Club 1872 has been rendered irrelevant just when their influence was needed the most.

Last night, Chris Jack put up a so-called Q&A which was supposed to help fans understand the so-called takeover saga and the latest developments in it. I read it very carefully and it confirms exactly what I said the other day.

These guys are nowhere near being able to pull this off. The path in front of them is unclear at best. But what is now official is that they intend to dilute the value of every other shareholding. Those who don’t want to play ball now face having their holdings rendered worthless as a result.

They make it sound so simple, but I maintain that this is far more difficult than they’re letting on—because in order to do this, they’re going to need a vote of the existing shareholders to get it over the line.

And those currently at the club who hold shares and aren’t willing to sell are not just going to roll over. They still have options. And although they may not want to resort to the law, they may have to in order to protect what they hold. As I said previously, this is going to get messy.

But what I really want to talk about today is something I covered in brief on the podcast the other night, and that’s the role of the fans’ organisation in all of this. I am mystified at how quiet they’ve been and how willing they seem to be to allow themselves to become nothing but an irrelevant joke.

Way back in the sands of time—1994—Fergus launched his revolution at Celtic, backed by the fans. You have to remember that this wasn’t a guy who came out of nowhere and staged his grab for power via all sorts of bland statements. Fergus McCann had already been on the scene for a couple of years before he took control.

I remember one occasion where he sat in the Radio Clyde outside broadcasting unit van to conduct an interview, after he’d been refused entry to Celtic Park. During that interview, he presented his plan to redevelop the stadium and to progress the club as a whole. This was not a guy who hadn’t thought things through.

That was at least a couple of years before he launched his boardroom coup, and the coup itself was helped along at every stage by supporters, by organisations like Celts for Change. They were instrumental in that process.

There was also a guy you may have heard of—a guy called David Low. That’s why I hold a particular place in my heart for David, why I’ve mentioned him a few times on this blog, and why I was so pleased to hear him on his recent podcast appearance on The Celtic Exchange. He’s also been on ACSOM a few times. Everyone knows that David is a man of the highest calibre and intelligence, who can speak with great gravitas on issues like finance and the power of the fans.

David was at the centre of what Fergus did, and so David knows as well as anyone that it wouldn’t have been possible without the Celts for Change boys—like Matt McGlone and others. And those guys would never have backed Fergus in the manner in which they did if he hadn’t presented his plan to them and to the wider support.

In the aftermath of Fergus’ revolution, whilst he was preparing the first share issue to pay for the stadium and everything else, me and my father went to one of the nights he put on at Celtic Park. He came, he spoke, and he presented the model of what the North Stand would look like. He answered questions and spoke to supporters who wanted more specific details.

We already knew the broad strokes, but there was something about going and listening to him talk, after he had taken charge, showing off that model and saying, “This is what the result will be. This is what we’re going to build together.”

It made you feel as if you were part of it.

It made you feel as if you were an equal partner. And that’s what Fergus wanted us to be—equal partners. That’s why so many of our fans went out and bought shares, recapitalised the club, and allowed them to start construction on a magnificent new home which still stands as a testament to Fergus today.

You’ll have noticed that what’s happening at Ibrox is nothing like that.

They haven’t presented a plan to the fans. They haven’t given the fans anything to inform them of how this is going to be done. They haven’t provided the supporters with a single piece of actual information. Think about that for a second.

Not a single piece of actual information.

There is vague talk that these people are backed by the 49ers. That appears to be only partially true. There is vague talk that Andrew Cavanagh is a billionaire. That almost certainly isn’t true. That’s why the press keeps referring to his company having “billions in assets under management.”

But the company having that “under management” doesn’t mean in his bank account.

What’s amazing about all this, of course, is that these fans have already been through the trauma of losing a club—of seeing something they cared about and loved being run into the ground. These are the last people who should ever be willing to see new ownership come into their club without asking serious questions about what that ownership is about, who makes up the numbers in the consortium, and why.

No club fans in this country should be less susceptible to that sort of takeover than the ones across the street at Ibrox.

Fergus intended that Celtic fans would own the club so that it could never fall into the wrong hands. We made a gross mistake in allowing this club to fall into the hands of a small group of people. I think, in some ways, we’ve paid for that mistake.

But the biggest price may come somewhere down the line. If there’s ever a hostile takeover at Celtic, we would be in a bad spot, and we’d have to fight again—for the future and the heart and soul of our club.

But see, I know that we could do that, and I know we would do that—because we’ve done it before. There would never be a takeover of this type at Celtic without the Celtic fan media and the wider support as a whole asking hard questions—not just of the directors who were going to sell their shares, but also about, and of, the people intending to buy them.

And we would be rallying support to make sure we had at least 25% of the voting bloc, so we could stop anything they wanted to do with which we had a major issue. Don’t forget—to change the structure of the club, to change its corporate form, to do anything involving its assets, or to dump debt onto it and make us carry it, would require a special resolution. And as long as we had 25%, we could stop that dead.

That protection we don’t yet have. And I think that at some point it’s imperative that the Celtic Trust and other shareholder organisations work to put that in place.

But that aside, I’ll tell you that I do trust certain people around the table. I trust that there are certain people around the table who would never sell their shares to any organisation that might want total unfettered control, and certainly not without getting clearer answers as to what their intentions were.

And I believe there are people around that table who would not sell under any circumstances and would act as a guard against any such action, even if much of the remaining shareholding was up for grabs.

I’ve said for years that the Ibrox club, because of the desperate state they’ve been in, was ripe for just the kind of negative attention that a lot of clubs in England have fallen victim to. A lot of people have taken over clubs south of the border and caused chaos within their walls. That’s beyond doubt.

And for every organisation like the one at Wrexham, there are five like the ones at Portsmouth, Coventry City, Blackpool, Reading, Charlton. That’s just off the top of my head—I could give you detailed backstories on all of them. Look them up. These are the cautionary tales, and there are many, many more.

Need I say Newcastle and Mike Ashley? Of course not. The Ibrox fans already know that story. But I’ll give you the background on one—I’ll tell you what happened at Hull City. Because that’s an interesting case in point.

In 2010, Hull City were a mess. Financial trouble, debts mounting, freshly relegated from the Premier League. In rides Assem Allam, a wealthy Egyptian-born businessman based in East Yorkshire, flush with cash from his industrial generator business. Local lad done good, wanting to give something back.

He cleared the debts, steadied the ship, and helped fund the return to the Premier League in 2013 under Steve Bruce. At that point, the fans were singing his name. The local press loved him. The bloke looked like a hero.

Out of absolutely nowhere, in 2013, Allam decided that “Hull City” wasn’t marketable enough globally. He wanted to rename the club “Hull Tigers”, like some kind of NFL franchise. Why? Because in his head, that would make them a global brand. He based in on “The Tigers” nickname already being used.

Fans went mental. What did he say to his critics? Well, in response to a banner that read “City Till We Die” at one game, he responded, “They can die as soon as they want.” No attempt to mend fences or build bridges there.

He paid no heed whatsoever to protests, demonstrations, sit-ins. He went straight to the FA and asked for permission to change the club’s name. Incredibly, they said no. He appealed. Denied a second time. Did he quit? Nope.

Instead, he started to scorch the earth. Selling players. Sacking managers. Relegation followed. Twice. He, like a lot of others who’ve taken over clubs and made big promises, either got bored or got frustrated with the fans and decided to just demolish everything around him. He stopped funding the club, but refused to sell it except at an extortionate price tag which nobody was willing to meet.

Fans continued to protest. Then they started to boycott. Did he care? At one point, he summed it up in a way few have ever dared: “It is not the fans who own the club. They have no right to tell me what to do.”

Amongst his many sins was paying the players via a tax scam involving image rights. If that sounds familiar, it should. There is no end to what these kinds of people will do.

This is what can happen when a club is in the hands of one group or one man, where no dissension is allowed, and the opinions of fans are completely neglected and rejected. Even other shareholders are totally ignored. When you give your club over to these kinds of people, you’re playing with fire.

And the thing is, without a coherent plan already laid out, you will never know what these people are about until they are in control. Right at the start of this, I said this was like a Trojan Horse and that the guys who are telling you to burn it on the beach rather than roll it through the gates are going to be proved right.

Look at the top clubs in the Premier League owned by Americans. Liverpool fans seem genuinely satisfied, but Arsenal fans have protested several times against their board. Man United fans have never stopped protesting against theirs. But what’s the point? What good does it do? What difference does it make? These people are separated from the fans by an entire ocean.

Craig Whyte had his castle just up the road. Ibrox fans didn’t even have the sense to protest that. Do they really think they’ll be able to put pressure on American owners living in some gated community somewhere?

They haven’t a clue. They wouldn’t know where to start.

The only defence against this sort of thing is soft power as held in shares, in influence and allies around the boardroom table, and it was exactly that kind of soft power Club 1872 was established to create in the first place.

It was an organisation that asked fans for money every month to buy shares. The intent was to acquire enough that they held a significant stake around that table, and there was much rejoicing when they got to 10%.

They were supposed to be shooting for 25.1%; that’s on their website to this day, and of course, I don’t need to tell you why that number is significant.

At first, King had intended to sell his shares to them; there was much fanfare back in 2021 when they announced on their site that he had agreed to this. At the time he was their blue eyed boy and they all loved him there.

Then in 2023, he pulled out of the deal and left them with a shareholding which had already shrunk to 7% or thereabouts and very quickly dropped to 5% as the equity confetti dilutions began. They are now down to their current level of 4%. They still have fans paying their monthly dues to this day, and they’re facing yet another dilution in their percentage as a consequence of these plans … plans which King himself has set in motion by offering his shares to Cavanagh.

And from everything in the public domain, they’ve not had a single meeting with the prospective owners. They haven’t heard a thing. Nothing at all. Not a whisper about the people who, if you believe the press, are about to take control of their club.

And I am astounded by that.

Club 1872 has been a busted flush for a while now anyway. From being King’s little personal praetorian guard to being strung along on the share deal, they’ve been made mugs of time and time again.

I wrote at the time that I thought it was telling that he had blamed Club 1872 for the collapse of that deal but that he rejected outright the idea of offering his shares instead to the wider Ibrox fan-base, who might not have wanted to purchase them through a shareholder group shrouded in controversy.

King’s utter dismissal of that idea has always been telling. He either didn’t believe that enough of their fans would be interested … or for reasons of his own he just didn’t want those shares in the hands of the ordinary supporters.

What I do know is that Club 1872 have never really played any role in holding the club to account. And now they’re about to be completely brushed aside as if they were nothing—and so far they’re accepting that.

Well, their reckoning is coming.

By the time it’s done, they’ll own less of the club than they do now, and they’ll have no influence at all. There will be no voices speaking on their behalf. Cavanagh, or whomever, might bring them in for coffee and biscuits and a little chat to make them feel valued—but their opinions won’t matter. Their views won’t be heard. Most importantly, their shares won’t matter in the slightest.

These people, whose organisation grew out of crisis and disaster and the death of one club, are damned by their silence and, by virtue of that, their acquiescence. If their club is again being handed over to spivs and charlatans, they’ve done nothing to prevent it. Hell, they’ve done nothing even to delay it by a day, and with 4% of the shares they could, and should, have played an active role here from the start.

They have no idea what’s going to happen. The media has no idea what’s going to happen. What we do know is that these people haven’t been told a single thing, and at least publicly, they haven’t asked a single hard question.

Yesterday, two national newspapers ran a variation of the same story: that the Leeds chairman—who is apparently involved in this somehow, somewhere, in some kind of role nobody quite knows—had sent the English club’s fans an open letter.

According to both media outlets, there were clues in that open letter about how he intends to run the club at Ibrox.

But I read that open letter, and I read both reports on it.

There was nothing in there about the Ibrox club at all. No pledges, as one of those papers alleged. No outline of a plan for Leeds, let alone for the club up here. It was a bog-standard chairman’s letter, thanking supporters and talking about how everyone was looking forward to life in the Premier League.

There was one reference to how they’d been long preparing for their return. No further info on what that meant. No outline of what fans could expect. This was a classic example of people up here generating headlines out of nothing at all. And that story swiftly rose to the top of all the Ibrox fan news aggregators as though it contained something concrete—which it absolutely did not.

In his post-war memoir Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer talked about Hitler and how his words managed to be so convincing to so many people. It’s a trick demagogues have perfected over time and history.

But it’s not really a great trick. It’s not so different from something any used car salesman or PR professional might deploy.

“Hitler’s statements were often so general and so vague that the listener could interpret them in his own way,” Speer said. “This allowed everyone to find in his words what he wanted to hear.”

And on that basis, Ibrox fans are willing to hand over their club. Their whole club; its future, its destiny, all of it. Everything.

And although I predicted some variation of this, although I’ve said for a couple of years now that they were a club ripe for a vulture capital takeover precisely because of the unquestioning nature of its supporters and the media up here, I am still profoundly shocked to watch this unfold.

If, indeed, it does unfold.

Because this might still be a trick of the light. A shadow on the wall. An illusion designed to sell season tickets and nothing more.

I still don’t see where the profit margin is. I still don’t see how this is viable, or how the purchase price can ever be recouped, far less the countless other tens of millions allegedly being spent on all sorts of areas of the club, as the media and the fans evidently believe, and without a shred of proof that it’ll happen.

Without even the beginnings of a plan, as Fergus laid out to us before he asked us for a penny of our own money.

To me, this whole thing is a fantasy built on a fantasy. It holds no internal logic at all. And yet… something is happening. Some scheme is being worked out. But what’s important is what it’s being sold as—a complete revolution. A takeover.

And so, in some ways, the best-case scenario for Ibrox fans is that it isn’t a takeover at all. It’s that it’s exactly what we’ve been talking about; the fakeover which my colleagues Joe McHugh and Eric Knott are wholly convinced that it is.

Because if their club really is on the brink of new ownership, by people willing to elbow aside any shareholder who doesn’t play ball, people willing to dilute the shareholdings of every other person just to execute their little coup, then these people aren’t playing around. They’ve no interest in appealing to the opposition or in winning friends and influencing people. They’re going to plough everyone under.

And I would be worried if people like that wanted control of Celtic.

I would be doing something about it. I wouldn’t be cheering it from the rafters. And I don’t think any of you would be either. I certainly would not be sitting in mute silence and waiting for the next story in The Daily Record … and if I was pouring money every month into an account at The Celtic Trust, money that was supposed to secure the future of the club against just such an event, I would be losing my mind.

What in God’s name are the Peepul at Club 1872 prepared to do to protect their club, and their members, and their rapidly diminishing block of shares?

As far as I can see, not a heck of a lot, which is unconscionable. If this ends badly, then on their heads be it.