The past few months the performances on the park compounded with what is being said by the board has given to a groundswell of anger from the fans mainly directed at the board. I will have to be honest to say that I, and a good few have had misgivings of the board over the past few season, but taken from the perspective of a fan, not a business person.
It would be foolish to think this feeling towards the board is new or not been festering over at least a decade. With decisions to hire the likes of Ronny Deila, to the lack of funds given to Brendan Rodgers in his final season, to what was seen as the ultimate slap in the face to the fans of hiring Neil Lennon after the cup final in the showers without even doing the due diligence of looking at other potential candidates for the job. These in isolation could be looked at in a real bad light, and I am not here to justify those bad decisions. For me those decisions were unjustifiable and I certainly cannot claim to be the biggest lover of the board, but I think you would struggle to find any fan base who are totally in love with their board of directors at a football club of they make their decisions based solely on the business side, which is how it looks to many.
Now with that being said, I am going to attempt to build some form of case for the board, as I feel their term has to be looked at in full context, and why I genuinely feel the reaction to the board is a bit over the top. I fully appreciate I won’t be changing any minds with this article. I guess I am doing this for myself to look past the anger and it being directed during a bad run in what has to be the most successful point in the clubs history since the 60’s.
To look at the club from where it was in the mid 90’s to where we are now, is like looking at 2 different clubs. One being 8 minutes from being on the same course as Oldco Rangers, with administrators lying in wait, to now, where in the past couple of seasons we have broken into the top 100 and even top 40 (last year we got to 37th richest club in the Deloitte rich list) world richest club lists. But I fully appreciate that many fans won’t be sold on bank balances, but I feel from where we were, to where we are now financially, must be accounted for in context of the board. Yes they claim they are “Celtic fans” which I have zero desire to dispute, but first and foremost they are business men, and they are on the board to run a company too.
Now I may be veering wildly into making weak excuses here, but I fully believe the country we are in does not help Celtic’s cause on a few levels. In Scotland the biggest challengers in the past couple of seasons has been the newly formed The Rangers. Other teams like Aberdeen and Hibernian have tried to push Celtic in the past decade, but none have been big enough to take on the Parkhead Powerhouse, which is a major flaw in Scottish football.
We are in a time where only really two teams realistically win the league, which means less interest outside of the two Glasgow clubs in regards to any potential TV money. To the detriment of Scottish football, English football capitalised on the potential of rebranding their game, with English players becoming world stars like Beckham. But this is me trying to explain how far Scottish football has fallen in the last 40 years. Celtic does seem to punch above its weight in the past 10 years if you were to look at other smaller nations with the similar finances in football. I fully believe this is mainly down to the running of the club from behind the scenes. Deals that have been done with sponsors, branding and ensuring to keeps Celtic’s stock high around the world.
Now I will admit this article is probably one of the hardest I’ve had to write, to try to “back the board” so to speak, as in essence I fully appreciate the call to ring changes and deeply feel the hurt of the bad form. I don’t want to lose any game, but I think if you look at the context of winning 15 out of the last 20 titles, winning 11 of the last 12 domestic trophies and managing to make those rich lists, this is not all done by some malicious board trying to harm the club.
During 2020, one of the most unforgiving years since World War 2, I would really not want to force out a board right now while Celtic are in a healthy position financially still, at the end of a Covid year. We are also heading into the deeply uncertain Brexit times, where even half way through December, we still have no clue how that will go, but I would rather my club be in the hands of those who can steer us through these troubling times. But I do say that with the heavy caveat that I do hope they can work in conjunction with the Celtic trust, to at least have some input from the fans and ease some concerns.
This is the maiden article written by Ross McAtasney, a long time contributor to The Celtic Blog, but first time writer to Vital Celtic.