Celtic fans should reject this dishonest narrative over our money.

There are moments when I read the noise around Celtic and genuinely wonder if sense has quietly left the room, slipping out the back door while nobody was looking, leaving only outrage and contradiction behind.

Because one of the things I hear around the club is an odd chorus. The same hollow outrage dressed up as analysis. Celtic have money in the bank and somehow, in the twisted theatre of modern media, that has become a crime.

I sit with that thought for a moment and cannot help but shake my head. Since when did financial stability become something to sneer at? Since when did prudence become a weakness? I find myself asking not just what is being said, but why it is being said at all.

Because let me be clear, and I will not dress this up in soft words, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a football club having money in the bank. Nothing.

It not a flaw nor a failing far less a scandal.

It only becomes a problem, and I will meet the critics halfway here, if that money is being hoarded while the team on the park and the facilities off it are left to decay.

If the board sits atop a growing pile of wealth while the squad weakens, while standards drop, while ambition quietly erodes and the ground falls apart then yes, that is not just a concern. That is a betrayal.

But that is a conditional argument. That is a specific accusation. Far too often, what I see is something far lazier than that. A blanket criticism. A careless narrative suggesting that the money itself is the issue.

That is where I part ways completely.

Because money, in and of itself, is not the enemy. Mismanagement is. Neglect is. A lack of ambition is. But money? Money is simply a tool. A resource. A safeguard. I look out at the wider world and I cannot ignore the lessons it has thrown at us, often brutally and often without warning. The fragility of systems we once thought untouchable. The speed at which stability can crumble.

We lived through the COVID-19 pandemic and, if that taught us anything, it showed that even the strongest institutions can fall to their knees overnight. Revenues vanish. Stadiums fall silent. Certainty dissolves into chaos.

And yet, here we are, with people scoffing at the idea of being prepared.

I think of geopolitical tensions, places like Iran sitting constantly on the edge of global uncertainty, and I’m reminded that the world does not move in straight lines. It lurches. It shocks and destabilises when we least expect it.

Even in the realm of technology, where optimism often runs unchecked, there are whispers – no, more than whispers – about an AI bubble, about inflated expectations and the inevitable correction that follows. A market shock on the level of the housing crash.

Boom and bust. Rise and fall. Stability and collapse.

This is the rhythm of the world.

So, when I hear the media mocking Celtic for having a financial cushion, I cannot help but feel that they are not just missing the point.

They are wilfully ignoring reality.

It is made all the more idiotic when they praise the Ibrox club for doing what Ibrox clubs always do; chasing glory at the cost of sustainability. Share issues to pay for transfers? Have they learned nothing? Where does that lead again? Oh yes, the graveyard.

Because preparation is not paranoia. It is not fear. It is responsibility.

And yet, this is where I refuse to be blindly loyal, where I refuse to become what I criticise, preparation must never become an excuse.

I will not defend a board that hides behind bank balances while the team suffers. I will not applaud restraint if it comes at the cost of quality on the pitch. Nor will I accept stagnation dressed up as prudence.

There is a line. There must always be a line. But the choice is not about having cash for hard times and having cash because our directors have fetishised the balance sheet.

Celtic, as a club, as an institution, as something far bigger than numbers on a balance sheet, must walk it carefully. Because this is not just any football club.

This is not a business that exists purely to turn a profit and satisfy shareholders. This is a living, breathing institution built on history, identity and expectation.

I think of the legacy of figures like Fergus McCann, a man who understood that financial discipline and ambition were not opposing forces but partners.

Fergus did not steady the ship just so it could drift calmly in still waters. He did it so it could sail further, stronger, bolder. He got criticised for that; discipline is always less sexy than the alternative.

But he was right. That is always the standard.

So, when I hear these criticisms, aimed at the money itself, aimed at Celtic’s stability, based on a critique of our wise and intelligent decision to operate strictly within the parameters of spending only what we earn, I find myself asking where the nuance is. Where is the balance? Why is everything reduced to extremes?

Either Celtic spend recklessly or they hoard miserly. Either the board act as visionaries or they behave like villains. It seems there is no space for complexity. The media is determined to spin it one way or the other.

But football, like life, is rarely that simple.

I want Celtic to be strong financially and for the club to be secure, protected against the storms that will inevitably come. I want a foundation that one bad season, one global crisis or one unforeseen collapse cannot shake.

God help other clubs in this country, those running up debts, those with no built-in resilience.

But I also want courage.

Celtic fans want investment when it is needed. I want ambition that we can see and feel, not ambition spoken about in careful, measured tones. I want a squad that reflects the stature of the club, not one that feels as though the club assembled it with one eye permanently fixed on the balance sheet. That is the real conversation we should be having.

Not this nonsense about whether having money is somehow wrong. Whether you can have too much of it sitting in the bank. There is no such thing. There is only a problem when issues pile up because you will not invest it properly.

The real question, the only question that matters, is what is being done with it.

Do we use it wisely or boldly? Do we use it in a way that honours what Celtic are and what Celtic should be? Or does it simply sit there, growing quietly, while the gap between potential and reality widens?

That is where scrutiny belongs. That is where criticism carries weight.

But lazy narratives? Cheap shots? The idea that a healthy bank balance is, in itself, something to condemn? I cannot take that seriously. I will not take that seriously.

Because we have seen what happens when clubs live beyond their means, when ambition is fuelled not by sustainability but by recklessness. I have seen the consequences of chasing short-term glory at the expense of long-term stability. It is not pretty.

But more and more, I look at the world beyond Celtic Park and at all the uncertainty swirling around it, and I think a rainy-day surplus is actually pretty smart. So no, I will not join the chorus of outrage. I will not pretend that having money in the bank is a sin that needs confession and correction.

But neither will I blindly defend everything done in prudence’s name. I stand somewhere in between, where reason still has a voice and where balance still matters. Maybe that is the most frustrating part of all.

Because in a world increasingly drawn to extremes, to outrage, to narratives that shout rather than think, there is very little room for that kind of perspective.

But I will hold onto it anyway.

Because Celtic deserve better than this tired, recycled criticism. They deserve scrutiny that actually means something. And above all, they deserve a future built not just on what sits in the bank, but on what the club does with it.

So, I come back to it, full circle, standing in the middle of all that noise, all that shouting, all that desperate need to turn everything into a crisis, and I refuse to let it drag me along.

Because I know what I see.

I see a club that must be careful, yes, but never timid. I see a club that must be secure, yes, but never stagnant. And I see a support far too wise, far too passionate, to fall for cheap narratives dressed up as truth.

So let them talk. Let them twist it, spin it, dress it up however they like. I will not be convinced that strength is weakness. I will not be told that stability is failure.

Nor though will I ever accept that having the means to build something greater is, in itself, something to be ashamed of.

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