The Scotsman’s article on the Celtic accounts was woeful, bitter and ignorant of the facts.

I’ve now read two articles about the Celtic accounts that made me want to bang my head against a wall.

One of them I’ll mention only in passing—because, frankly, anyone celebrating the fact that our club has handed over £10 million to HMRC as some sort of achievement while we refused to spend appropriately on a striker to support the manager (and perhaps even keep him here longer) is beyond my comprehension.

I gave the club credit for the accounts without going to ridiculous extremes, but that? That’s Ibrox-level howling at the moon. That’s worshipping the wrong gods. That’s having priorities completely at odds with the vast majority of fans, with the manager, and with the long-term interests of the club.

How does it benefit Celtic to pour money into the national exchequer while key areas of the club need fixing? Even as a joke, I’m not laughing.

That aside, the results were brilliant, and I knew someone would try to put the most negative possible spin on them. Step forward, Mark Atkinson of The Scotsman, who delivered a piece so dripping in bitterness and low-level spite that it could have been lifted directly from an Ibrox fan forum.

His article, titled “Celtic are in exceptional health but cautionary prediction made for July despite desire to spend,” is all you need to read to understand the intent behind it.

It’s also downright lazy. It contains multiple glaring errors that render it completely unreliable as a source of accurate information. Take this section, for example:

“The period in the update to shareholders covers the sale of Matt O’Riley to Brighton – believed to be for a fee of £25m – and the purchases of Adam Idah, Arne Engels, Paulo Bernardo, and Auston Trusty.

Celtic broke their transfer record not once but twice in the summer, with Idah coming with a £9m price tag and Engels costing them £11m. That goes some way to explaining the dip in the bank balance.”

This is absolute nonsense.

The dip in cash reserves has nothing to do with transfer spending. It is a direct result of the club investing in infrastructure, which is stated explicitly in the accounts and in the chairman’s own statement that accompanies them.

Did Atkinson even bother reading that before writing his drivel? Of course not. He glanced at some headline figures and cobbled together a story.

Matt O’Riley’s transfer fee was not the only one we received in the summer. If you tally up the income and subtract the expenditure, Celtic were in net profit from that window. The overall figures for the full calendar year aren’t reflected entirely in these numbers, but I’ll spell it out anyway: a total transfer income of £46.7 million means we’re at least £10 million in profit on player sales alone.

And then comes this laughable claim:

“Celtic would not be in such a strong position financially had they not received such a significant fee for O’Riley, as well as bringing in around £10m for Kyogo Furuhashi in January. A big chunk of that January income was spent on bringing Jota in from Rennes – where Furuhashi was sold to. Celtic also sold Bosun Lawal, Tomoki Iwata, Michael Johnston, Yuki Kobayashi, Daniel Kelly, and Hyeongyu Oh in this period and continue to make profits on the majority of their recruits. In that regard, their player model continues to serve them well.”

Once again, nonsense. Celtic would still be in a strong financial position. Maybe we wouldn’t have spent as much on Idah, Engels, or Trusty, but we’d have found other players. That’s the beauty of living within our means. When you bring in extra, you spend extra. That’s how it works.

I’m sorry this isn’t what Atkinson and his ilk want to hear.

I’m sorry they can’t stand the fact that Celtic is well-run, profitable, and a successful enterprise in every respect. And I’m very sorry that they believe our financial strength relies solely on player sales—it doesn’t.

Celtic posted a profit of over £40 million for the first half of the year, even with our substantial signings. We could have brought in zero from transfers and still been financially stable going into the second half of the season.

Even if you strip out the O’Riley sale, the club still had significant revenue streams and there are more to come, from the Kyogo sale, Champions League payments (some of which haven’t even been received yet), gate receipts from Bayern Munich, and so on. If we made a loss at all – by no means certain – it would not be a substantial one.

I know certain people want to believe that Celtic must sell a major asset every year or risk financial collapse. But that’s simply not true.

The facts don’t support it—not even close.

What really grates is the blatant, wilful ignorance of our media. It’s not that they don’t understand the reality. It’s that they choose to misrepresent it.

Atkinson even selectively quotes the chairman’s statement when it suits him:

“Lawwell did caution that the next set of figures might not be so impressive. ‘The club’s earnings profile and cash generation from trading is biased toward the first half of our financial year,’ he said, ‘and we naturally expect a seasonal downturn in earnings in the second half of the year.’”

Atkinson presents this like it’s some shocking revelation. It isn’t. It’s common knowledge. The first half of the season includes season ticket revenue, which isn’t reflected in the second half, and there are other payments which traditionally come early. The chairman wasn’t issuing a warning—he was stating an obvious fact.

But Atkinson ramps up the doom and gloom anyway. He quotes Lawwell again.

“This seasonal profiling is entirely within expectations and our planning assumptions. Our outturn earnings can also be materially impacted by football success and the year-end assessment of player registration carrying values. Taking all of this into consideration, we would expect our total outturn financial performance for the year ending 30 June 2025 to be significantly lower than the result posted for the first six months of the financial year.”

And this is supposed to alarm us? To make us expect a hard summer or a lack of quality signings to come? Please. That’s laughable.

What does significantly lower even mean?

If you’ve posted a £40 million profit in the first half of the season, a “significant” drop could be 25% or 50%, and you’re still in rude financial health. Even a 75% reduction would still leave Celtic with a £10 million profit for the season.

That still gives the manager the funds he needs for signings. That’s the reality. And that’s before you even consider the possibility of another major sale.

In case Atkinson hasn’t noticed, Celtic have mastered this model.

The one thing this club has always had is its feet on the ground. We don’t deal in fantasy. We don’t expect “war chests” or reckless spending. We understand what’s realistic and what isn’t. That’s how we’ve built and sustained success.

There are no downsides in those accounts—none. Unless you count the £10 million sent to the exchequer because profits were so high. But that’s just responsible financial management. I know that’s another concept that is alien to some, but as grim as that figure is, it will do a lot of good in the wider community. That’s a far cry from refusing to pay your entertainers and stiffing the face painter.

Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images

The other night we put up our latest podcast. Recorded just after the Ibrox club went crashing out of the cup, we called it They’re Simply Depressed.