Well, at least tonight we have something approaching clarity.
We do not have anything official from Martin O’Neill yet, but then you would not expect anything official from Martin O’Neill unless it was his resignation statement. Celtic’s pledge to back him can only have been made with his support and approval, so the managerial change that many of us expected, and even hoped for, is obviously not going to come.
And a lot else besides is not going to come.
Real change is not in our immediate future. Positive change is not in our immediate future. The people responsible for this mess have decided to carry on, and now we all get to live with the consequences.
The club posted its accounts today, and they show a loss.
Anybody who still thinks there are no consequences for the decisions made at Celtic, or for the way this club is run, is dead wrong. And this is only the first instalment.
That loss can be explained in any number of ways.
They all amount to the same thing; failure.
You can talk about the cost of paying off a failed management team that lasted eight games.
You can talk about the failure to qualify for the Champions League when all Celtic really needed to do was properly equip the side with a striker who could score goals, which I had always assumed was one of the basic purposes of a football team.
You can talk about the consequences of “Not Another Penny”, and the money which therefore never found its way into the club’s coffers despite being available almost for free, if supporters had been treated with even a shred of respect.
But whatever way you want to break it down, that loss belongs to them.
That loss is down to them.
That loss happened because of them.
We did nothing wrong.
The only reason this club has been profitable, the only reason it has been successful, the only reason Celtic has been able to boast those gigantic swelling bank accounts in the first place, is because you, me and thousands of other supporters put our money into it.
Other people took what we put in and then laughed in our faces while making it perfectly clear that our money was the only thing about us they valued.
No business that treats its customers with this much contempt gets away with it forever.
Even now, that contempt continues to be expressed in a hundred different ways, including on so-called fan websites which are little more than mouthpieces for the board. Believe me, I am not done with that subject by a long way.
That contempt is part of how you turn a football club which usually makes profits into one which has just posted its first loss in a while.
And it will not be the last loss. Other consequences are coming.
Because this is not a well-run football club by any stretch of the imagination. It has been a profitable football club, but those are not the same thing and they never have been.
Staying one step ahead of flailing domestic competition which should not even be able to clutch your ankles is not proof of prosperity or competence.
One of the people responsible for much of Celtic’s success over the last decade – not that you would know it – has left this club twice under a cloud because he found it impossible to work with people inside the business.
Those people are still here. Those people are still making disastrous decisions. Those people remain the focus of supporter anger for very good reasons, and not the least of those reasons is the contempt I have already mentioned.
By many of the metrics that actually matter, this is a failing business.
The only footballing measure by which Celtic could claim success was that it appointed very good managers who were capable of working around ever-diminishing support and still winning in spite of the restrictions placed upon them.
That has finished. They have made sure nobody matching that skill set will be in any hurry to come here again.
The other measure was profitability.
Look what happened to that.
The only two things by which this club seems to measure success are now both failing.
And that failure is just the start.
This road leads in one direction, and it is not the Promised Land.
If O’Neill had walked, who would the next manager have been?
There is nobody left in Dermot Desmond’s little black book, and the increasingly obvious smell of decay coming off this football club would put off anybody whose first priority was to build a serious reputation. Anyone who already has a name is going to think very carefully before coming near this place.
What is left? Somebody whose best years are behind him? Somebody desperate for one last payday? Somebody grateful simply to be asked?
That is not a path to the Promised Land either.
That is how the rot spreads. That is how the decay deepens. That is how the stink starts to toxify the entire institution for years.
Celtic was once the real thing.
You could imagine the club simply growing and growing. You could believe that the fact we played in Scottish football was not going to define the ceiling of our ambition.
For a long time, this club has been pretending. It has been masquerading as something healthier, stronger and more ambitious than it really is. But that masquerade is ending because the audience can see through the facade now.
And so can everybody else. Here at home, and farther afield, people see every hole in the superstructure. Every unprofessional or hostile act increased their perception that this club is a basket-case organisation which has profited from some very good coaches who did not let the mediocrity around them hold us back.
I said the other day that you cannot hold it against people who still go to the games, who still buy tickets and who still spend money on the club.
They are in love with the institution.
That is not an endorsement of the people running it.
But the judgement on those people, those who run Celtic, is coming because the institution itself is desperately sick, and what it needs is a transfusion of energy and ambition which it will not get under the current regime.
This club has not been asymptomatic.
The signs of sickness have been everywhere for years.
You just had to be willing to look for them. You had to be willing to see past domestic success against a hapless opponent, success which owed as much to brilliant men in the dugout as it did to anything the people above them ever did.
Those managers were undermined again and again by the leadership.
The symptoms are there in an academy structure stacked with former players, many of whom have never demonstrated that they possess the technical expertise required to build something modern and elite. They are there in a coaching structure which too often feels assembled in the same way.
And if you think this one is bad, wait until you see the next one. Because the next one will be worse by degrees of magnitude.
The symptoms are there in all those Champions League exits before the group stages. They are there in our repeated inability to win knockout ties. They are there in our inability even to dominate a supposedly hapless domestic rival with any kind of consistency. They are there in a board of directors which often looks like little more than a rubber stamp for one individual. They are there in a chief executive who may as well not exist because, as public leadership goes, that is an empty shirt if ever there was one. They are there in a chairman whose apparent special skill is playing student politics with the customer base, with the results we can all see in those numbers.
But those are minor symptoms.
Those are the kind of symptoms people ignore. The kind you work through. The kind you put down to the fatigue of everyday life.
The more severe symptoms are coming.
We were not asymptomatic. The full-blown illness simply had not hit with force yet.
Now it is coming, and there is nothing we can do to stop it if the people responsible for this club continue behaving exactly as they have, which they intend to.
So, brace yourselves for a dark and terrible season ahead.
And it will not be the last one.
If you think these people have a plan beyond the here and now, you are kidding yourself. If you think they are suddenly going to repair everything they have broken, you are a fool. If you trust people who have gaslit supporters and misled them repeatedly before, then maybe you deserve everything you get.
The only problem with that is the rest of us are going to get it too.
And we do not deserve it. We did not ask for it. We do not want it.
But this is what Celtic is now.
And in truth, it is what Celtic has been for quite a long time. A broken institution held together by sticky glue and Sellotape. The remarkable thing is that, in this desiccated landscape, that has somehow been enough.
Enough to guarantee success. Enough to make profits.
Enough to preserve the illusion that everything was basically fine.
But all of that is coming to an end.
What is left now are the consequences. What is left now is the sickness.
So, strap yourselves in.
All of that is now on its way.
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I’ve said it before and I say it again, the worst thing that could have happened to Celtic was the demise of Rangers. From then on our ‘trusted custodians’ believed their own hype and thought we’d have it all our own way forever. You reap what you sow and those cowards that run our club will get theirs. A change will come. I strongly believe that. Clear them all out and start again. HH
I’m curious as to what any new manager would bring to the side ?
What would he do differently ? we have enough of baloney and fodders ffs
Change is only going to happen when the huns win a treble or two or the fans boycott. It’s dreadful that it needs to come to that but that’s how it is. I personally don’t think the supporters have put enough (if any) pressure on the board to make them uncomfortable. I get supporting Celtic is different than supporting the people who run celtic, but the fact remains the only way to hurt them is to hurt the club, whether that be on the pitch or off it. Desmond and his pets won’t change and have no need to change. They have ridiculously well paid jobs and couldn’t care less about football. For example, I’ve never watched or cared about Rugby in any way, if I was elected onto the board of a top rugby team, given 18k a week to do whatever I was told, then I would do it. It’s the same for these guys, they ARE NOT celtic supporters. They will keep O’Neill and his dreadful coaches because, A) they do what they’re told and B) it’s the cheapest option. They don’t care any more about O’Neill’s legacy than he seems to at this point. Everything we loved about our club is gone, the apathy in the crowd on Sunday told us that, everyone has accepted that what once made our club so special and a huge part of our lives is nothing more than a soulless business who want our money and nothing else. I’m ashamed of the club, top to bottom and they have betrayed each and every supporter. Against my better judgement I renewed my season ticket, out of habit more than anything and the naive hope that things would change in the summer, but the thought of going to the games now feels like a chore, not something I look forward to any more and I wont be the only one feeling that way. Maybe it’s time to start following rugby after all!
A very illuminating and unsurprising article James, on where our beloved club are heading.
I also share the sentiments of JS1992CFC…
Following Celtic should always be a pleasure, regardless of the various blips you will encounter as a football fan !
Unfortunately, the board parasites and their puppet master have sucked the life and enthusiasm out of us all.
Leaving Celtic Park on Sunday, I’ve never witnessed such a quiet crowd. It was almost a resignation or acceptance of what we had just witnessed with no one knowing how to change the mood.
Of course the performances, (lack of) formations, tactics and overall demeanour of the team, must be thrown at management and coaches.
Abject, dire, dreadful, disgraceful and ultimately so disappointing from any Celtic team that we pay good money to watch.
Players certainly do not get a pass on this either!
The minimum we ask from any player wearing the Celtic jersey is pride, passion and hard work…not some of the gutless nonsense we’d had to recently watch!!!!
To come up short in every department against a Sevco outfit, that was branded clueless, not so long ago, shows us all how desperate these times currently are!!!
We are indeed a hugely dysfunctional club, and the only way to change that is with individuals or organised group(s) coming together and acquiring the majority shareholding within our club.
That would be a start.
Celtic FC’s financial statement reflects the regression that our board continues to put us through, with no desire to improve or progress!
As you say James, it is us, the fans that have created the club’s wealth and it is the parasites within the club that treat us with the utmost contempt.
Change will happen but we would all like it to happen sooner rather than later, so that our club can be returned to its “happy place!” HH
This financial statement is the only wake-up call we need to take notice of. The very future of our club is now at stake. These numbers aren’t a one-off; they are the beginning of a pattern. They will repeat, and they will get worse, and over the next five years they will wipe out the cash reserves we’ve been boasting about for a decade. This isn’t a crisis you can fix with a new manager or a January signing. This is structural. This is cultural. This is the evaporation I’ve been talking about — slow, quiet, and deadly.
We absolutely need a clear out across senior levels at the club, of that there is no doubt. But on the financials, you are somewhat having your cake and eating it James. If we had posted a profit you would have castigated the board for not investing that profit back into the club. But we posted a loss and you castigate them for not making a profit.
This season and last the board made things more difficult than they needed to be for both managers to qualify for the CL. However we had a much stronger squad and should have won through against Kairat (and probably would have done if Maeda had brought his shooting boots). And as you have noted recently, letting a 4 goal lead slip was an outrageous failure of the players, captain, coaches and manager. The cost of the first of those failures is clear and the cost of the second failure can be estimated. But whilst I would love us to be serial CL participants, we are not in a top 5 league and it will be increasingly difficult for clubs like ourselves to qualify routinely (look at Ajax’s recent record). There is a balance to be reached between financing ambition on the pitch and protecting against the jeopardy that has to exist within sport for it to be meaningful. Over the years our board has buried too much of our talent rather than invest it to build and develop our club.
What we should be able to expect as a given is a degree of competence in the running of our club; a club with a clear vision and strategy that we can all support and be proud of. The board has never shared its strategy with us – I suspect this is because if they did their intentions would lead to outrage and rebellion.
Good post Portojoe, fair criticism of the board but with a bit of reality added.
The club is not in a good place, the Board haven’t got a clue how much damage they have done, and are doing in their relationship with the fans/customers.
The Celtic fans percentage wise, are probably the most politically and financially aware group of fans in Scotland, but this Board of ours continually treat them as mugs.
If Martin decides to stay, on his head be it, unless he can work another miracle, which I think is doubtful, we’re heading for a Covid like season.
In any other business questions would be getting asked about the mismanagement of the company, to go from a profit after tax of 33.9 million to a loss of 4.9 million is pretty damning and heads should roll, but no it’s doubtful if anyone will go, as long as they toe the line and do what the Irish dictator tells them.
Celtic should be the easiest club in Scotland to run at a profit, but with this group of highly paid sychophants in charge of our club,we’re heading for the rocks.
Updated financials from the LSE:
Group revenue fell by 22.7 per cent from £143.6million to £111million, while Celtic recorded a £6.6million loss before tax. That compares with a £45.7million profit during the previous financial year.
The club’s post-tax position also swung from a £33.9million profit to a £4.8million loss, while its cash balance dropped from £77.3million to £66.4million.
Commercial and sponsorship revenue dropped from £36.1million to £31.7million.
Stadium operations income fell from
£10.5million to £7.8million.
Media-rights revenue plunged from £45.2million to £20.6million.
Ticketing income decreased slightly from £49.8million to £49.1million.
…..Good, now keep going Celtic supporters. I’ve cancelled my Celtic Player subscription and will not be buying that beautiful 2026 away kit.
Good blog James, and a sad 1 to read
There’s only 1 way this horror show ends, and that’s if the whole board and DD are removed.
We’re left with the how to we make that happen syndrome.
It’s time for action Bhoys
Some great comments, and a sad read. This Board should hold their heads in shame, but they won’t. They have treated what is probably the best and most loyal support in Britain disgracefully, and it looks like we’re all going to suffer over the next few seasons.