GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MARCH 16: Celtic fans build up the atmosphere during a William Hill Premiership match between Celtic and Rangers at Celtic Park, on March 16, 2025, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Alan Harvey/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Way back at the start of the season, when the first transfer window closed, something at Celtic shifted forever. How could a Celtic board take the decision to ignore the manager completely, risking the season, risking his walking out, and putting the whole of the campaign in jeopardy? Everything changed that day.
There are moments in football where something shifts permanently. That was one of them, in terms of the relationship between a club and its supporters. Once that line is crossed, it does not simply reset. It does not quietly heal. It does not drift back to what it was before. And that is where Celtic have been ever since.
Because what this board has done over the past months, and indeed over a longer period than many want to admit, has fundamentally altered how people will view it. There is no going back. Not to the old goodwill. Not to the quiet acceptance. There will be no return to the assumption that, whatever disagreements existed, there was still a shared understanding of what Celtic is.
They broke that. And they did it by choice.
In truth, this is not about one decision. It is not about one transfer window, one manager, one result, or one controversy. Instead, it is about a pattern of behaviour. A pattern that shows, repeatedly, a lack of respect from those at the top of this club towards everyone else in it. The Schmeichel situation is the latest example, and one of the worst.
Managers have been ignored. Supporters have been dismissed. They have been talked down to. They have been treated as an inconvenience rather than as the foundation of everything Celtic is. And that is why this season changes things forever.
Football clubs can survive poor decisions and bad seasons. They can even survive periods of decline. What they cannot repair easily is a fractured relationship with their own support. That is the damage happening here, and the people in charge at Celtic either do not recognise it or they simply do not care.
For years, fans and the club shared a degree of trust. Not blind trust, not unconditional trust, but enough for supporters to believe that, at some level, the people running the club understood what it meant, and that everyone stood on the same side. However, it has become increasingly clear that this is not the case. Look at Chris McKay’s behaviour at the weekend. I can’t stand this guy. A man who stands behind a police line making faces at the club’s own fans? Disgusting.
He does not understand the responsibility he carries, or he takes it for granted. He does not understand that Celtic is not just a business. Not just a brand. Not just a balance sheet. At this point, he cannot repair the damage he has done to himself.
Because once trust goes, it does not come back easily.
The board may not realise the full extent of the damage they’ve done to themselves, but I have never spoken to as many Celtic fans who feel absolutely disconnected from the club. They may believe that results will fix that, that a good run, a trophy, a managerial appointment, or a strong transfer window will restore the relationship.
It won’t. Because this is not about results anymore. This is about respect. It is about how people have been treated. It is about their basic professionalism and worse; this is about their basic decency, and people who behave as they have forfeited the right to claim that as a character trait. Supporters feel disrespected, they feel ignored, they feel that their voices do not matter and hearts have hardened all round.
You can feel it. The tone has changed. The patience has gone. The willingness to give the benefit of the doubt has evaporated. There is a level of scrutiny now that did not exist before. There is a level of scepticism that will not be easily undone. And there is something else as well. The contempt is now a two-way thing.
And that’s a big problem for these people. Their lives will never go back to the way they were, not ever. They have changed their own reality. Had they treated fans with even a modicum of respect that would be one thing.
People might not have agreed with them had they spoken to fans in good faith, but they would have won our approval for at least engaging on a proper level. The disgusting way they’ve behaved is ruinous to them.
The people who sit in that boardroom are not anonymous.
These folks are not shielded from the real world. They go to games and attend events and move in circles where Celtic supporters are present, and from this point forward, that experience is not going to be the same.
They will walk into rooms where they are no longer respected. There they will encounter people who do not see them as custodians of the club, but as the architects of its current problems. As selfish, petty, arrogant tossers unworthy of office
They will hear it in the tone of conversations. They will see it in the looks, in the reactions, in the complete absence of the deference that once existed. That is not a threat. It is not even a call to action. It is simply the reality that follows when a support like this loses trust. This is their life now, and likely forever.
Because Celtic supporters do not forget. They do not forget when people ignore them. They do not forget when people mislead them. Celtic supporters do not forget when the board treats them as secondary to its decisions, and they do not quietly move on from it.
Maybe they have not heard this one; we don’t sit at the back of the bus, no matter who sits in the driver’s seat. We do not regard ourselves as less than anyone else. The board has spent too long acting as though that behaviour carries no consequences, as though the club will continue to function in exactly the same way, regardless of how supporters feel. As though the relationship can stretch indefinitely without ever breaking.
That assumption was wrong. It was as wrong as it could be.
It has broken, and now everything is different.
From this point on, every decision will face more aggressive questioning. Every statement will come under closer examination. Every failure will draw harsher judgment. Not because supporters have changed. But because the board has. Or rather, because it has revealed itself. That is the real issue here.
This is not about a sudden collapse in trust. It is about a gradual realisation that the people running this club do not see it in the same way the supporters do. They take out of the club what people like us put in. They do not feel the same connection, and they do not operate with the same priorities.
That is where we are now, and there is no easy way out of it. No quick fix, no simple gesture and no single decision that suddenly restores what has been lost. Trust, once broken at this level, does not come back. That is the price of what has happened. That is the consequence of the way this board has conducted itself.
They may not feel it fully yet. But they will.
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I know this is off topic but the Israeli government and Israeli armed forces are a bunch on murdering terrorist bastards who continue to murder thousands of Palastinian people for no reason other than the Israelis are bastards. I have just read a piece in a newspaper that described the idf shooting in the head and killing a family coming back from a Ramadan shopping trip, including 4 little children.
Why does the world stand back and let Israel and america get away with this genocidal ethnic cleansing.?
Why are these evil bastards allowed get away with with mass murder and all the government’s stand by and let it happen..
Fuck israel
Agree with every word BigStevie
Excellent article!
Recently what I’ve also noticed is the spinelessness of this board, their grovelling subservience to the people who hate us and their attacks on our most dedicated supporters.
That isn’t what Celtic is about ,in fact we are the complete opposite of that.
I’m not going to fund people who behave like that.
By banning the Green Brigade I to won’t go back and until they clear this board out or DD, or make drastic changes in attitude then I’ll never go back.
They are ripping the heart out of Celtic and it’s support as much as they have ripped the heart out of the team and staff.
Volp, fair play to you. The only way to change the board is to empty the stadium. There seems to be no coordination though. The collective have gone silent. Not even tennis ball protests anymore. The support is completely unorganised and even the boycott against Dundee had less than 50% support. Not sure how many are on the waiting list but pretty sure many of them will snap up spare season tickets and many will have the fear of losing them for ever.
Major issue with the GB. They have been told if they agree to abide by the Terms and conditions of their STs they can come back. They have obviously refused this but we won’t really know because they refuse to let the support see the minutes of their meetings with the club.
The expect unconditional backing from the majority of the support and they want back in the stadium unconditionally and unpoliced which is never going to happen.
MrMojorism, I think you are completely underestimating the strength of feeling by the bulk of the support against these individuals. By individuals I’m talking about the people who matter on the Board, DD,MN,CMcK and BW , PL was there but he has scuttled off in a huff.
Things have got so bad that there are elements of the support who are becoming apathetic, and that is just as dangerous or maybe even more dangerous for these people as anger.
I can only judge by my own close family and extended family ,plus friends, and whereas 6 months ago they they were evenly split, to a man and woman they are now scunnered by these charlatans, and the complete disrespect they have for the majority of the support. ST renewalswill be the test , but if there are no changes of personell on the Board, I would think at least 50% will be thinking long and hard before renewing. As for the fabled waiting list, it will be interesting to see how many of those would take up the slack.
As far as the GB is concerned, I would be surprised if what you say is correct about being unpoliced in the stadium. I would think that it is the way they have been getting policed both inside and outside the stadium compared with other Ultras throughout the country that is the bugbear in the discussions. Kettled and dawn raids don’t seem to be on the agenda of Police Scotland for other Ultras throughout Scotland. The Ibrox example of Ultras have had spectacular displays of Pyros and Fireworks, especially at Kilmarnock and Dundee, at Killie a young boy was injured. Then at Ibrox they have invaded the field with violent intentions whilst firing pyros into a crowded stand, and I didn’t see any reaction from Police Scotland, as scores of the guilty individuals were ushered back into the seated areas they had come from. They have had police escorts to stadiums not kettling and searching.
Whataboutery does matter, especially if a National Police Force isn’t policing in a fair and regular manner, and this doesn’t seem to be happening.
It could be that at Celtic Park at the next Glasgow Derby most of the masked eejits who invaded the park at Ibrox will be in attendance, spouting their ditty’s of hatred, Whilst the GB are absent courtesy of our Board and Hargreaves.
Waffle and empty threats. Rinse and repeat.
This board will be in place in a year’s time. Articles like this are a waste of time.
Sadly, the support can do nothing other than pointless tilting at windmills.
Much like this piece.
Christian anderson i presume?
More hun whoppers. Get ywrsel back to ibrox nausea. Cretain
It’ll be interesting to see what they say when we probably lose the title…
And if Sevco nick it from Hearts and Olympiakos don’t win their league and Sevco start to spend the £50 millions coming their way what will they say then…
Probably Sweet Fuck All…
He ain’t called Lucan for nothing ya know !
The only way change happens is to support our club at local Celtic supporters clubs and bars, stay away from the ground and spend nothing.The league has gone, it is now time to act.
If Dermot Desmond had a shred of decency he would relinquish his shares to let Celtic rebuild from his error strewn grip! Just leave and go and count your money, because it’s now blatantly obvious that you have no respect for Celtic fans and you’re using Celtic as a cash cow, raking in far more than you have given! Go now and take your yes men with you, you are all a disgrace to Celtic!
Despite the fact that we all know what our board of directors are like, the dimwitted useless fukkers that they are, James’s article is still necessary to continually remind us of what we are dealing with here. It is necessary to keep the pot boiling and to prompt us all into any action, no matter how small, to keep jabbing and wearing down these incompetent critters and to make their positions and their lives as uncomfortable as possible. If it gets to the stage where their lives are intolerable then so be it, for Celtic FC is much more important to all of us than the existence of any of those imposters. They say the pen is mightier than the sword and there is little sign of that just now, but in time constant pressure will surely pay dividends and those heartless fukkers in charge will bite the bullet and finally cave in.
I myself have got completely scunnered at times and questioned the tactics of the Collective, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and I’m cool with that now, we need to keep relentlessly chipping away.
More power to your elbow James, keep on keeping on.