Back the team

 

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 21^st 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.