Is next week the one where Celtic fans get some good news?

Before I start this piece, I want to thank our resident Ginger Witch for bringing some light and positivity to the blog today. As I do not really feel there has been a lot of it going around, a piece about the white smoke that might finally sit above Celtic Park was welcome.

This summer is finally getting underway, perhaps, and that inspired me to write my own more upbeat article.

Over the last week, the Celtic Fans Collective has been highlighting many of the comments people inside Celtic made towards the end of last season.

There are two reasons for highlighting those comments. The first is that those comments were either accurate and spoke to the club’s intentions, and the Collective wants to remind people, or they were cynical frauds designed to get people to buy season tickets from those who have not learned a lesson and have no intention of changing. In that case, the Collective was highlighting the hypocrisy of them.

I have a very simple outlook when it comes to these people. I do not have any faith in them whatsoever. I believe they are going to be just as arrogant, just as aloof and just as contemptuous of supporter opinion as they have always been. I do not see much that indicates they are willing to change.

And yet, there is always a “but” at the back of my mind.

Because what if they were serious? What if this club is changing? What if the change is just happening more slowly than we would like?

I have just finished a very lengthy piece on Glasgow’s peculiar little day of “culture.” You might call it that. That piece is going up later, and it is not a nice one.

It was not a nice piece to write. But as I said in that article, it is the sort of day that reminds us who the enemy actually are.

If you live in Glasgow and looked out your window today and saw them marching down the street, playing those songs of hatred, then you will know. You will feel a profound sense of your own identity, your own culture and your own views coming into focus. And you will remember what this club means to us, and to many others.

All week long I have said, although I do not know who believes it, that I do not enjoy this. I do not enjoy whipping my own club every single day.

I do not enjoy writing negativity. Why would I?

Negativity does not get you readers. A lot of people mistakenly believe that is why we do it, but those people are grossly ignorant of how this business actually works. Our numbers are never better than when we are writing good news. Our numbers are never better than when we are laughing at the club across the city, at their foibles, while we rise above them and wave down from our upward position.

That is the truth of it.

Writing negativity all day just tanks the numbers.

It depresses everybody involved, because no one wants to write that stuff all day and certainly no one wants to read it all day.

I am dying to write something positive. I am dying to have something good to focus on. When we appointed a set-piece coach last week, I was delighted to be able to write about it and explain why I thought it was a great move.

If, as Paulina says, the signings are on the way, if the first two are going to come early next week, then brilliant. Great. Let us have something good to talk about.

Because this is what the Collective has highlighted. This is what we were promised all the way through the last few months of the season. This is what we were told was just around the corner. Maybe not a brave new world, but a club that works a little better than the recent past. A club that actually learns from its mistakes, builds on the things that are good, and where everyone gains a little humility and a little perspective.

So maybe next week is the week when we start to put this thing to rights.

Maybe next week is the week when we remember who the enemy actually is. Maybe we remember that there are clubs out there getting their business done, and that there is an entire media ecosystem dying to see us fail. Maybe next week is the week when we finally get our act together and start to punch back.

That is what I am hoping for.

That would be nice.

Because it seems impossible, does it not, that all that talk from the club was just empty platitude? That it was all just PR designed to get people back onside? That it meant absolutely nothing? Because how the hell do they think they can get away with continuing exactly as they have before?

How do they think they can do exactly what they have always done when they know the Celtic fan movement is ready for a brand-new round of protests and demonstrations, and that the anger will, if anything, be even more focused and more determined than it was last year?

Are they really going to leave us grossly, scandalously undermanned going into Champions League qualifiers which we might then lose, which would really unleash the dogs of fury?

Are they really willing to hang Martin O’Neill out to dry after what he did last season?

Can they really be that selfish?

That profoundly ignorant?

Even accounting for all the nonsense we know happened in relation to the coaches, is it feasible that these people could make the same mistakes all over again? Is it feasible that they might just be about to drag us down the same bad road?

I have to believe otherwise. I have to believe this will not happen. I have to believe these people have more sense than that, and that they have learned lessons. Maybe it is naive to believe that. Maybe I do not really believe it at all. Maybe I just want to believe it.

But let us see what the next seven days brings.

Let us see if we are able to write with more positivity. Let us see if we are going to get reasons to be cheerful, or if by the end of it we are once again going to be frustrated and angry with our club.

We need some good news.

The supporters need it. The manager needs it. The players need it. The whole club needs it, because the mood around Celtic has been allowed to decay for too long.

That decay did not happen by accident. It happened because promises were made and not kept, because standards slipped, because communication collapsed, and because supporters were treated as though they would simply keep turning up and paying up no matter what.

Maybe next week starts to change that.

Maybe the white smoke finally rises. Maybe the first proper signings arrive. Maybe Celtic show that all the talk about learning lessons was not just another slab of empty corporate nonsense. Maybe we see the beginning of a summer that starts to restore belief.

And if that happens, nobody will be happier to write about it than me.

I want to write about good players. I want to write about ambition. I want to write about a club that knows what it is doing. I want to write about Martin O’Neill being properly backed. I want to write about supporters feeling excited again instead of bracing themselves for the next act of self-sabotage.

But those things require proof. Words are easy. Promises are easy. Interviews are easy. Supporter engagement is easy when it is only designed to calm people down long enough to get through a difficult moment.

Delivery is what matters.

These people have made promises. They damn sure better keep them. It has taken forever, but better late than never. So let us see what next week brings.

Let us see whether Celtic are finally ready to give us something worth believing in … or whether we get another seven days which confirm our darkest fears.

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