Back the team
Like most of you reading this, I’ve invested a
lot of time, money and emotion into supporting Celtic over the years. I’ve seen
some great days and I’ve seen days when success seemed far off. In the early
1990s Celtic had in place a board which lacked the financial acumen and clout
to drag Celtic into the modern era. In those times, fans’ discontent was
discussed in fanzines which developed in response the rather insipid club
newspaper which tended to not publish letters critical of the board. The Celtic
View came to be sarcastically nicknamed ‘Pravda,’ the Russian word for ‘truth.’
It was most famously known as the name of the official newspaper of the Communist
Party of the old USSR. It acted as the government's mouthpiece for decades and
even the Russian people knew it was full of propaganda.
Debate and protest in those pre-social media days
had to be done in a more up close and personal way. Fans debated on the buses
to games, they talked on the terraces and if they wanted to organise, then
leaflets were handed out around the ground and articles sent to the fanzines. In
such ways, public meetings could be set up and this was a particularly
effective weapon in the Celts for Change days of the early 90s. The context of
a failing team, a stadium in dire need of rebuilding and a board who were
almost bankrupt of both money and ideas, lent the protests of those days a real
sense of urgency. The club we loved was failing and in very real danger of
administration with all the problems and humiliations that would come with
that. The ordinary Celtic fan, for so long thought of as useful idiots by the old
board organised in a remarkable way to save the soul of their football club.
If we fast forward thirty years, we see a club
which has built tremendous domestic success on the platform those supporters of
thirty years ago provided. Tens of thousands of fans bought shares in Celtic
and rebuilt the stadium and the team. Each year tens of thousands of them buy
season tickets and merchandise which helps make a club, almost bankrupt in 1994,
the wealthiest in the land by some distance. But Celtic is more than a
business, more than a way of making wealthy shareholders a tidy dividend. It is,
as Bob Kelly once said, for many people a way of life. All of us fans want the
very best for our club. Yes, we’ve racked up 42 domestic trophies in the 21st
century and that is all well and good. But we look with frustration at clubs of
similar size to Celtic and a good few smaller than us who achieve more in
Europe than we do.
Last season we made a real go of it in the
toughest club competition in the world. We took Bayern Munich, a club whose
turnover was over a billion Euros last year, to within 60 seconds of extra time
in the Champions League. We really thought we were a couple of good signings
away from making the club we love a force in Europe again. That old Celtic
habit of not building on a position of strength reared its head again and we
allowed some of the key components of the side to leave without adequately
replacing them. The appalling handling of the summer transfer window, coupled
with the team losing to Kairat Almaty in the Champions League play-off round
saw the hopes we had after last season turn to ashes in our hands. The majority
of fans were rightly angry at the board for mishandling things so badly and allowing
the team to regress. It’s important the club is well run and financially sound,
but for the fans, all of that is designed to give the manager the players he
needs to move the club forward. It seemed to betray a real lack of ambition and
vision on behalf of those running the club. To sit on £70m of cash reserves and
watch as the team went backwards was in the eyes of many ordinary fans
inexplicable and unforgivable.
Modern social media has made organising protests
far easier for today’s supporters than it was for their fathers 30 years ago. Facebook
and X can reach thousands of supporters easily and various podcasts and blogs
are accessible to all. You can even order 1000 personalised posters on Amazon
for under £100. It is also easier for fans to disagree with each other as was
proven again today following the announcement of a proposed ‘3 match package of
silences’ organised by a group calling itself ‘Celtic Fans Collective.’ Most
see nothing wrong in their objective of making the Celtic board communicate
better with the fans but I honestly struggled to find a comment which supported
the idea of sitting in silence for parts of the 3 games mentioned.
Much as we are fairly united on the need for
transparent, open and communicative running of our club, most fans are not in
agreement with doing anything which might hinder the team. We go to the match
to back our side, to cheer, to moan, to kick every ball with them. That’s part
of being a Celtic fan. Trying to get at the board by sitting in silence is like
trying to stop the sun rising by closing your eyes. It’ll achieve nothing and
may be counter-productive to the team on the pitch. That is something, I for one
would not countenance. We see how an increasingly toxic atmosphere at Ibrox if
affecting that particular team and do not want to start down that road. Celtic
Park is famous for its atmosphere on European nights. The idea of us sitting in
silence for half an hour in the match with Braga next week is simply
ridiculous. The dispute is with the board and those with a point to make should
adopt tactics which make them sit up and take notice, not offer a helping hand
to opponents by turning the stadium into a library.
A better man than me once said, ‘Football without
the fans is nothing.’ I hope our board realise that and work to give the Celtic
fans the best possible team they can and communicate with fans in a less
patronising manner. Former Dundee United boss, Jim McLean said many years ago, ‘with
supporters like these, how can you fail to become champions? They are just
incredible. I give Celtic credit for playing really well and beating us but
these fans look as though they are part of the team.’ When Celtic and their
fans are united like that, they are a potent force indeed.
I respect the right of any fan to express their
displeasure at the board. We care so much about our club and want it to be all
it can be, but I suspect that the majority at Celtic Park for the visit of Hibs
will be making plenty of noise. This isn’t the 1990s. We aren’t backing a
failing team and a clueless board. Domestically we are in the midst of one of
the most successful periods in Celtic’s long and unbroken history. Yes, the
board made a complete hash of the summer transfer window and fans have every
right to be angry about that but that shouldn’t stop them backing the team with
all the fervour they’re famous for.
The cry in the 90s may have been, ‘sack the
board,’ but it was also ‘back the team.’ I suspect the majority at Celtic’s
next few games will be doing just that.
