Celtic fans are never going to be passive observers at this club again.

Last night, I wrote a piece on the latest communique from Brian Wilson, and I think I expressed my contempt about as clearly as I could.

But that contempt is nothing compared to the contempt Celtic has shown for all of us, and for this club.

They seem to think everything is fine because Martin O’Neill has stabilised the situation on the pitch. He got no help or support from anybody above him, by the way, and we are not champions yet.

I’ve said from the start that everything changed last summer. The penny still has not dropped with these people. They still have not grasped what that means in real terms.

There is no going back to the way things worked before.

That is simply not going to happen.

This club changed forever this year. Fans will no longer take a back seat and watch as the future of Celtic is mapped out for them by men hopelessly out of their depth.

We are seeing various factions pop up, and that has created the appearance of a divided and fractured support. If the board thinks that kind of strategy will work, then that is up to them. But beneath the surface, something much more important is happening.

We now have three shareholder organisations, which on the face of it is pretty ridiculous. The Trust is working with the Collective, and that is the smart move, because the Collective is the organisation with the muscle. It is the one capable of getting through defences. It is the one capable of organising boycotts and campaigns.

Anyone who thinks that stuff does not work should ask the former chairman.

We have Celtic Fans Limited, another organisation set up to represent shareholders. Now we have this Willie Haughey-led campaign, which seems to want to work within the present system, which everyone knows is a non-starter.

I’ve already suggested a strategy for Willie Haughey. If he really wants to help this club, he should tap into his personal fortune, or that of the people he knows, offer Desmond a fair price for his shares, and then sell those shares back to supporters.

If a percentage of this club remains in the hands of institutional investors, that is perfectly fine, as long as they do not wield control.

But what the emergence of these organisations really represents, when all is said and done, is a support whose eyes are open. They want engagement and involvement. They want a say in how decisions are made.

It does not matter whether you have signed up to Haughey’s season-ticket scheme. Nor does it matter if you have signed up with Celtic Fans Limited. It does not matter whether you are sticking with the Trust or whether you are part of the Collective.

Everyone who gets involved is getting involved because they want a say in how things work.

That represents systemic change. And that is permanent.

Obviously, I am part of the Collective, and that is where I am going to stay. I picked the people I want to fight alongside. I picked my team, and I am not going to change that.

The people I have met and got to know in the Collective are some of the best people I have ever worked with. They are passionate about this club. They are politically astute and they understand how to run and organise a major campaign.

Every single one of them has acted in a selfless manner. Some have given enormous amounts of their time to fighting for the future of this football club.

But whichever campaign you support, and whichever group you are part of, welcome to the movement for change.

Welcome to the reform agenda.

Because that is what all of us want. Reform. Change. A different, better Celtic. A club where supporters have a genuine voice at the top table.

The club itself, which has spent years ignoring us, thinks it can buy us off by setting up a few talking shops.

I’ll say this again, and I’ll say it in a way that leaves no room for doubt.

These people have failed to read the writing on the wall.

They genuinely think they can fob us off with promises of change in the summer, a new manager, some signings and some vague notion that they are finally paying attention to us.

You’re damn right they are paying attention to us.

They would not be doing any of this if they were not.

But the reason they are paying attention is that we forced them to pay attention. All of us did that, whichever organisation you belong to and whichever path to victory you think we need to follow.

Without that effort, these people carry on exactly as they were. This whole season, this whole potentially catastrophic season, resolves in whatever way it resolves without affecting them in any real way.

That is how they thought it would go.

Instead, they now have to reckon with a support that is fully awake and fully engaged. Things are never going back to the way they were.

The summer changed everything. Reputations have been shattered. Credibility has been put through the shredder. Some people doubtless believe nothing has really changed around here, but they are wrong.

There are people who will never recover from this.

Until the day he leaves, Michael Nicholson will never be able to walk into a room full of Celtic supporters without knowing that a large number of them, perhaps a majority, perhaps the vast majority, hold him in utter contempt.

Chris McKay is exactly the same.

These people have guaranteed eternal enmity.

They have their salaries and their job titles. They can hang onto them and try to gut this out a while longer.

But it is already over. They cannot sit in a room with a few hand-picked toadies and convince themselves that being told they are still brilliant is an accurate reflection of how they are seen outside that room.

Everyone in Scottish football has spent the last year laughing at these people. The only people who were not laughing were Celtic supporters.

We will remember that.

They don’t get to go back to their quiet, easy lives. They don’t get to return to relative obscurity and anonymity. Everyone knows who they are now and what they have done. Everyone knows what they will have to do if they want to escape the spotlight that has fallen on them.

I won’t lie. Even if they walk away now, they have already damaged themselves and their reputations in ways that will never fully go away. But the longer they hang on, the worse that damage will become.

The longer they persist, the longer it will take for them to go back to their lives without this hanging over them. That is what they have accomplished.

That is all they have accomplished.

Now they have to get used to the idea that the supporters are no longer passive. We will no longer simply sit in our seats, nod our heads and pay our money.

This is our club. We are taking it back.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.