Accounts Show Celtic Fans Saved The Club From Financial Melt-Down Last Season.

Today Celtic published their accounts from last season, and we made a seven figure loss.

That sounds much worse than it actually is.

We still have a cash surplus in the bank and so we’re not going to be running to directors for loans or anything like that.

Celtic continues to be a self-sustaining, self-funding operation.

In short, Celtic continues to depend, for everything it has, on the goodwill of the supporters.

The announcement of the £11 million in losses came with the traditional statements from all at the top end of the club.

I’ll get to the specifics of some of those later. What stood out is that the fans gave the club their backing in season ticket sales and in a big upturn in merchandising which helped to keep down the size of the losses.

Celtic fans saved the club last season, which is all the more extraordinary when you consider how little gratitude there was for us outside of the usual mealy-mouthed statements.

The board treated us like mugs. They continue to treat us like mugs.

Today’s financial statement was the first direct communication anyone at Parkhead has bothered to have with us since The departure of Dominic McKay. You’d never believe that an organisation which treats its customer base with this level of contempt depends so completely on us. Yet it’s all there in black and white. The numbers don’t lie.

In those numbers was a reminder of how bad it could get if the confidence of the fans is lost; we still posted £20 million more in earnings than we did in Ronny Deila’s last season, where the upper stands were empty on European midweeks and fans were disillusioned.

Our support is labouring under a mighty task right now; to get behind the team whilst trying to ignore the bald fact that this club is run by men who are utterly out of ideas. If this manager fails, then I don’t know that these charlatans have any place left to hide.

They are using Ange as a human shield at the moment.

It should be sobering for them to recall that in Ronny’s second spell our earnings were a mere £60 million; that ought to serve as a warning about what the future will look like unless these people articulate some kind of vision for it.

That vision was nowhere in those statements today. Nowhere.

Celtic fans are the people who fund this whole operation. Even accounting for player sales, we are what keeps the ship afloat.

This board screws with us at its peril.

If we have to take a hit for a year or two to remove these people I think a lot of us would be willing to do exactly that, because what emerges from the other side will be stronger for it.

Today we’ve finally hired a head of sports science, but we are still miles from where we should be on and off the pitch.

The people who put together that financial statement today praise us and insult us at the same time with talk of “drawing a line” under last season rather than doing what any serious and credible organisation would do, which is make the basis for learning lessons for the future and improving in every operational area.

We fans want the best, and this board has shown that it has no idea how to deliver that.

How much longer we tacitly endorse their performances with our money is the question that should be keeping these people awake at night.