The Celtic Fans Collective is changing the club right now. Dismiss us at your peril.

Celtic is in a strange place right now, and you can see it everywhere. It shows most clearly in the position facing shareholders who were completely disenfranchised at the AGM just a few short months ago. Instead of one shareholder organisation, we now have two. If you’re hearing echoes of the Judean People’s Front versus the People’s Front of Judea, you’re not imagining it.

The Celtic Trust decided to fold its not inconsiderable weight into the Collective. Celtic Supporters Limited did not.

It was Celtic Supporters Limited, through its spokesperson Duncan Smillie, that went on a short tour recently to tell the Celtic Fans’ Collective that it had its strategy wrong. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

But if you are going to criticise a strategy and propose an alternative, it helps if that alternative isn’t one that has been tried repeatedly for more than a decade, failed every time, and will take another decade to produce even a single tangible result.

That stands in contrast to a mass membership organisation that has, in a matter of months, already removed the Celtic chairman.

There is no reason a shareholder organisation cannot quietly acquire shares in the background while also lending support to a mass membership movement. In fact, that is precisely what the Trust has attempted to do as part of the Collective.

The Trust has not been idle. It has worked away consistently, and while I have disagreed with them from time to time with it, those disagreements centre on strategy rather than on intent.

Most of us understand what a share acquisition strategy aims to achieve. We also understand that Celtic’s problems go far beyond who sits in the director’s box. They run straight through ownership and corporate structure. The idea that one man in Ireland holds such outsized influence is ludicrous, especially when he has shown himself to be such a reckless custodian of that power.

That said, nobody can look at Michael Nicholson, Brian Wilson and the current board — the board that hired Paul Tisdale and Wilfred Nancy — and conclude that removing them has no immediate value.

Even if Desmond handpicks the next CEO, almost anyone would represent an improvement on Michael Nicholson.

If people nicknamed Tisdale “Doctor Dolittle”, then Nicholson deserves the title “Doctor What Does He Do?” He never speaks. He never faces the media. He never answers questions. If he played no part in hiring the last manager, then what exactly is his function?

I understand the share acquisition strategy as a concept. I also understand that even with a fair wind, it will take years to have any real effect. We do not have years. This club is in structural decline.

It needs to start fixing deep-seated problems now, before the club across the city fully gets its act together. Everything Celtic wants to achieve depends on remaining the dominant force in Scottish football.

The Ibrox club is modernising its structures. We are not.

If Duncan Smillie and David Low — for whom this site has enormous respect — believe we can afford to wait literal years and that this represents the only viable strategy, then I disagree. I genuinely struggle to see how they reached that conclusion.

The Celtic Fans’ Collective is not a perfect vessel. It has flaws. I can attest to that from the inside. But it came together quickly. Volunteers run it day to day. These people give their time freely because they care about the club and want to improve it. I refuse to let perfect become the enemy of good.

For all its faults, the Collective makes noise. People know it exists. The club knows it exists. I find it strange to hear repeated claims that the Collective cannot achieve its primary goals when Peter Lawwell has already gone, Paul Tisdale has already gone, and the Not A Penny More campaign now gathers real momentum as we move beyond Christmas.

We are not just active. We have crossed two names off the bingo card. If reports about Nicholson offering his resignation hold any truth — and I’ve written about that already — then we are close to a third. Nicholson will follow in time.

Here is the most important point, and one many people miss. We are now dictating the game. Everything the club does in its relationship with supporters is reactive. We forced it onto the back foot the moment fans realised they had agency and could influence events. The Collective has grown too large to ignore.

The club has not ignored it. Quite the opposite. It closed a section of the stadium to try to divide supporters. It banned fan media from club events. This is not the behaviour of an organisation unconcerned by collective action. This is an organisation feeling the strain.

Celtic’s shareholding remains fragmented. There is clear value in locating and binding those shares into a meaningful voting bloc. That work matters. Anyone willing to take it on deserves full support. But those people should also show respect to supporters with boots on the ground, achieving tangible results in the here and now. These actions already generate headlines, shape narratives and apply real pressure.

We came close — far closer than the board likely realises — to a full-scale boycott of today’s match. Only the sackings of Nancy and Tisdale prevented that. A poor transfer window or the perception that Celtic have fallen out of the title race will bring that threat right back, just as season ticket renewals loom. Anyone dismissing the Collective does so in the face of overwhelming evidence.

From the outset, I believed fan power would win. Celtic is not propped up by a billionaire or buoyed by a colossal TV deal. The club relies on its supporters. Fans have recognised that and acted accordingly. The outcome was always predictable.

Yes, ownership structure remains the deeper issue. We cannot fix it overnight. We may never fix it through share acquisition alone. But combine that long-term work with mass supporter mobilisation — buses, blogs, podcasts, supporter groups — and you create a multi-track strategy capable of reshaping the club. That is why the Trust helped build this movement in the first place.

Celtic is in crisis. Crisis demands all hands on deck. I welcome anyone who wants to help and wish them well in their long, painstaking work. But they must understand this: without serious fan pressure now, without forcing the board into constant reaction, their own efforts risk failure.

People can sneer about pitchforks in car parks all they like. We have shown that pressure works. Channelled fan anger produces results.

Anyone still denying that needs to open their eyes.

The Collective has achieved an enormous amount in a very short time.

There is much more to come.