Celtic’s board has gotten used to the sound of silence in the ground.
Have you noticed how little the club talks about getting fans back in the stadium these days? I’m not saying that they don’t want fans in the ground, but at the moment they are glad to be without them.
The way our board dithers over the manager and the way they are putting off the “January review”, which has almost certainly come to a conclusion which the fans are not going to support, the less they want to confront the anger of the fan base.
In short, Celtic’s board has lost its fear of the unoccupied stadium.
They don’t look, with trepidation, at the idea of tens of thousands of seats sitting there glumly empty.
Indeed, I think there are people at Parkhead who would rather fans stayed a way than show up and confront them. Their fear of fan protests has over-ridden their concern for the damage that a boycott could do to the stability of the club itself.
Indeed, some probably don’t believe a boycott would affect our stability.
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain published a piece a few weeks ago which laid out the horrific logic the board would doubtless follow if we had lots of empty seats; there is “equity in the squad” and if worst came to worst – worst in their eyes – they could simply sell a couple of players.
The Celtic fans need to understand that if the board announces that Lennon is staying until the end of the season, and perhaps beyond, that they are betting that they can convince enough people to renew that it won’t have a major impact on the club.
There are, doubtless, some in that boardroom who do believe they can do this and gut it out.
They probably believe that any fan who renews broadly supports the strategy; if you wonder how they could ever be so blind, consider the catastrophic PR nightmares we’ve already seen this season and ask yourself if that is really so easy to dismiss.
This board is perfectly capable of making further mistakes.
If this decision is made before the new CEO is in charge, he will be as stuck with Lennon as the rest of us and worse; he’ll be the one who finally has to wield the axe.
I thought it impossible that our board might be contemplating leaving this in his hands … the longer this drags on, the more I wonder.
