Celtic’s lack of engagement with fans is starting to become a problem.

Now that the dust has settled a bit on the game itself, it’s worth revisiting one of the issues that arose in the run-up to it. The incident I’m talking about is Celtic’s release of a highly critical statement about fan banners and how that played into the Green Brigade not having a tifo at the match.

Look, everyone knows that I don’t think these guys are angels. Everyone knows I’ve had issues with some of their conduct and behaviour. But on this one, they are 100% right. There’s no sugarcoating it—Celtic has badly, badly mismanaged its relationship with the fans. And that’s not new information. That’s something we’ve all known for a long time.

I was once part of the fan media rotation. But that was always an arm’s-length arrangement, which suited me just fine. I don’t want to be too close to the club, and I certainly don’t ever want to feel like I depend on them for information, stories, or anything else. Even that level of engagement became too much to stomach when Joe McHugh was attacked by the chairman at the AGM simply for getting up and asking a question, as was his right as a shareholder.

There’s also the small matter of this chairman personally threatening this blogger over a story he didn’t like. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about how the club views fan media, no matter what kind of relationship it pretends to have with us. That relationship is entirely conditional—on us toeing the line, playing the game, and doing things the board’s way.

If that’s the deal, I’m happy to have no relationship with them at all.

Celtic plays favourites. We all know that. That’s nothing new.

Every major institution—from politics to football clubs, from media organisations to big corporations—plays favourites to some extent. Celtic isn’t the first football club to have a select group of fan representatives it deems worthy of engagement, and it won’t be the last. But the more I see how that relationship works, the clearer it becomes that it’s badly skewed. The club doesn’t want to hear from people who challenge them. They exist in an echo chamber of their own making.

The Green Brigade and Bhoys groups actually have a better relationship with the club than most other supporter organisations. They meet with Celtic more regularly, and they can pick up the phone and get through to people at the club whenever they need to. So some might think it’s a bit rich for them to complain about not being listened to. But again, the issue is that Celtic treats this as a purely transactional relationship—one entirely on their own terms.

Now, I don’t think those two groups have done themselves many favours in the past, especially with how they’ve openly defied the club over things like pyro and other behaviour. But the general point remains the same. Celtic wants to impose strict limits on things they have no business controlling, such as free expression.

So I do have some sympathy when they say the club doesn’t listen. I do have some sympathy when they say they’re treated with condescension and contempt—because it’s true. The club is happy to ride on the backs of these fan groups when it wants to showcase something positive, but when there’s a chance that it might upset the average Daily Mail reader or a Telegraph columnist, they completely freak out.

Celtic is hiding behind the excuse that they refused to engage this time because the banners were “unauthorised.”

That is, of course, nonsense. The club had already released a statement saying their issue was with what was on the banners, not the lack of approval. The fan groups are right to point out that if they had sought permission, the club would have said no. There’s truth and falsehood in both perspectives here, but the general point remains—Celtic doesn’t properly listen to the fans or take their views into account.

We all know how that conversation would have gone.

The fans say, “This is what we want the banners to say.” The club says, “No.” If asked to justify that stance, they wouldn’t even try. They’d roll out the usual “broad church” rubbish and use that as a brush-off. But as I’ve said before, “a club open to all” is not meant to be taken literally. It never was.

Because “all” is an all-encompassing word—and our support is not all-encompassing.

The dregs of the far right have no place at Celtic Park, nor should they. The club doesn’t want them. The fanbase wouldn’t tolerate them. When we call ourselves a club open to all, what we actually mean is that we are outward-looking, tolerant, and respectful. That we do not discriminate based on race, creed, religion, sexual orientation, or any of the other things used to divide people.

In that sense, yes, we are a club open to all.

If you support players taking the knee, there should be no issue supporting the rights of the Palestinian people. If you accept UEFA’s bans on political slogans in the stands, what business do you have playing Fields of Athenry over the tannoy?

That’s an overtly political song. And that’s just one example. Grace is an Irish Republican ballad—everyone knows that.

When the club talks about not wanting to upset some of its own fans, that could mean anything. But this isn’t about flares or smoke bombs—things that are dangerous and illegal. This is about free expression.

And I struggle to understand how the club can try to suppress that while pretending they’re doing anything other than imposing their own viewpoint and their own version of morality onto the rest of us.

I was listening to a fan media podcast with David Low recently. At the end of it, he was asked, If you could change one thing about Celtic, what would it be?

His answer? The club’s relationship with the supporters—the lack of meaningful engagement, the lack of real respect for the views of the fans.

Now, David is closer to the Celtic board than most. He’s probably more on their side than not. So I found it remarkable that he was so openly critical. But that’s David Low for you—he’s straight-talking. He doesn’t sugarcoat, and he doesn’t BS. And no one would want him to.

But this isn’t some radical new revelation. Anyone who knows how the board treats the fans knows this already. There is a level of contempt for their paying customers. You see it at the AGM, where Joe McHugh was treated with complete disrespect. You see it in the minutes of so-called “fan forums,” where people ask questions, get told some “working group” will discuss it, and then hear nothing ever again.

And you see it most clearly in the person of Michael Nicholson, the chief executive. He’s been in the job for years and has never once made a public statement. Not one. You might take that as a sign of contempt for the mainstream media—but it’s worse than that. Because regardless of which outlet he used, he would ultimately be speaking to us—the fans. And he doesn’t think he has to. That’s part of the problem.

The Green Brigade is right to be angry. Because in this instance, the club has treated the supporters with complete contempt. And that only feeds into the wider perception that they don’t care about fan opinions.

They have no interest in engaging. And the decision to release that statement last week—at a time when the club was riding high—did nobody any good. It only pushed people further into their corners. That is the worst kind of PR.

I’ve long said that one of Celtic’s biggest issues is perception. And the perception that this board disregards its own fans is widespread. They’ve been able to get away with it for years because the team on the pitch is winning.

But woe betide them if the day ever comes when the fans start scrutinising their performances the way they do the manager’s and the players’. By then, it will be far too late for them to suddenly start pretending they care about engagement.