The More Stick And Hate The Celtic Sites Get, The More We Know We’re Doing Something Right.

This has been one Hell of a month for this site. I think I’ve had more messages and emails than at any time since I started on here. Many of them came from the other side of the city. Many of them were bile soaked and awful. And I have enjoyed them all.

There was a time when I recoiled from nasty emails and messages. Now I embrace them. They are the ultimate proof that I’m doing something right. They are the ultimate proof that all of us in Celtic cyberspace are doing something right.

Look across the city and tell me what you see.

Not the club, but the fans. There is some noise on their forums, but in their fan media, what’s the message? Business as usual. And it’s not business as usual over there, and in their shoes, we would not be allowing our club or others in our support to act as if it was.

Let me segue for a moment into a comparison.

I watch all the politics YouTube channels that I can, and I’m familiar with almost every aspect now of the anti-Trump coalition, from The Bulwark, which is run by ex-conservative Republicans to Pod Save America, which is run by former Democrat Party activists.

Across the spectrum, in the aftermath of the debate on Thursday, a real discussion is happening about how Biden needs to think long and hard about this and if he has the slightest doubt in his own ability or health he must put the country first.

Nobody is denying the seriousness of what they watched. I’ll go you one step further; if Biden had started ranting and raving on that stage in the manner Trump had, the discussion wouldn’t have lasted the weekend. The Democratic Party would have moved already.

The Republican Party is like a weird outlier right now, but I recognise their inertia and their corruption and their moral cowardice from a lifetime studying the Ibrox fan-base.

I scorn the Tory Party, but the Tory Party is not the Republican Party.

In the last ten years, how many leaders has it dispatched?

They got rid of Truss because she was an extremist. They got rid of Johnston because he was a liar.

This was only possible because responsible people within their ranks got together and said “We can’t allow this to go on. We have to put a stop to it.”

And they did that. That’s what the discussions in the Democratic Party are about. “This cannot continue.”

Well, we did that, as a support, at the end of the February window, where the response of Celtic cyberspace to another epic let-down was so unequivocally condemnatory and damning that within weeks Mark Lawwell’s departure had been announced and we were able to say “well, they are listening after all.”

Sure, Daddy is still there but the boss no longer has his son making key decisions which ought to be in the manager’s purview.

That’s a huge victory.

It would never have happened had we taken the attitude that the fan media across the city does; silent acquiescence or full-throated support for the board. We knew what that failure could have cost us and we did not wait until the outcome was known; we acted because that was the right thing to do.

We didn’t hope things got better on their own.

We decided that we’d try to move the needle. I believe that we did just that.

I know there are Ibrox fans who would love to clear their stands of the bile and hatred.

I know they want competent leadership.

I know that they do not care for the club’s media spin and they have contempt for its media apologists.

It’s just that I never hear from those people.

They don’t run blogs and podcasts.

They do not make those voices ring out.

Like Republican lawmakers, they are too worried by what the Crazies might say or do if they speak up. Or it’s even worse than that; some of the “official media partners” are way too close to the club for their own good, or that of their fellow fans.

This has been the month of the Ibrox shut-down.

Regardless of what is being implied elsewhere, the best work on the Ibrox shut-down has been done right here on Celtic sites.

We’ve asked questions the mainstream press won’t.

Is some of the coverage a little manic? Of course it is. Have you seen any of the social media chatter about the lad who is lost in Tenerife? Do yourself a favour and avoid it, lest you lose your mind at the utter callousness and staggering stupidity of your fellow man.

What I’m saying is, in the absence of facts people’s imaginations run riot.

Amidst the theorising, there are serious questions being asked on our sites, and I reckon those are the only places where those questions are being asked.

There is a real problem across the city, and the idea that people over there have disclosed everything they know to fans who need that information is for the birds. Worse, the other clubs don’t know what they need to either.

This will have a knock-on effect on other teams. That’s just a fact. The longer it lasts the greater that impact is going to be. So, we’re fully entitled to ask questions. In the absence of a media which wants to dig for root causes, we’re also fully entitled to wonder what those are.

Still, we get the digs. Still, we get the bile. Still, we get the stick.

Bring it all on. Let my email inbox fill up with it.

I literally do not care any longer and neither should a single writer at a single Celtic site anywhere else. If people want to attack us for asking questions, they should feel free, but I’m afraid their sectarian attempt at cancel culture isn’t going to shut us up or make us stop poking around in their dustbin.

The conduct of the club across the city affects every other club in the game.

There is a sense of entitlement in some of the media coverage of this which suggests that the rest of Scottish football should be rallying round them and willing to offer the hand of friendship. Neil Doncaster offers his support with a statement about how the current chairman is an impressive guy who has reached out and tried to build bridges with others … is he having a laugh?

This guy escalated the Celtic ticket crisis. He demanded money from Dundee like some third-rate debt collector. He was at the forefront of efforts to tank the SPFL’s last official sponsorship deal. He is the very same guy who talked about scores to settle.

I’m a little bit tired, all of us are a little bit tired, of the suggestion that we should be willing to bail them out when they screw up, but more than just being tired, I am insulted by the idea that they have tried to mend fences when we know they’ve done the opposite.

Almost every email and message I’ve received from their neck of the woods has been bigoted and soaked in the spittle of the hater.

And for what? For asking questions their own fan media hasn’t, and which the mainstream media won’t.

Questions whose answers should be far more important to them than they are to me.

But this is their peculiar insanity.

As long as they abuse me, I know I’m doing something right.