Celtic’s strengths and weaknesses are all laid out in a stunning report from last year.

In August last year, a report was published which went largely unremarked upon across the mainstream media. Although it got a little bit of play in Celtic fan media, it didn’t get a lot of digging into it, nor the attention the hardcore detail it contains really deserves.

It was a report on a website called the Fair Game Index, which has been around for a couple of seasons now. What it does is score every club on this island in four criteria and then gives those clubs a score out of 100.

Celtic was the highest-performing club on the Fair Game Index for 2024.

The reason I want to revisit this story today and dig into it in some real detail is twofold.

First, I somehow missed the significance of the story at the time. And secondly, because myself and the guys on the podcast are sometimes accused of not recognising the good that Celtic does, the positives of the Celtic operation.

I refute that, because the main thing that we do on our sites is defend the club. And at a time when the media claims that the Ibrox club is about to be handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to God knows who with little or no due diligence at all, I think it’s more important than ever to scrutinise our own club aggressively—to acknowledge where it’s getting things right, but also to point out where it’s getting things wrong.

What is brilliant about the Fair Game Index report for 2024, when you read it in full, is that it offers a very clear picture of both elements of how Celtic is run. The depth of the report is astounding. The overview is gobsmacking.

If you haven’t heard of this yet, then brace yourself—this is one heck of a report, and it paints one heck of a picture of our football club. And almost all of it is positive.

Now, before I start, the Fair Game Index is not indicative of the size of the club or how much money it has in the bank, or how many trophies it has won. It is an overall score taking into account four key criteria and giving a total score at the end. So, it’s not about how successful we are in terms of wins and titles compared to other clubs in the UK. It’s about bigger things than that—deeper things than that.

Our overall score out of 100 is 80.6. Which is phenomenal.

That’s 23 points higher than Hearts, who sit behind us in Scotland and are very near the top of the overall list. It is higher by 22 points than Spurs, who sit in second place overall. And when I say this has got nothing to do with the respective sizes of the clubs or their trophy hauls, you can see what I mean.

Spurs finished last season in fifth place in the English Premier League, and yet we sit above them on this list. I have little doubt that we’ll sit at the top again for 2025, simply because the gulf between us and most other clubs in the UK is enormous.

Let me tell you what the four criteria are and where Celtic scores on them. Before I do that, let me point out that we top the bill in four of the five categories right here in Scotland (including highest score overall), but probably more impressive than that is that we top three out of five of them for the UK as a whole, including, as I said, our total— which has us out in front as the best-run club on the island.

So, where our successes lie is obvious to see.

But equally obvious are the weaknesses.

What I’m going to give you now is from their own downloadable report. And this is what it says about how they come to their scores. This is really interesting stuff, because this is not a small undertaking. This is a huge project across multiple different fields and scaled on multiple different criteria. So, I think that it’s pretty authoritative and something I’ll be keeping a close eye on in future.

“Each club is scored out of 100, with 40 marks coming from financial sustainability, 30 from good governance, 20 from equality and ethical standards and 10 from fan and community engagement.

“Financial sustainability includes 38 touchpoints and includes measures such as accounting, debt, ticket pricing and sponsorship.

“Good governance draws on 55 different metrics and covers areas such as board structure, accountability and transparency.

“Equality and ethical standards has the most touchpoints – 106 – and covers a very broad range of topics from ethics to sexism, and from environmental impact to racism.

“Fan and community engagement has 30 touchpoints, including fan representation and community investment.”

That’s from the report itself. So that’s how it arrives at its score.

That’s how it determines who tops the bill. You can see, then, that topping four out of five scores—including the overall rank—in Scotland, and three out of five for the UK as a whole, is incredibly impressive. And shows that the people who run our club, by and large, know what they’re doing.

I have criticisms of these guys.

We all do and those criticisms are no less legitimate for looking at this list, and this report in detail, and being hugely satisfied with what’s in it. As I said, the areas where we are successful are crystal clear. So are the areas in which we come up short.

And think about this—really think about what it means. We scored the highest marks across the UK. The highest marks. And it’s not even close. If we fix those areas where we’re not doing so well on this list, we’ll move even further ahead. We could well end up with a score in the 90s, which would be beyond impressive. It would be beyond belief. And that’s something we shouldn’t forget.

My personal gripes with this club are about vision and long-term strategy. I think we don’t do enough right in certain areas. Youth development is one. Trying to lead reform is another. Proper openness and transparency. Proper engagement with supporters. And I’ve commented on all of these over the years and I’ll continue to criticise the club where I think it’s due.

But I’ve also repeatedly said that I consider us a boring club by comparison to the one across the city. That lot generate so much news, so many stories, so much chaos, that you could write 100 books and still have more to tell.

The people who run our club are not flashy or glitzy or glamorous. But they are bloody good at what they do. Within certain parameters, in which they are knowledgeable, they are very knowledgeable indeed. In the areas where they are successful, they are amongst the best in the business.

Never doubt that for a moment. And the fact that we’ve married high standards of governance and sustainability with continued success on the pitch is mind-blowing.

When people talk about tedious trebles and about our strength being unhealthy for Scottish football, they’re talking through their backsides.

Because this is how every club should aim to be run. This is what every club out there should strive for. And this is why Rodgers sometimes gets pissed off when he hears people talk about how he’s bought success, or how our club has bought success, and how it’s all built on money.

It is not all built on money. It’s built on these pillars.

So, let’s talk overall scores in each of those segments, and I’m going to try to provide as much context as I can for how successful we are. Again, I find it helpful to quote from the text itself because it is very illuminating indeed.

The section on the English Premier League opens with this observation:

“The high financial sustainability score can be explained by the huge revenues the division receives compared to the other 10 divisions analysed and the highest proportion of clubs disclosing full accounts on Companies House.”

That average score is 23 out of 40. The highest score for a Premier League club is 29.1, enjoyed by Manchester United.

Celtic’s financial sustainability score is 36.5.

Which means that even without those massive revenues that formed such a big part of the financial sustainability score in England, we outstrip every side in the Premier League. In fact, we outstrip every side in the report.

Just as important as the financial sustainability score is the good governance score, marked out of 30. The highest ranking club in England in governance is Norwich City with 21.8 out of 30.

Celtic blows that out of the water with a score of 25.1—by far the highest in the UK. Another sign that we are an exceptionally well-run operation.

Again, it’s a huge score that, when you look at it that way, is highly impressive. It shows that for all the questions we might have about some of the things these people do, in terms of our compliance with regulations, our openness in accounting, our professionalism and high standards—they outstrip every other club on the island. And those in our boardroom are entitled to a lap of honour for that. Because it’s amazing.

We have work to do in equality and ethical standards, but again, our position on the overall score for that is fantastic. We scored 13 out of 20 in that category. It’s the highest in Scotland, and that should be a source of pride to all of us—even if it looks like a lower score than you might think we’d get. But no other club in Scotland even gets a 10.

There are 164 clubs in England. Only 16 of those score a 10 or higher. So again, we’re in very rarefied company here—very near the top of the tree. There are, in fact, only three clubs in the whole survey who have a higher score than we do. Those clubs are Brighton with a 15.1, Spurs with a 14.9, and Burnley with a 13.8.

So while we have work to do, every club in the country—every club on this island—has work to do. But again, this is a fantastic score, but we should be aiming to finish higher on that list, no doubt about it. This is an area where we can make improvements, and we can do so very simply. But our score is still outstanding overall when you consider it puts us fourth in the UK.

It’s in fan and community engagement where we somewhat crashed the car. And it’s not difficult to see what the damage is. Our score on that criterion is an abysmal 6 out of 10. Let me put this in some context for you.

We’re top in financial sustainability. We’re top on good governance—both of those for the UK, not just Scotland. We’re fourth in ethical standards in the UK and top in Scotland. But in terms of fan and community engagement, there are no fewer than 12 clubs in Scotland alone with a higher score than us.

That includes the club at Ibrox, by the way, who are 8th in their overall score on the list just in Scotland and way down the list for the UK as a whole.

Now, it’s not a disaster. Let me try to put it in some kind of context. In the English Premier League, no side scores as highly as we do except for Brentford, who top us. There are only three sides in the English Championship with a higher overall score. But you get into League One and it starts to get embarrassing—seven of their clubs score more highly than we do. And there are two clubs in League Two scoring higher. One of those is AFC Wimbledon, whose score of 9.3 is the highest in the UK.

Five clubs in the National League finish higher than we do. National League North is an utter blowout, with six of their clubs finishing higher—three of those scoring an 8 or higher on the list. And to finish it off, there are four clubs in National League South with a higher score. And there’s something rather noticeable about that, isn’t there?

The more successful a club is, the less it feels that it has to engage with its fans or the outside world. When you look at how the top teams in the Premier League perform, they are as lamentable as our score is. Because this is not an area where we are actively engaged or committed to high standards the way we should be.

Fan engagement is one of the things we’ve banged on about constantly. The club tells us nothing. It gives us no information. It doesn’t talk directly to us. Not enough. Even the fan outlets and media conferences have proved to be a smoke-and-mirrors exercise. And the general contempt in which fan media is held was clearly expressed by the chairman at the last AGM. Not that I needed to be told that.

But we won’t even comment on the invisible CEO. We’ve all talked about how he has yet to appear in front of supporters at anything other than that sanitised gathering for suits, or that handful of invite-only little powwows with certain friends of the man.

There’s no real scrutiny of our directors, any more than there’s real scrutiny of the ones across town. They don’t feel they have to submit themselves to it. Perhaps they look at those high scores for governance and financial sustainability and think there’s no need to defend their performances in other areas. But that reeks of arrogance—and of a certain amount of contempt.

It’s not terribly difficult to imagine a scenario in which they could massively improve that score. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where our overall rating is in the 90s. There aren’t many things we’re doing wrong, in terms of how that particular list is graded and set up. But I think our ethical score is too low. And the fan engagement one is atrocious. They have an ivory tower outlook—and that’s reflected in that score.

There are insights in that report as to why fan engagement scores are so high at many other clubs. The clubs which top that metric are the ones which are partly run by the fans themselves. That’s why there are so many Scottish clubs ahead of us.

That’s why the lower leagues in England have so many clubs who score outrageously well on that criterion.

I’m not generally an advocate for fans on the board, but last year I proposed a Congress of Celtic Supporters—an actual elected body that would have some weight when it makes a statement, or presents a case, or takes on a cause.

That would do far more good than having a fan on the board, because it would be made up of representatives from the mainstream fan organisations, fan media, supporters’ clubs and groups. No one grouping would hold too much authority or consistently get its own way. So when that body spoke, its voice would be heard—and it would be credible. The lunatics would not run the asylum. And whenever you’re setting up an elected body, that has to be a concern and a consideration.

Something certainly has to change in our relationship with the club. It might sound like a small thing—given that the semi-final went off largely without a hitch—but this digital ticket issue is just one of those problems that could have been solved if the club had communicated more clearly with supporters.

Because I now know that the club was aware of that issue from at least the time of the League Cup semi-finals, when the SFA told Celtic and the other clubs that they wanted to put this system in place.

So this wasn’t just a case of Hampden failing to communicate its intentions. This was a case of Celtic knowing what Hampden’s intentions were—and not passing that on to the fans. I’ve got a real problem with that, considering all the mayhem that unfolded for a couple of weeks there in relation to this issue.

Our club should always be open-minded, receptive to criticism, and willing to change. Receptive to criticism it certainly is not.

When you have a chairman threatening bloggers and calling members of the media because he doesn’t like the coverage—well, too bad. Do certain things better and there wouldn’t be criticism. As for being willing to change—I have my doubts. When this board is locked onto a course, it sticks to it religiously. Even if the circumstances are changing and swirling around them.

I know for sure that we haven’t done enough—not nearly enough—in terms of reform. Because the game here is still a joke. It’s still amateur hour on so many levels. We’ve got governing bodies who don’t want to lead. They don’t want to take major decisions. The regulations have more holes in them than Swiss cheese. And one particular club has become very adept at finding those loopholes.

What we do right, we do exceptionally well. Exceptionally well. And there’s a warning in that for anyone who thinks that new ownership at Ibrox is going to change their situation in any dramatic way.

They’re going up against the best-run, financially sustainable organisation in football in the UK. That’s how you know there’s no magic money tree out there. That’s how you know there’s no pot of gold hidden at the end of the rainbow waiting to be found and exploited. If it existed, we’d have found it already.

I was delighted to read that report properly last night and to work this article out. All the criticisms I have about this club are grounded in the reality of the things we’re doing wrong. They’re obvious things. They stand out. They stand out a mile. Failures in youth development. Failures in imagination. Failures in reform. And yes, those fan engagement failures. But I’m glad to be able to acknowledge that we are a superbly run organisation in so many other ways.

Yeah, I may sound like a broken record—but it’s worth saying over and over again. Not only are we top in two out of four criteria and with the overall highest score, but we’ve done what no other club in the top rankings has managed to do—which is to remain consistent in winning trophies and titles, even as we run a financially tight and well-governed ship.

So let the critics give us stick where they may. Let them talk about how much money we wasted on Idah, or how much we’ve wasted on Engels, or how Auston Trusty isn’t worth £6 million. It’s all garbage for the garbage disposal. We’re on the brink of a Treble. We’ve just posted huge profits. And we have as many high-value assets in the playing squad as we’ve had in years.

In spite of the reputation I sometimes have for being a critic, I’m not actually a critic in the way people think. I love my club. I want it to be all it can be. I’ll acknowledge where we’re doing well. And I’ll criticise where we’re not.

A score of 80 out of 100? That’s tremendous. Forgive me for wanting 90 next time around—but I do. For my sins, I do. And it should be the aim of those at the top of our club to ensure that not only do we stay top, but that we grow that number—and keep getting better and better and better.

If they do that, then even I’ll have nothing left to complain about.