Mark Wilson’s Latest Critique Of The Celtic Board Is Impossible To Read With A Straight Face.

Since the very first day I started doing this, I have committed myself to covering the media that covers our club. We don’t get a fair shake from these guys at the best of times, but at a time like this some of the coverage we get is plainly bonkers and some of it is grossly unfair.

This week, we deserve nearly all the stick we’re getting.

Because we are, right now, objectively a mess.

There seem to be multiple issues affecting the club, from the attitudes of the players to the gripes of the manager to whatever in God’s name is going on in the boardroom and the scouting department, and so by and large I have nothing good to say about the people who got us into this mess.

But if you fell out with a friend or a member of your family, you might still bristle at hearing someone bad mouth them. You might still want to get up in that person’s face especially if you knew they were talking crap. And that’s how I feel today about Mark Wilson’s latest daft comments on Radio Clyde, on that show he’s on where brain cells go to die.

Yesterday, or the day before – I don’t know this because I don’t listen to the damned thing, because I like my brain cells in their current condition – he made the following remarks. “I don’t think it helps when the board keep coming out and saying ‘we are doing great. Look at the spreadsheet”. That just fuels the flames (with) Celtic fans wanting more money spent.”

And I wracked my brain trying to recollect when our board had done that aside from when the accounts came out – when you are supposed to boast about the spreadsheets – and at the AGM where they are sort of part of the event. I certainly don’t remember any other occasion when they’ve done it. But the media does mention it a lot.

Celtic’s board of directors don’t talk. Ever. Unless they have to. Unless they are sitting in front of an annual meeting or making a report to the Stock Exchange.

So where is Wilson getting this from? Is he hearing voices? He must be if he thinks our directors are constantly going on and on about the money we have in the bank.

I know some people do obsess over this subject. Mainly in Scotland’s news rooms. It’s those people who keep on mentioning it over and over and over again in case we’ve forgotten it.

They do it to stir just the kind of disharmony Wilson is stoking here, whether he knows it or not, and I rather suspect that he does. But we don’t need reminding of how much money is in the bank, we’re already well aware of it. These constant references to it in the press are bizarre.

He and his media colleagues have done something which, to me, seems rather unique; they’ve made a virtue out of Ibrox being skint and a curse out of us having money. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen in my time doing this job.

Wilson comes across like someone talking just to hear the sound of his own voice.

There is plenty to criticise our board over, most notably how pathetic the summer transfer window was. And as many of us have said, the problem isn’t with what we spent but what we spent it on … ten signings when for the same money we could have signed two or three really good first team starters who might have made a big difference to the campaign so far.

Not only does Wilson seem to think our board is doing something they aren’t, he seems to think we expect them to spend money right now, when the transfer window isn’t even open. We know what’s in the bank. We know more money needs to be spent to repair the damage of the summer.

But we also know how to read a calendar and that we can’t do it for another week.

I’ll be honest; I don’t expect the manager to get everything he needs in January. I’ve seen enough of these people not to trust them all the way.

We’ll certainly get a striker, although whether it’s the sort we require and not some project I’m less sure about. I know that the wrong moves will cost us the title, and that they are too arrogant to recognise the degree to which they’d be responsible for that, but I’ll judge them on these things at the end of the damned window and not before.

They screwed up the summer, in a big way. Rodgers did too in not grabbing this by the throat.

I think Lawwell Jnr’s record has been terrible to the extent where he’d be under serious pressure at a club where they actually held people to account.

But you know what? I’m damned if I’m going to give these people stick for stuff they’ve not actually done wrong, and the idea that our board is somehow forever rubbing our face in the accounts is garbage.

Celtic fans know this much; the money in the bank is the only reason to have any confidence about January at all, because if this club actually approaches this with the right ideas and the right intent, and they promise Rodgers anything close to what he says he needs we are in a position to be able to do it, and it’s that cash pile which will let us.

If Wilson ceased running his mouth off for even two seconds he’d recognise that the summer is over and the judgement on that one is already in, and these people made a real raging mess of that.

But none of us is blind. We’re well aware that without some quality in January that the title race is in serious jeopardy. Rodgers is too, and surely to God he has fought his corner hard, so even this board has to recognise the stakes.

I’m happy to criticise this board for what it does and doesn’t do, but you know something? I’m through criticising Celtic for having money in the bank.

Of all the moronic ideas in this mad world of Scottish football, which is never short of stupid ideas, this suggestion that we should be ashamed or embarrassed by having financial stability has to be one of the worst.

It is impossible to take Wilson seriously. He’s been hanging out with Hugh Keevins too much. I thought only he could sound as stupid as this.