The Celtic board is now being laughed at by other clubs. Wow.

There’s a story that has wide currency in Scottish football. It may or may not be true, but most people believe it—and the reason most people believe it is that a number of senior journalists have confirmed it, with one even claiming to have been there when it happened.

The story goes that the board at Ibrox—the previous one—so offended our chairman, our CEO, and our largest shareholder at Hampden on the day they knocked us out of the Scottish Cup on penalties, when Mark Warburton was their manager, that Dermot Desmond immediately put out the call to bring in a top-class boss and bury them.

It didn’t quite work in the end, although we secured a number of incredible achievements along the way. Because the corpse is still kicking—and in between times, it even managed to win a league title. That’s because we lacked strategic outlook. We lacked any coherence. And the manager we brought in wasn’t sufficiently backed, even though he delivered back-to-back trebles, something no other manager in the game had ever done. And so, he walked. The gambit failed.

But I find it interesting that we tried.

See, here’s the thing. We do have people running our club who are nothing but walking egos. I know for a fact that at least two of our board members have threatened bloggers and journalists with legal action because they didn’t like what was written about them. They’re emotional. They have pride bordering on megalomania. And that pride—that egotism, that emotion—has sometimes driven what they do.

These people act out when they feel slighted, like children denied a toy they want. The toys go flying out the pram. And that’s all well and good—but club business is very often run this way: on emotion. On personal grievances. On likes and dislikes. On mood swings. That’s a problem—and we’re paying the price for it right now.

But let’s not pretend that emotion isn’t also a weapon. It’s been used against us in the past. So let’s, for once, use it in our favour.

Today, all of Celtic cyberspace is talking about a story that’s doing the rounds. And a lot of the people pushing that story are laughing their arses off—at us, at our professionalism, and comparing us negatively to the club across the city. Read that again. They’re saying that, compared to them, we don’t do things the right way.

And if this came from some hack in the Scottish sports media, you could ignore it. But it didn’t. It came from the chairman of Go Ahead Eagles, who has dealt with both clubs in this transfer window—and knows which one he thinks did business in the right way. And it wasn’t us.

Now, if the guy had just said he liked the way they did business, we’d all have taken the inference, but at least it would’ve had some ambiguity to it. But he named us. He mocked us. He laughed. That’s what we are now—an object of ridicule. A club chairman at another club felt so free to mock us in public. A chairman who points to us as a model of dysfunction. A chairman who’s saying: Compared to them, you’re amateurs.

So damn it, Peter. Michael. Are you happy with that? Are you happy to know that these people are ripping the piss out of you?

Not out of Celtic—Celtic is an institution. That’s not what’s being mocked here. You are. They’re laughing at you. They’re laughing at how you do things. At how you run the business. You’re being mocked because you’re seen as slow, amateurish, and out of your depth.

That’s a fellow director, a fellow boardroom operator at a fellow European club. And if that’s what he’s willing to say in public—while laughing—imagine what he’s saying behind closed doors.

The behaviour this club has exhibited during this transfer window has been mortifying for supporters—supporters who have seen this play out before and knew how it would end. I wrote over a week ago about the risk of how bad it would look if the Ibrox club, dealing with the same club we were, for a different player, managed to get their man in first. It was obvious that was a possibility. It was obvious it would embarrass us.

And you let it happen. On your watch.

And now their chairman is laughing at you. Not at Celtic—you.

Dermot—when was the last time someone laughed at you like that? When was the last time someone seriously suggested that the guys at Ibrox might be a bit better at this than you are?

Doesn’t that sting?

Peter—I know you hate being negatively compared to anyone over there. I know that the idea of being outdone by them sticks in your craw the same way it would stick in mine, or in the throat of any other Celtic fan. I remember our conversations. I know your contempt for them is as great as mine. But here we are. They’ve embarrassed you. You’re really going to sit and take that?

They’re not the only club in this window to say that our offers fall way short. So there’s probably a few of these clubs rolling their eyes behind closed doors, laughing to themselves. And by the way, you do realise we have a reputation for this, right?

You might think you’re hot shit. That when you travel abroad you’re looked on with admiration by chairmen at other clubs. But in fact, our reputation isn’t that we’re fiscally sound or prudent—it’s that we’re tight. That we’re difficult. That we’re amateurs. That we’re stupid in how we go about things.

And those who think we overpaid last summer have a point. Because you guys dithered and dragged your feet. You allowed clubs to push prices up on us. So we didn’t actually save anything at all.

And the only problem with your approach this time, in refusing to be held to ransom, is that you’re going to guarantee we don’t get anyone at all.

And that’s not going to make you look strong. It’s not going to make you look like tough negotiators. Because nobody sees us that way. Nobody thinks you’re the smartest kids in the class.

Nobody looked at the 2023 window and thought it was anything other than a shambles. You handed over over £1 million of our money to an Australian club and then gave them back the player. Nobody thinks that’s smart. That’s the same mistake we made with Marian Shved, how many years ago? His club must have laughed at us. The Australians definitely did.

Go Ahead Eagles are actually laughing at us—publicly. What do you think it looks like from the inside? I guarantee you, it doesn’t look like what it looks like from the outside.

There’s a little analogy I like to use when I talk about perception. Two guys are looking at each other through a plate glass window. One is inside the building. One is outside.

The guy inside sees someone outside acting crazy—jumping, leaping, pointing, shouting, banging on the glass. He thinks the guy is mad.

But the guy outside is looking in and seeing someone standing there, calm, passive, unmoved—and he’s screaming because he can see that the building is on fire. He’s trying to warn him. And the guy inside? He doesn’t care. That’s what he sees.

That’s the board right now. Confusing their reality with the reality the rest of us see.

What they’d see, if they looked properly, is that they’re not regarded around Europe as high-calibre businessmen. They think they are. But they’re not.

They’re seen as a pain in the arse. Slow to get things done. Stupid in how they approach deals. And it’s got to the point where clubs aren’t just frustrated—they’re laughing.

And I’ll say this again: they’re not laughing at us—not at Celtic. They’re laughing at you, Peter. Michael. Dermot.

So how does it feel?

And what are you going to do about it?