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Who Owns Celtic Will Become The Critical Issue For This Generation Of Fans.

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Wouldn’t it be nice to be owned by zillionaire owners who would fill the team with quality players?

Yes, and no.

Because if such people ever got their hands on Celtic they would, in the real sense, in the sense that the current board has never managed, take it away from being something that belongs to us. Celtic is what we made it. We are the club.

Issues of ownership are going to increasingly come to dominate our thinking. I’m willing to bet that Ibrox ends up in the hands of a hedge fund; their club is tailor made for that kind of using and their debt situation leaves them wind open to it.

Ours must never fall into similar hands.

The recent comments by Roger Mitchell, about how he’d like to get some private equity money into Celtic Park in exchange for Desmond’s shares actually fills me with dread, because unless we knew exactly who was behind that money and what they wanted from it I would be loathe to do that deal.

Desmond is not a great leader for this club, but there are worse people out there.

Far worse.

In some ways, it might be “the better the devil we know” than taking a chance on some bunch of faceless wonders who will only see Celtic as a cash cow.

This is a subject that requires far more work and far more thought than a Saturday night’s writing can do justice to, but I feel an acute sense of pride in that the new generation of Celtic fans is going to be able to do stuff that no generation has before.

They will be vloggers and bloggers and podcasters and the creators of better fan media content than any of our guys at present can muster. They will be militant, engaged, ready to fight for the kind of Celtic that they think that they deserve.

And the issue of ownership is going to be their great cause. My dad’s generation was the one that clawed the club from the hands of the White’s and Kelly’s. Mine saw the start of the fan media revolution and the first steps towards genuine fan representation.

But these kids coming up right now … they will decide the long term future of Celtic, whether it falls into the hands of faceless, soulless money men or if our club stays true to its founding principles and genuinely becomes something in which the fans have an honest to God controlling interest.

The ownership question will be answered by them and that will determine the kind of club this is when their kids have their kids.

It’s a huge responsibility.

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  • Iljas Baker says:

    I don’t think Celtic in the SPFL will ever be a cash cow and there is no guarantee that if Celtic ever got into the EPL DD wouldn’t start to treat it as a cash cow. The best hope I think for Celtic seems to be that it is owned by the fans as is the case in the Bundesliga but I personally don’t know how feasible that would be. I know there are a lot of supporters out there who would like Celtic to be owned by the fans but I wonder if DD is really the only obstacle. If it was supporter owned would we still be able to spend so much on our squad as at present albeit with a better use of the spending.

  • Bob (original) says:

    Would anyone here know if there were any conditions attached to the Bunnet’s sale of his shares to DD?

    For example, first refusal to fellow Board members and/or to fans’ groups?

    Or, could anyone with enough cash to tempt DD just acquire his stake without any objection?

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