Why are so many people in Celtic cyberspace, and I mean smart people, capable people, good people, pretending to be stupid? It is a serious question.
I am asking it seriously because I know these people are not stupid, but they are certainly going out of their way to give the impression and appearance of being stupid.
Yesterday Martin O’Neill made some fairly unequivocal remarks about how, for him, domestic football is the priority. This is the allegation which has been levelled at Celtic over and over again for years, and yesterday no less a person than the manager of the club itself said those words out loud.
It was in the context of new signings and registration for European competition. It was in the context of the transfer window and the club’s overall plan for the season. This was not ambiguous. It was contextual. It was stated openly and boldly in a way which is not open to serious misinterpretation. It was clear.
The signings have been brought here with domestic football prioritised. That is about as clear as you can get it. It deprioritises Europe at a time when the club is trying to sell tickets for the Europa League, confirms that Celtic has not properly prepared the squad for European competition and lowers expectations about what we are actually supposed to accomplish in that tournament.
I cannot believe there is another credible way to view it.
O’Neill said that there were tough decisions to make over the Europa League squad and then stated explicitly: “for me, the most important thing is our domestic football.” He said Celtic wanted the new signings to make their mark “initially in the domestic scene, which is the most important thing for us at this stage.”
And it is not simply that people are pretending not to know this. It is not simply that people are pretending not to hear what the manager is actually saying. It is not that they are ignoring his words and substituting what they believe he really means underneath them, although that alone is one hell of a leap and exactly the kind of twisting of a manager’s remarks we would crucify the mainstream media for attempting.
It is the greater context they are pretending not to understand.
Because some of them have sought to present this as a binary choice.
It isn’t.
“If you had to pick between progress in Europe and domestic success, be honest, which would you choose?”
My answer to that is fuck you. You know that is not the choice.
It insults me and everybody else when you pretend that it is, and it makes you sound stupid. When I know you are not stupid, I start wondering why you are being dishonest. Because if you know that is not the choice and present it as if it is, you are being dishonest.
You are taking the piss. You are asking us to swallow something which we know is not true and which you also know is not true.
My question is why. For what end? To whose benefit? Whose agenda does it suit? Whose point of view are you defending?
Celtic has dominated football in this country to an extraordinary degree over the last decade and a half. Celtic has won 14 of the last 15 league championships, with 2020/21 the only interruption, and within that period there have been five domestic trebles, including the extraordinary Quadruple Treble and another under Ange Postecoglou in 2022/23. Since Rodgers first walked through the doors at Celtic Park that success has been ludicrous.
Aside from the COVID season itself, we have not won less than a double in any of those years. That is not ordinary success. That is domination.
So, in which universe do we become strong enough to compete seriously in Europe while simultaneously going backwards domestically? A Celtic side strong enough to compete in Europe does not have to obsess about domestic football.
Domestic football takes care of itself.
A Celtic team strong enough to be genuinely competitive in the Europa League or the Champions League should dominate Scotland almost by default because the qualities required to compete at that level are greater than those required to beat most teams here.
So, this binary choice people are asking us to make exists only in some parallel universe where Celtic somehow becomes routinely stronger against Benfica, Marseille or whoever else we face in Europe while becoming routinely weaker against Kilmarnock and Dundee.
How does that happen? It doesn’t.
And it is a bullshit question for another reason too.
Here is the truth of it. There is no Celtic supporter I know who would not trade a domestic League title for a European trophy. Not one.
Everybody arguing this nonsense knows that too.
Martin O’Neill’s finest hour as Celtic manager was not winning his first domestic treble. It was not even last season’s extraordinary recovery which ended with another league and Scottish Cup double.
The reason people were talking at all about statues in carparks is that O’Neill took Celtic to a UEFA Cup final and pushed José Mourinho’s Porto, a side which would win the Champions League the following season, all the way into extra time before losing 3-2.
That is how Celtic supporters remember greatness. Europe has always mattered. O’Neill himself once treated Europe as the benchmark. But he knows there is little point now because the club itself does not consider it important enough.
The club proved that two seasons ago when it sold Kyogo before the Aston Villa Champions League game and failed to replace him before Bayern Munich.
We all have differences of opinion about how this transfer window went.
Some people think it was an absolute disaster.
I do not share that view.
There are positions in which Celtic is materially better off than before the window opened, and those positions are important ones. The forward line has been retooled in a way I did not expect and still cannot quite believe. We look vastly superior to every other club in this league going forward, and we proved in the first leg against LASK that some of these guys can punch their weight in Europe too.
Other people will tell you the transfer window was a roaring success.
I do not agree with that either because it clearly was not.
You cannot call it a roaring success when half the new arrivals are loans, effectively pushing another rebuilding job into next summer. You cannot call it a roaring success when three of the late signings do not even make the European squad. You cannot call it a roaring success when obvious holes remain all over the team despite money piling up in the bank.
And do not even get me started on the idea that some of this will simply be dealt with in January. It won’t. Everyone should know that by now. Jam at this club is like John Fogerty’s Tomorrow. It never comes.
It was a squandered transfer window.
A wasted transfer window in terms of the opportunity to reach the Champions League and to fix some of the structural problems with this team in a way which would have given us stability going forward into next summer.
With those holes still in the side, including that big, glaring, gaping one at defensive midfield which I wrote about last night, I will not give this window a pass.
But I am not calling it an automatic failure either.
Those are differences of opinion.
That is what we all live on.
That is what we thrive on.
That is the stuff of every pub debate, every armchair discussion and every superb supporters’ bus argument I have ever been part of.
This is not that.
Some people want to get abusive because you have dared to question the manager.
Well, fuck you. That is my answer to that, and I can live with it because you respond in kind and you move on.
But the disingenuous bullshit which some people are determined to push is something else.
It is not going to fly.
There is no binary choice here. Nobody is suggesting that Celtic should sacrifice domestic success on the altar of European progress. That is not a legitimate choice anybody is being asked to make. There is no one or the other.
They go hand in hand. Everybody knows that.
And I will tell you why I know everybody knows it.
Because some of the people arguing this nonsense now have spent years making exactly the opposite argument. They have spent years saying Celtic should be better in Europe. They have spent years saying our resources should allow us to compete more effectively. They have spent years ridiculing the idea that Scottish football itself makes European progress impossible.
But most of all, they have pointed out the obvious fact, over and over again, that a Celtic side that is tooled for European success has precisely nothing to fear right here at home. Nothing. Nada. Nil.
So, what the Hell are they on about?
This club is very good at gaslighting supporters, but when you know what the club is doing you can at least avoid some of the perils and pitfalls of being gaslit.
It becomes much more insidious when the gaslighting comes from people who should, and do, know better, yet nevertheless push a dishonest narrative anyway.
We should not have to stand for that.
We have had enough of this shit from the club itself.
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There you have it. Celtic are a massive club and one which strode the world’s stage at one time but that’s not the one we’re getting. Some people need to GTF.
Mons ambition has been drained from him by the board. I’m sure I read somewhere when he left the first time that he said Celtic fans should prepare for being in the slow lane. We’re now on the hard shoulder
Let’s face it Cgreen, when Celtic were a major force in Europe the competition was not rigged in favour of the 5 major leagues in Europe. Yes, some clubs have punched above their weight on a few, very few occasions since then and broke that mould, but in the main it is the same Clubs from the same major leagues that have success and prosper accordingly. We all want to be part of that success, we all want to do well in Europe, I was at Seville and it was one of the best moments of my life. However, my expectations are now based on reality and common sense, for there are many, many clubs like us, all in the same boat and all chasing a European dream that will elude most of them. The standard of the Scottish League and the finances achieved stifle our Clubs growth, surely you can see that. It used to be a level playing field in the good old days, but that no longer applies.
Ok, JG but even Sevco got to a European final in recent years and thank heavens lost on penalties.
I wasn’t lucky enough to be in Seville that night, but I remember the highs and lows of that season very clearly. Our outlay for that campaign was something like £4m, and there’s an interesting parallel in the calendar too: we played Shelbourne in a pre-season friendly almost 24 years to the day of this year’s match. We were knocked out of the Champions League on away goals before the run to the UEFA Cup final. This year, we’d have progressed on away goals if that rule was still in place.
But the full context of 2002/03 matters. For all the romance of Seville, we didn’t win a single domestic trophy that season. That’s the cautionary tale. It was an unforgettable European run, but it came at the cost of everything at home — and I don’t think Celtic supporters would accept a trophyless campaign now, even with a deep European run.
As for O’Neill saying domestic matters are our bread and butter, I prefer to see it as our meat and drink. We’ve been feasting domestically for many years since then. Domestic football hasn’t been fragile or under threat — it’s been routine. So framing Europe as something we can’t pursue without jeopardising the league is a false dilemma. A Celtic side strong enough for Europe doesn’t weaken domestically; it reinforces the dominance we already enjoy.
James I read most articles and comments on your site, I’ve not seen one comment that doesn’t voice some level of disappointment, in the fact that our Board have left various managers short of players and unprepared for the CL play offs.
As far as the importance between The Domestic League Title and Europe goes, I’d put the Title as our primary target at the start of each season, but I would also like to see a pretty good performance on the European stage, preferably the CL, if not then a good run in The Europa League would be quite nice.
There is absolutely no conflict of priorities with me, I’m with MON the Domestic Title comes first, a reasonable run in Euro comes 2nd. There is no doubt we could be better in Europe, and our Board are holding us back on that stage, but with the financial handicap of being based in a small European country, it is very very hard for any club outside the five richest Leagues to be successful in winning European trophies, as results this century have shown.
Micmac, I agree the title is important but the cups should not be. Imagine we played a weakened team for the league cup game at Ibrox and lost…there would be wild rage.
If Arsenal draw Shrewsbury Town, Liverpool or Man City in the cup they will play several 2nd string players no matter what. Its also how you tempt decent back up to the club.
The Arsenal fans didnt go mental when Southampton knocked them out of the cup last season.
Meanwhile we are winning everything in Scotland and still not happy. I agree that europe is set up for the benefit of the best but Scotland is set up so that it is almost impossible for us or the Ibrox entity to lose. Noone else ever wins a title. We couldn’t even lose it last season despite being the worst celtic side in living memory.
We dont belong in the UCL. We get hammered every single time we are in it without exception.
James was saying it was a great campaign when Dortmund put 7 past us. 7 severely flattered us and even with Dortmund easing off it should have been double figures.
Everyone was watching it through their fingers!
Why do you keep saying we get hammered in champions league ‘every time without exception’ when results prove we dont?
What a fanny
I get that words aren’t your strong point Chris so I will try and explain it so that you can understand.
Every time we actually qualify for the UCL somebody puts 5, 6 or 7 past us. A couple of seasons ago it was dortmund 7, before that Atletico 6. Barca 7 twice. PSG 7 & 5 in the same season. All these teams ease off but still it could be double figures.
You get it now?
I agree the Cups aren’t really important, maybe for a day out at the final, but that’s about it. You keep on about no one else can win the League in Scotland, but lots of other Leagues throughout the World are much the same. In Europe The Bundesliga in Germany is practically a one team winning League, In Spain La Liga is practically between two teams every season and in France PSG are monopolising the League there.
For the League to be more competitive in Scotland, Celtic would have to drop their standards a lot, just as we did last season, and surely you don’t want that.
Other than that the other teams would have to get a lot better and I can’t see that happening. Maybe someday the Huns will get their act together and challenge us properly, this Board of ours with their complacency might make it easier for them.
All leagues have teams that dominate micmac but Leverkusen won the league for the first time ever with a domestic invincible season only losing the europa league final the entire season. It is impossible for that to happen in Scotland. There isn’t another country in the world where only 2 teams have won it in 40 years micmac. It’s a fact and it makes us a poorer side.
One of the main reasons we are way off the pace in europe.
Who are these people you’re talking about?
Name names,otherwise your argument loses credibility.
My take on MON’s comments (as posted earlier) was that he was referring principally to the 3 new signings not in the EL squad and that their priority is domestic football at this time to earn their place in the squad/team. As was also pointed out by others, James demanded that MON play a 2nd eleven against Stuttgart as our priority had to be the league (presumably on the basis that James didn’t think we could win the EL). So now MON is getting grief for taking James’ advice…
I must admit I read the headline to this article and my first thought was is it a rhetorical question?
I would just like to know why our club seems wholly focused on building up more and more millions in the bank. What is the purpose of a fortune in the bank you don’t use, what’s the end game.
Great comment Dan