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For The Celtic Board, The Idea Of A Glasgow “Friendly” Abroad Is Off The Table For Good.

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For some people at Celtic, the last 24 hours must be a source of enormous frustration as one of the stupidest ideas in the recent history of a club that has had a ton of them collapsed around them.

It was the height of recklessness, the summit of folly, to climb into bed with that club on any sort of commercial deal. Their past behaviour should have told us that.

This blog was able to predict, with uncanny accuracy, that the Ibrox board would feel the heat from their fans and whilst I didn’t expect it to lead to them withdrawing I did raise that as a serious possibility, even after they had trumpeted the cash on offer.

I did warn that their previous behaviour made it more than possible.

Are people at Celtic stupid or what?

They always get such praise for being smart, but the warning signs were blinking on this one and Ibrox pulling the plug could never be ruled out completely. A lot of us were able to see that Celtic were absolute mugs for believing that they could be trusted.

Ask Hummel. Ask Ashley.

Ask the Takeover Panel of the City of London.

Ask Puma. Ask the firm that were contracted to build the Ibrox Memorial Garden.

Ask cinch and the SPFL.

And so for believing that they could be taken at the word, for believing that a signed contract was some kind of guarantee with them, we pay a price. Hopefully not a financial one.

If anyone wants to offer their resignation over it, that should be accepted.

If no-one does, we might want to consider firing somebody for putting a plan together which depended on the integrity of people who have none and which flew in the face of the wishes of the club’s own paying customers at home.

Ibrox has given us a severe lesson here.

It is certainly one that those at Celtic Park will forget at their own peril.

The idea of playing a “friendly” with Ibrox abroad is surely dead now and forever.

Nobody is going to pay big money to organise such a game, because of what Ibrox has just done here. That affects them more than it affects us, but there will be much whinging and wailing in parts of Celtic Park as a result of it too.

Their club will not attempt this again. Ours can’t.

The only way the club could have flogged this to the fan-base was on the back of Ange’s sterling reputation. They hid behind him in order to sell this bill of goods, and that was a one-time thing and it’s over with.

The only reason there wasn’t widespread fury amongst our fans was that few wanted to disrupt Ange’s homecoming and the organisers had made it clear that this is how it would be marketed.

Any effort to market the game on its own merits – when the idea has none – would have caused a firestorm.

The board has no idea how close to that they came.

Ironically, one of the reasons this collapsed was our board’s colossal miscalculation about the importance of the Old Firm brand to the club across the city.

This, too, is something that this blog has spelled out over and over and over again and our board has apparently failed to understand it. The Ibrox club are the ones who benefit from the promotion of this rivalry. It elevates them even as it drags us down … but it depends, entirely, on their being able to market the fixture in the desired fashion.

Without being able to call it an “Old Firm match” their club can’t properly benefit from it in terms of selling their global brand.

To those who are interested in them for this reason, the clubs come as a pair or not at all. If one club isn’t fully on board, in every sense, there’s no point in trying to sell the idea itself.

It is Celtic, more even than them, who have driven the final nail into the coffin of this despicable concept, by refusing to allow this … and I know that was not our intention.

Their fans have made it plain that they don’t want their club playing us, period.

But when we refuse to even use their preferred terminology – and let’s face it, our board doing that is the final line in the sand for almost all of us – their club certainly can’t sell it.

So it’s Celtic who killed this idea, although I’m certain we did not foresee that outcome any more than the board ever thought Ibrox’s fans might prevail on them to take another stupid, irreversible course of action, although they already did this over tickets.

Our board seems to have thought they could arrange an “Old Firm” game without calling it one; any one of us could have told them Ibrox’s fans would never swallow that and it would stick in the craw of their commercial department as well.

Now Ibrox will mark it down as their own red-line in future negotiations, and since our club could not even countenance such a thing, it is that, more than anything else, which kills this idea stone dead.

And not before time.

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8 comments

  • John A says:

    Our board are a bunch of tory and I wouldn’t be surprised masonic charlatans. I trust them the same as sevco.

  • Peterbrady says:

    I meant to comment earlier but I cannot believe NFL has become a soup taker after all he had to put up with the filth and all there brethren scum

  • Nick66 says:

    As I listen to CSSB every night for the idiocy that exudes from the Sevco psyche, I hear the O** F** tag put on 90% of callers both Celtic and Sevco. It is something that exists despite our objections to the term. Why is it still allowed on this and other comercial channels if Celtic can stop it in Oz, why not Clydebank. Only 1 Celtic caller tonight referred to Sunday as the Glasgow Derby. Truth is in Scotland OF is allowed, yet abroad not. CSSB are obviously benefitting from that tag as it’s why callers call. If Celtic are truly serious about protecting the usage of that term then they surely should nip itvin the bud domestically. Delighted that Sevco did what they do best, break contracts, and probably end up in court, or send the Sydney Cup lads to the liquidators should they collapse like their big brother.

    • Droopy McCool says:

      Celtic did not stop it in Oz. Let’s not give the board credit for something they didn’t do! At the time I write this the phrase is still on the official website of the tournament. Which means that we were happy for it to be used but won’t come out and say it.
      And we can’t stop people saying the words on a radio show either, any more than they can stop fans mentioning it in the pub.

  • Seppington says:

    The thing about the Old Firm trademark is that it is exactly that – a trademark. It identifies Celtic versus Rangers FC (IL). Selling us vs The Rangers International Football Club (nee Sevco Scotland) as “The Old Firm (TM)” would be misrepresentation and could lead to lawsuits against all involved if any litigious wag had the nuts to take it to court. even if said lawsuits went nowhere it”s still a hassle that doesn’t nedd to happen so sticking with reality and not allowing the OF TM to be used is in everyone’s interests…even the hun, though they might not see it that way….

  • Saulgoodman says:

    The celtic board are a constant embarrassment to our club , spineless re calling out refs , Glasgow Derby tickets , not strengthening the team before qualifiers now trying to get into bed wi that mob just to make a fast buck that they need badly , the ibrox board might be skint but they’re going for 10 in a row over our board – sack the board !

  • john says:

    couldn’t it just be that the Celtic board new that this would be the outcome and that Sevco would go into meltdown over this fixture and there was never any prospect of this game going ahead anyway thus Anges homecoming could be Sevco free. Maybe the board are smarter than some people give them credit for.

  • stephen mcadam says:

    I was an absolute disgrace! that board allowed this in the first place, our great real global! fanbase would been tarnished as the poison would have caused chaos in sydney nothing was surer! And they put us in that situation! I said at the time and on here many times since they would had blood on their hands! We need to get shot these out of touch silent puppets they make me sick! guys like bankier and even desmond himself! they need removed this should be the last straw regardless how well Ange has the team going, we need big big changes! Obviously its going be hard with him having so much control l but we as fans need to claim a big part of our club! back and have real men of vision i
    n our boardroom

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