Dermot Desmond should have been at Ibrox on Sunday to see them laugh at him.

This morning, Joe McHugh put up a highly amusing piece about Dermot Desmond’s scheduled appearance at the Dunhill Cup next month; anyone who wants to see him should attend, as the tickets are free.

You can get them here.

Everyone should think about going along.

On Sunday, as we were getting well and truly bossed at Ibrox, Dermot Desmond may have been recovering from a mild hangover. I know he wasn’t at the game, but then it’s a rare thing that he turns up for any game these days. I rather wish he had been, because I’m sure the Americans would have been full of the joys of spring.

I’m sure their mood would have been euphoric.

And since Desmond appears to only really gives a shit about himself, our best chance of getting out of the malaise we are in right now is if someone at Ibrox insults him again, as they did in the aftermath of the Scottish Cup tie that led to the appointment of Rodgers.

What a misjudgement many of us made when that story broke. At the time, it looked like hubris from them had backfired.

In hindsight, it was actually much more damaging for us than it was for them. Because it suggested that the guy in charge of this club is more invested in his own ego than in the general health of Celtic itself.

It took him being provoked like that before he did the best for us. Getting the best for us wasn’t an end in itself, so it seems, but something to spite those who had laughed at him. That is the last type of person you ever want running an institution like this.

So, he wasn’t there on Sunday.

And as I said, he probably had a hangover because he spent the day before hobnobbing with all the other elites of Ireland as they entertained Donald Trump. I’m sure that somewhere there’s a nice framed picture of him and Trump to hang up on his wall.

Two giant egos.

Two men who seem to refuse to listen to professional advice, or experts, or anyone with whom they might disagree or who might tell them they’re wrong.

If the Trump administration is a disaster for America, then this guy and his directors are a disaster for Celtic, because the machinery that drives them is the same: subservience to a leadership figure, whether his judgement is right or wrong.

And right now, Desmond’s own judgement could not be more questionable.

The Celtic that he presides over is an embarrassment. It is a club of enormous wealth and potential squandered because he leaves it in the hands of lackeys and yes-men, the kind of people who won’t question his judgement or deviate from his grand philosophy.

And this is the result.

Not just Sunday. Not just LASK, but a malaise that runs deep, which has left Celtic devoid of any real leadership figures at all.

Even the man who fronts up at the press conferences and supposedly runs the team is no longer convincing any of us that he has the leadership required. He is too passive. He’s too interested in keeping the peace. He’s trying in vain to hold together his own reputation.

He does not have the stomach to challenge the board, far less the man in Ireland to whom he believes he owes his entire professional sporting life. And so, we’re in a mess.

It wasn’t any surprise to see Desmond in that footage the other day, mixing with the Irish president and the President of the United States.

It wasn’t surprising because he is one of Ireland’s upper crust.

He’s one of its elite movers and shakers, and I’m sure that is not the only time he has been in such rarefied company.

Far from it, in fact, if you know the history of the guy.

We’ve talked about Trump in a roundabout kind of way, but that’s a man whose politics and policies are incompatible with good government. Take the tariffs, for example. He doesn’t know how a tariff works. He doesn’t know what a tariff does.

He doesn’t understand that American manufacturing companies, which plan their business in blocks of years, are relocating out of the United States to the countries they used to buy machine parts and other equipment from because they cannot afford to pay his tariffs.

He doesn’t understand that this will harm the American economy in ways that aren’t even clear yet and won’t be clear for a long time.

He doesn’t know that cutting grants and research money for things like renewable energy hands the initiative and the advantage to America’s adversary, China, which is already the world leader in the field.

America is run by an ignorant bigot who doesn’t know any better.

Stupid ideas pop into his head, and that man has the power to make those things flesh.

Desmond, who has never run a sports organisation and who has convinced himself that staying ahead of a basket-case football club in a dilapidated, clapped-out league represents success, whilst the team is asset-stripped and the fans’ ambitions are crushed, has made similar mistakes at every turn.

Locked into a conservative way of thinking, rooted in the past, he has no solutions to Celtic’s problems.

He doesn’t even see them as problems, which in itself is a major problem.

We are led by an egomaniac who doesn’t know any better.

Every now and again, some daft idea will pop into his head, and no one will tell him he’s wrong.

I was glad he was in Austria, but I know what his being in Austria represented.

I doubt he was there primarily to watch Celtic. He was there to bask in the warm afterglow of his team reaching the Champions League. He wanted to strut about like a master of the universe. “Look at me, I own a Champions League club.”

And that humiliation was something he earned.

The humiliation of the whole Celtic party that night was earned.

Did they learn from it? Did they take any lessons from it?

No, they didn’t. They cut their budget. And on Sunday, we paid a price for that decision.

And I wish he had been there.

I wish he had been there to soak up the atmosphere, to squirm in that seat, to see what his leadership has wrought on Celtic.

I wish he’d been there to take the mockery, because maybe then he would do something positive.

Maybe then we’d get the kind of leadership at Celtic that we deserve.

Not, I suspect, because he wants the best for the club, but to settle his personal grudge or score.

Not a good reason for doing things, but better than doing nothing.

And as long as the club was stronger, I couldn’t give a shit what his reasons were.

But he wasn’t there, and so he didn’t see and he didn’t hear.

So, he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to care. Because no one rubbed his face in it.

He thinks no one laughed at him behind his back, except that they do.

They all do.

And if he was half as smart as he thinks he is, he would know that.

But he doesn’t have to sit in front of them and endure that ridicule. He leaves that to the rest of us.

Which is what cowards do, and it’s why I am so sick of him.

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