Celtic Supporters Ltd have released a searing indictment of this board.

Last week, Willie Haughey and Paul McStay’s project broke ground and broke cover, and the group calling itself Celtic Supporters Limited put out a document in which it discussed what it calls The Celtic Paradox.

The paradox is simple enough.

We are a club which should sit just outside the European elite, but we act like a provincial Scottish club with provincial ideas.

Their main contention is that our profitability depends on Champions League income, which we do not work hard enough to secure, and that with the money we have in the bank, we could be reinvesting in new income streams.

We could be using the stadium for non-matchday purposes. There are naming-rights possibilities we have not even properly discussed with major partners. There are commercial opportunities sitting there unexplored.

The upshot is that they believe, over the next five years, Celtic could miss out on somewhere in the region of £50 million to £75 million, and possibly as high as £100 million.

This is cash we do not voluntarily go out and get.

Money that would otherwise be available to us.

What makes this such a sharp analysis is that a lot of commentary on the Celtic board focuses on what it does. The club is profitable. The club makes money. The balance sheet is strong. Therefore, this is painted as success.

But what Celtic Supporters Limited are saying is that we should be measuring the club not only against what it does, but against what it refuses to do to maximise revenues and increase profitability.

That distinction is very important.

They are saying that the money you do not make, the money you choose not to chase, the money you do not maximise, is money you lose.

It is money left on the table.

That is bad business.

One thing previous boards at the Ibrox club have tried to do is squeeze every available penny out of the club they run. They have bars. They have a museum at the stadium. They have used Ibrox for concerts and other events. They have spent money building facilities to a decent standard. It is other areas of the business where they fail.

The point here is that opportunities Celtic do not explore cost us just as much as the mistakes we make.

A lot of people will say that is crazy talk. They will say the money is ephemeral, that it does not exist, that it is theoretical.

But there is a very good business case for saying these guys are right.

We know we do not use the stadium enough. We know we do not develop our commercial potential enough. We have not invested in a museum. We have not properly invested in major facilities around Celtic Park. We have talked about a hotel. We have talked about expanding the stadium. We have talked about upgrading the executive boxes.

We dance the dance.

But we do not actually do any of it.

It remains on the level of theory.

The board does not have a comprehensive redevelopment plan. It does not have a comprehensive revenue-enhancement strategy. We have not gone to teams like the Boston Celtics or other global sports franchises and tried to build meaningful partnerships.

We have not even properly branched out into a sports-franchise model, something the Ibrox club explored for years.

Celtic should have bought a team in the English pyramid, or built one from the ground up, years ago. We could have watched it grow through the divisions. That is only one area where we failed to think bigger.

We have failed in so many areas.

We do not have a credible growth strategy.

The board is content simply to maintain.

The analysis of where Celtic do not do enough is devastating because it is inarguable. We all know it is true. This club has no strategic vision, and that is what this site has been lamenting for years. There are no strategic thinkers in there.

There are no entrepreneurs.

We have a club run by bankers, accountancy types and lawyers.

There are no genuine risk-takers. No people who have built something from the ground up. We are a small-c conservative club with a small-c conservative board.

So, I thought Celtic Supporters Limited’s indictment of the board was devastating.

There is only one part of the document with which I disagree, and that is that they are not calling for regime change.

They are asking for change, but not necessarily regime change.

I understand why. They do not want to appear as an immediate threat to the current established order at the club. I get that. But they also have to know that the current established order will not implement the kind of plan they are talking about.

Regime change is not only desirable.

It is necessary.

Without it, there will be no major strategic shift.

The people who run Celtic at the moment do not believe a strategic shift is necessary, because they think they are the smartest kids in the class. Even if they did decide to pivot, I do not think any of them has the capacity, knowledge or skill set to do it successfully.

There is nothing in their history to suggest they know how.

The reason Fergus McCann was able to come in and revolutionise Celtic in five years is that Fergus was an entrepreneur. Fergus was a risk-taker. Like all good risk-takers, he understood calculated risk.

He did the sums beforehand.

He knew exactly how much he could afford to put in and how much he was going to ask supporters to put in. His faith in the supporters ultimately saw him leave Celtic with pockets full of cash and his mission complete.

There is not a Fergus McCann on this board.

Not one.

These people have no concept of how to improve Celtic in the ways Celtic Supporters Limited are urging them to improve it. Haughey himself is a builder and entrepreneur. He could probably do many of these things capably and well.

But nobody is asking him to do it.

Without someone like that on the board, the board is not going to change course. And the board will never appoint someone like that until it does change course, because bringing in a person like that means inviting in a disruptor.

Someone who will push until change happens.

We have already seen what that looks like with Dominic McKay.

We have seen how it ends.

I wish I believed we had a board of directors that would read the Celtic Supporters Limited document, recognise the truth in it, see some of their own faults and make honest-to-God changes.

But I do not believe that.

Look at the current managerial hunt and you understand that these people are not going to get better. They are not going to improve how they behave. They are not going to improve how they do things. They are not going to talk honestly about any of it.

They are not going to communicate properly.

So yes, the document is useful because it outlines the club we could have. It talks about what we could be doing better. That number, that we are potentially leaving £10 million to £20 million on the table every single year because of our refusal, unwillingness or inability to make a major strategic pivot, is enormous and consequential.

It cannot be ignored. As analysis, it is first rate.

It is not a deep dive into every possible revenue stream we are missing out on. It is an overview. But I believe it is an accurate one.

I understand the thinking behind wanting to work with the current board. These guys do not believe disharmony at Celtic is good for the club. They do not believe it is good for the business.

But disharmony is the only way we are going to move these people. They are not voluntarily going to go. They are not voluntarily going to change.

And as far as a lot of us are concerned, it would not matter anymore even if they were prepared to change, because that ship sailed some time ago.

They have no moral right to govern this club any longer.

They cast that moral right aside last season, in the summer with the choices they made, and again in January with the choices they made.

If they appoint Robbie Keane, then the last shred of responsibility they have to the wider institution will be gone. Even for some people willing to forgive and forget, that will be too far.

I said from the start that we now have three or four different groups apparently devoted to the same common goal: the modernisation of Celtic.

All of these groups have to find a way to work together.

They have to run their strategies in tandem.

They will all have to adapt to the plans the others are making.

But on certain things, there can be no room for negotiation, because they are essential requirements.

Nicholson, McKay and others have to go.

There is no prospect of Celtic moving on, improving, changing, developing or growing with those guys at the helm. Even if there was, they have burned all their bridges.

Beyond that, there is a way for these fan groups to work together, and they have to.

Because what Celtic Supporters Limited have shown in a very short time is that they have diagnosed the problem to a T. In pushing for better governance and making that their central objective, they are definitely on the right lines.

Their organisation is worthy of being taken seriously.

I was sceptical at the start.

I now believe they are worthy of support.

The irony is that they turned me around simply by providing information. They gave us a glimpse of their thinking and strategy.

If the board takes no other lesson from this, it should take that one.

If they pay attention to nothing else in the document, they should pay heed to the fact that by talking to supporters about their aims, objectives and outlook, Celtic Supporters Limited have won over people like me.

That is the power of good communication.

That is the power of putting your plans in the public domain.

Even when I do not agree with all of it, I am broadly supportive of the aims.

That is the triumph of a good communication strategy.

And that is another lesson this Celtic board is almost certain to ignore.

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