The Celtic online community has humiliated the “football finance expert” time and time again.

Over the last few days, I’ve had more on my plate than I could reasonably handle, with a series of stories rolling in that needed attention. While I may occasionally delay a piece, I don’t give up on any of them. Some stories, I just set aside for when I have time. This is one of those.

And I’ll be honest—I’m only returning to it now because I have a mug of coffee in front of me and about twenty minutes to spare, so it probably won’t be highbrow stuff. This isn’t an especially important story, because the subject isn’t an especially important person. But since he spent some time recently taking shots at our fans on social media, recycling a stale old joke he’s made about ten times without ever landing a laugh, it’s worth addressing.

The man in question is Kieran Maguire, the self-proclaimed football finance expert.

He’s a guy so hopeless at analysing football finances that I wouldn’t trust him with the cost of a season ticket. For years, he’s been bleating on about the financial “robustness” of the Ibrox club, and for years Celtic fans have been having a field day slagging him off for it.

This blog’s called him out more than once, and it’s usually for statements as detached from reality as they come. Recently, he was even talking about what a great investment Scottish football is—a fantasy I’ve debunked right here on the blog.

The ways to make money in Scottish football are limited, and owning a club isn’t one of them. There are narrow avenues—like youth development—that could yield some returns if properly funded and executed, a subject I’ll return to in the future because it’s rife with misconceptions.

Analytics, too, might help clubs spot value, but even then, they’re still constrained by UEFA’s financial sustainability regulations, a point that seems lost on Maguire.

Clubs like Dundee United, St. Mirren, and Hearts will always be limited in terms of player calibre by what they can afford in transfer fees and wages. Analytics may offer a slight edge, but it won’t produce the calibre of player Maguire dreams about returning vast sums to “investors.”

See, Maguire is a rent-a-quote, someone with limited insight in the very subject he’s so often called upon to discuss.

He may have some basic grasp of finance, but I wouldn’t trust him to invest a penny on my behalf. Football finances, however, are an entirely different beast, one he fundamentally doesn’t understand. His latest remarks on this topic are laughable.

Just this week, as our fans were dissecting the Ibrox accounts, and a day after he had been on an Ibrox fan podcast trying to find the positives in those horrific numbers, he was at it again, airing his joke about Celtic fans; asking Alexa or ChatGPT (or one of the other virtual assistants) where to find financial experts, and it answered “the East End of Glasgow.”

It’s a rotten joke and has been since he first trotted it out.

But Maguire’s humour here barely masks his embarrassment.

The Ibrox accounts have dismantled his every claim about the club’s finances.

His response? An ill-fated attempt to shift attention with this stale gag.

Because here’s the simple truth: those accounts confirm what we’ve known all along—namely, that the Ibrox club is a financial wreck, bleeding cash and unable to live within its means. And they’ve also proven the sheer stupidity of Maguire’s own previous assessments. He’s been telling us for years that the Ibrox club is financially sound, and just around the corner from a miraculous turnaround.

I can’t count the number of times he’s tried to spin their financial figures, with statements either profoundly misleading or economically nonsensical. And in his online spat with our fans, he had the nerve to suggest that the Ibrox club’s situation is “sustainable” simply because the directors are willing to carry the debt.

Anyone with even a basic understanding of finances—anyone who’s ever run a business—knows that a business relying on directors to keep it afloat is the opposite of sustainable.

I can’t imagine a more ridiculous interpretation of their accounts anywhere online, even on the most rabid of Ibrox fan forums.

Every year, when those dismal accounts come out, he repeats the same delusional optimism.

He talks up a bright future, about how they’re another step closer to sustainability, another step closer to breaking even, another step closer to finally competing with Celtic financially. And every single year, he’s proven wrong, while we’ve been consistently right.

So, tell me—whose record would you bet on? Whose predictions do you think have actually held up?

I don’t know if our support simply has a higher concentration of sharp-minded accountants, or if it’s that even a basic level of education enables you to work out from a decade of bank statements showing constant losses that a business is not doing well, but what I do know is this: we certainly understand that fact a lot better than Kieran Maguire seems able to.