Celtic may be setting a trap for the Ultras. But it may not work as they expect.

There cannot be many people of my generation who have not watched The Great Escape ten times or more. Even the generation below mine must know the basic story by now.

For the record, it is a magnificent film. It is not nearly as jingoistic as some people imagine. It tells a superb story, has a remarkable cast and even portrays many of the Germans in a relatively reasonable and sympathetic way until the events at the end.

The central concept behind Stalag Luft III was not entirely irrational.

The Germans gathered many of the most persistent escapees together in one camp. As the line in the film puts it, they took all their rotten eggs and placed them in one basket. The theory made sense. Put the troublemakers together, watch the basket carefully and prevent them from creating difficulties elsewhere.

The flaw was equally obvious.

By gathering the most experienced escape artists in one place, the Germans created a formidable team. They concentrated the intelligence, ingenuity, experience and organisational ability required to carry out one of the largest prison escapes of the war.

The plan designed to contain them helped make them stronger. That is part of what makes The Great Escape such a compelling story. You can understand the thinking behind the decision while also seeing why it ultimately failed.

When the Green Brigade returned to Celtic Park last season, I was delighted to see them back in their rightful place, creating noise and improving the atmosphere.

Where I normally sit is not far from the old Bhoys Celtic section. For those final home matches, I had the Bhoys singing and banging their drums on one side of the stadium and the Green Brigade doing the same on the other. The atmosphere was immense. It was as good as I can remember Celtic Park sounding in years.

When it became clear that both groups would be placed together in the same section, I initially wondered about the logic. I wondered whether it might create difficulties between them, although the two groups appear to get along reasonably well.

Then another possibility occurred to me. This may not be the board accommodating them. It may be the board laying a trap.

The Green Brigade still has unresolved issues with the club. Two of its members continue to face bans, and I know the circumstances behind at least one of those cases. From everything I understand, the basis for it is preposterous.

I wrote about those bans earlier in the summer because they represented an early and obvious example of bad faith from the board. The more I think about the new section, however, the more I believe the issue may go beyond simple bad faith.

What I see is a board which thinks it has placed – as it sees it – all its rotten eggs in one basket. It can now watch that basket closely.

At the first available excuse, it can drop the hammer on everyone inside it. The board may believe that placing both ultras groups together makes them easier to monitor, easier to contain, easier to threaten and easier to punish collectively.

Should one group cross a line, both can be blamed. Should one individual behave badly, an entire section can be sanctioned. It would not particularly matter whether the grounds were strong or whether collective punishment made an already tense situation worse.

The structure would already be in place.

I was initially frustrated that the Green Brigade’s recent banner focused on the continuing bans rather than offering a broader criticism of the board. But I understand why it did so. The group is defending its members, and the whole support should be concerned when ordinary fans can effectively have their season tickets suspended on the word of people whose dealings with fans have repeatedly generated distrust.

The wider problem is that the Green Brigade was lied to. There is no point sugar-coating that. The whole support was told that peace had been established between the club and the group. In reality, the peace lasted only as long as the board believed it required the Green Brigade’s support and atmosphere to help the team cross the line last season.

Once the campaign ended, the shutters came down again. The club can no longer be trusted in its dealings with supporters.

Brian Wilson may believe he is the smartest person in the room with his version of playground politics and divide-and-conquer tactics. The club engages selectively with groups willing to tell it what it wants to hear while ignoring the largest organised supporter movement Celtic has ever seen.

Its contempt does not end there.

Celtic Supporters Limited is made up of serious and credible people, including individuals with experience going back to the Fergus McCann era. Its members have gone out of their way to make clear that they do not see their role as confrontational.

Yet they have produced one of the strongest critiques of the board anywhere and have repeatedly exposed the club’s refusal to engage in meaningful dialogue.

The board’s supposed supporter outreach has been little more than theatre. It was consultation in name only: a hand-picked talking shop designed and controlled by the same people whose conduct was supposedly under discussion.

The one genuinely positive development was the promotion of John Paul Taylor. He has worked tirelessly for Celtic supporters and has too often been left exposed by the club itself. He deserves the opportunity. But that does not transform a phoney consultation exercise into genuine engagement.

The board is not placing the Green Brigade and Bhoys Celtic together as a favour or gesture of goodwill. I believe it is a trap.

I suspect both groups understand that possibility themselves. They know the people they are dealing with. They do not trust Wilson, Michael Nicholson or the other senior figures who have spent years damaging the relationship between the club and its support.

They will also know that the political and regulatory climate around Scottish football is changing.

Strict liability is coming down the road in some form. The political temperature in Glasgow is higher and more poisonous than I can remember, and there is every possibility that serious and ugly incidents will unfold inside stadiums during the coming season.

The Green Brigade’s banner addressing hatred and intolerance was outstanding and should have been praised across the game. It spoke directly to the founding values of Celtic and to the wider social atmosphere developing around Scottish football.

But the media will inevitably attempt to turn the debate into another plague-on-all-houses narrative, as though there is a moral equivalence between banners preaching tolerance and banners preaching hatred.

Celtic’s board will not want the club standing firmly on one side of that debate, even when that side is morally correct and consistent with everything Celtic was founded to represent. That is why both groups must be careful.

I urge them to behave, to watch everything they do and to avoid giving this disreputable board the excuse some people inside the club may already be waiting for. Yet I do not believe the season will finish without the club picking another fight with its own supporters.

The opportunity may arrive when the Scottish FA announces sanctions arising from events which did not even occur at Celtic Park.

At the very least, I expect both ultras groups to be called into a meeting once the governing body delivers its verdict. They may be presented with a fait accompli: a take-it-or-leave-it series of demands amounting to a behavioural contract.

The club will hide behind the threat of further sanctions and use the governing bodies as its shield. The Green Brigade and Bhoys Celtic will be placed under enormous pressure to accept whatever new terms are presented.

Whatever understanding exists now may be the first thing discarded. That would only confirm what both groups probably already suspect.

I have spent years writing about Celtic’s perception problem.

The board is widely regarded as aloof, arrogant, uncompromising and incompetent, often all at once. I have repeatedly argued for better communication and greater honesty because negative perception can destroy careers, companies and entire institutions.

Managing perception is a central part of public relations. You do not treat it with contempt unless you are prepared to pay the price.

Any competent communications professional would be horrified by the way Celtic handles this side of its business. We have now reached the natural destination of that failure.

The board’s credibility has deteriorated to such an extent that should it tell supporters the grass is green and the sky is blue, many would still distrust the evidence of their own eyes. Sometimes that level of distrust causes people to jump at shadows. It can lead to theories unsupported by evidence and conclusions which go too far.

I accept that. But in this case, the suspicion is grounded in a long pattern of conduct and I know that a lot of people share this view. Supporter groups have been used, abused, mistreated and lied to. The AGM itself became an exercise in spin and contempt. Even the story told afterwards was twisted to protect the board.

The continuing bans imposed on Green Brigade members after the supposed peace had been achieved were another clear indication that these people cannot be taken at their word. They cannot be trusted to behave openly, responsibly or with good intent towards the support. That means everybody inside the new section should be wary.

They should expect every action to be scrutinised, every incident to be amplified and every mistake to be used against the entire group.

They should understand that the people who put them together may be waiting for the opportunity to punish them together.

But there is another side to this of course.

The Celtic board may believe that concentrating both ultras groups in one section makes them easier to control. It may believe it has created a cage. What it may actually have created is a command centre.

The Germans at Stalag Luft III believed they had solved their problem by gathering every experienced escape artist in one place. Instead, they introduced those men to one another, allowed them to pool their abilities and created the conditions for an operation far larger than anything they could have achieved separately.

Celtic’s board may discover something similar. By placing the Green Brigade and Bhoys Celtic together, it has concentrated the loudest, most organised and most politically aware sections of the support in one location.

It has given them a shared space, a common experience and, potentially, a common grievance. The board may find that the groups coordinate more effectively, support one another more readily and become harder to isolate through divide-and-conquer tactics. The plan designed to contain them may help make them stronger.

I cannot prove that creating this single section was designed as a trap. But given the pattern of bad faith, the unresolved bans and the board’s deteriorating relationship with supporters, nobody can reasonably dismiss the suspicion.

The groups should remain disciplined and refuse to provide the board with an easy excuse. But the board should also be careful what it wishes for because a breach of faith with both groups would create a more chaotic scenario than we have now … and not one in which they will emerge as the winners.

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