.
Of all the twisted ideas these people believe in, the one that makes me sick above all others is the hope they cling to that the child abuse allegations in football ensnare our club and prompt a torrent of victims to come forward and sue us.
Imagine rooting for that. Think about how warped that is.
To this day, no-one’s ever been able to tell me what exactly Celtic would have been sued for. The allegations they talk so much about happen – as they well know – in an independent organisation that just happens to have borne our name. No story has ever in a public forum which alleges more than that, not one story with an ounce of credibility. It is a contemptible thing for them to be dreaming of, one of the sickest fantasies to which they cling. And they won’t let it go.
Sevco fans are actually obsessed with this idea above others.
They use that word against us a lot, because we enjoy mocking them and we have a duty to keep our eyes on what they and their criminal chairman and our corrupt association are getting up to … but I’ll tell you, I’d rather be obsessed with a NewCo football club and its soap opera dealings than with a subject so skin-crawling and awful. This is swimming in a swamp. It has no redeeming merits at all.
Those amongst their fan-base who kid themselves that they care about the victims … there’s not one bit of truth in that at all. When these allegations touched on their own club and its conduct via a BBC documentary last year the outcry was registered in decibels.
So dig everywhere … just not at Ibrox.
Hypocritical scum.
Dermot Desmond And His Corrupt Global Web Of Finance.
Every time one of those stories about disclosures of the tax affairs of the rich and famous appears in the press, Sevco fans wet their pants over the possibility that those tales will ensnare our own largest shareholder, Irish billionaire Dermot Desmond.
From the Panama Papers to the Paradise Papers, every one of those breaking news bulletins has had the super-sleuths of the Scottish media, who took months to find out Craig Whyte was not a billionaire himself, swing into action alongside them.
And aside from a minor league story about an airplane company, they’ve produced exactly nothing.
The fantasy persists; that one day they will do what international institutions and all the investigative journalists and Ireland have failed to, and link Dermot Desmond to some nefarious scheme for which there is no legal defence. And that someone a trail of breadcrumbs will lead from there to Celtic Park and to our spectacular undoing.
It will never, ever happen.
Forget that Desmond has so many lawyers working for him that it would make the Sevco squad look small by comparison. Forget that he has survived more brushes with the legal authorities than John Gotti did. Desmond is a guy who doesn’t need to gild the lily or break the rules to make and hold onto a fortune. He’s smart, capable, ruthless and brilliant. He can spot opportunities where others wouldn’t have a clue. His deal to buy London City Airport was labelled insane; he made a massive profit on it and showed everyone he knew best after all.
On top of that, Dermot Desmond does not finance Celtic.
I get tired repeating that to these muppets.
We are not dependent on his wealth. Our club exists wholly separate to him.
If he was removed from the equation we would lose expertise and gravitas … but not actual money.
Not only is the man clean, but we wouldn’t pay a price even if he wasn’t.
Not only would an investigation have to find that stuff, and a jury convict on it, we wouldn’t suffer even if they did.
Juninho, EBT’s, Robbie Keane And Side Contracts.
This little collection of fantasies ought to really make you giggle.
Sevco fans like to point out that for a while Celtic dabbled in the business of paying player’s EBT’s.
We did. It’s an acknowledged fact that Juninho got one.
But the truth of that story has been in the public domain for over a decade; we paid him with something like an EBT, with a fixed sum coming on the expiry of his contract. It was our one and only toe dipped in that dark water. Brian Quinn, a former governor of the Bank of England, stepped up to the board shortly thereafter, advised against that and we not only declared it but paid the tax on it before even being sent a letter asking us to.
And there were no side contracts. The details of that payment were in the one we gave to the SFA.
Think we’d have survived that unscathed otherwise? Had the SFA not been in possession of that information we’d have walked the plank at the same time as the LNS commission, or that would have been used as leverage to get us to drop it completely.
They also cling to rumours that Dermot Desmond (he of the previous segment) funded the salaries of various high profile footballers down through the years, like Robbie and Roy Keane, like Thomas Gravesen, like Craig Bellamy.
Forget that this is little different to directors loans keeping on the lights … there is actually no proof whatsoever that it happened.
Even if it did, Celtic’s scrupulous and meticulous business methods certainly would have seen these things declared to all the relevant authorities.
It’s another crazy story going nowhere.
These Delusions Are Actually A Backhanded Compliment To Us …
This deep-seated fantasy they hold – that we are one crisis away from being where they are – should flatter us, to be honest.
Because in wanting to see us dragged down to their pitiful level, they are consciously accepting that it’s the only chance they have. Unable to rise to where we are, with no plan, no money and their presumed status ebbing away, they long for some confluence of events which reduces us so that we’re more like them.
It’s as tragic for them as it is hilarious for us.
Bereft of even hope now, this is all they have left.
They no longer believe that someone will save them.
Instead they’re waiting for someone to destroy us.
You would pity them, if they weren’t such appalling Peepul.