As The SPFL Gets Ready To Meet, Celtic Must Support Any Calls For Change.

Before we get to the real subject not just of the day but, I suspect, the week, there are two other matters to get out of the way first. This is is one of them.

So, the SPFL clubs are going to meet next week to discuss their widely heralded “internal report” which gave them a clean bill of health and has prompted calls from six different clubs for answers to what basically boil down to one single question; “who do you lot think you are kidding?”

One of those clubs is the Ibrox one. Indeed, they have a good claim to having launched this process by being the club to demand the report in the first place.

We know they were acting in their own interests. They must have expected a complete snow-job such as this. But the simple fact of the matter is that they are no longer the only club in pursuit of answers and maybe even reforms.

If the clubs come out in favour of reforms, if they read that report and react with contempt and disgust, if they believe it’s a sign that the governing bodies think they can treat them like mugs, and they decide no longer to tolerate that then we are going to have to decide whether we stand on the side of the reformers or with the status quo.

And to me, that seems like a fairly easy choice to make. Celtic should be leading any reform agenda. Celtic cannot, Celtic must not, allow the Ibrox club to emerge as the leaders of the effort and especially not if we are on the other side of it. Reforms are necessary. They are critical.

As I said in the Doncaster piece posted recently, we have been propping these guys up for far too long already and it’s high time we stopped.

The status quo is a joke, and if we don’t want Ibrox steering this in the direction of their own choosing, if we want the changes to be sensible and egalitarian and focussed on the good of the game first and foremost, we need to step up and lead.

God almighty, isn’t it time for this?

Aren’t these people sick and tired of watching the game here continue to deteriorate?

That doesn’t help us in the long term.

These second-rate leaders with their third-rate outlook are responsible for our dreadful commercial contracts, our complete failure to modernise, our ludicrous regulations with more holes than Swiss Cheese and their refusal to engage with the bulk of the suggestions in the McLeish Report which they commissioned and then ignored.

I’ve speculated that Celtic’s failure to reform the SFA is as much to do with our leaders protecting their own position as anything else. Are we to believe it?

If that’s not the obstacle standing in front of us then what exactly is?

The McLeish Report contains enough provisions to change the game for good.

The Scottish Football Supporters Association has its own list of suggestions.

Reform of football in England is well underway and there’s an independent report down there which has plenty more.

The roadblocks here are not for want of ideas. The ideas exist.

Why does the willingness to proceed down that road not exist? What are we waiting for? How bad does Scottish football have to get?

For the SPFL and the SFA both to tell anyone that they are well-run organisations is preposterous, and yet both of them have recently done exactly that.

The SPFL have commissioned their wee report and the SFA went in front of the Scottish Parliament and actually boasted about our robust financial regulations, which is laughable as we all know.

Ian Maxwell also completely rejected any need for our game to have an independent regulator … which God alone knows we do, and badly.

This might be the moment to start the ball rolling. If these clubs aren’t satisfied then they need to decide what they intend to do about it and we, shamefaced at not being in front of the pack, will have to then decide how we respond.

This board has behaved abysmally already.

The disgrace of failing on this would be profound, and would deserve to be fatal.