What exactly are we seeing?
The chickens coming home to roost and the vindication of the fools.
GoD is dead – beware false profits, this meagre blog once warned, enraged, frustrated and exasporated by a “new reality” peddled by those who advocated the abridging of our ambitions; the downsizing of our dreams.
This was not because of some reckless obsession with the idea that Celtic could once again conquer Europe in the foreseeable future. Nor has the lexicon of hubris often been exercised in the articulation of Celtic fans' dreams.
But if Celtic must be a club so grounded as to doggedly follow the the plough in the soil, who would deny its believers the idle respite of looking at the stars?
The answer is those who deigned themselves fit to recalibrate the parameters within which “hopelessly unrealistic” fans thought their club belonged.
If Fergus McCann saved Celtic – and he assuredly did – he also, presumably unwittingly, trumpeted a perspective that would be exploited by lavishly-funded venture capitalists, claiming his legacy, and asserting a view that, just as Andy Walker & Co. wouldn't be allowed to throw premium stock away, the highest aspiration was the rude health of the bottom line.
Enter Dermot Desmond – he of the Coolmore Mafia fame – a man whose wealth was sourced from the most ethically-challenging of business practices and whose name has echoed around Dublin's courts in relation to allegations of corruption at the highest levels of government – fully legally exonerated. Desmond, who Charlie Haughey once lauded for his contribution to the much-envied Celtic Tiger economy, created a new Celtic in his own graven image.
The man who once bought London City Airport for £23.5m and sold it 11 years later for £750m may have wealth “off the radar” but he is no “sugar daddy”, as a Scottish sports journalist once misdescribed him.
He is an arch-deal-maker whose pursuit of profit has, so far, never yet shown signs of being moderated by dewey-eyed sentiment, such as might be hoped of by fans of a club whose Irish heritage recalls ballads of resistance, defiance and a belief that its day will come.
Desmond, with crop in hand, has ruthlessly whipped Celtic into a fat-free corporate entity, defined by turnover, margins and growth potential.
This model is not based on avoiding the self-destructive hedonism that destroyed a club down Govan way, nor yet readying itself for that sunny day when UEFA rocks the football world by enforcing its much-vaunted ideals of Financial Fair Play.
No, rather this is a Celtic whose name would be interchangeable with that of any plc atop a balance sheet within a portfolio of Desmond investments.
His plan? To ready Celtic for sale at the pull of a hair trigger. Should a “bigger league” somehow accommodate Celtic – with the English Premier League the Holy Grail – he will jettison Celtic like London airport, crowing to orgasm about the exponential growth of his initial investment.
If that prospect is ever proven to be out of reach within ten or twenty years, he will be poised to offload an efficient business.
Such is the new realism that has promised Celtic halcyon days, though not now, not yet – if we just wait long enough.
This cannot be achieved alone and if this piece has been predominantly about Dermot Desmond, that is not to protect his chief engineer, Peter Lawwell.
How much would someone have to pay you to implement the dismantling of a club and the discrediting of and ethos and an identity? £1m-a-year?
And how much to brazenly, shamelessly, spin every move by Celtic plc as being the only – “on-plan” way for the, ever-elusive, divine future happiness of the club. GoD is dead – beware false profits? And Dermot Desmond … and Peter Lawwell … and Paul Brennan … and Celtic Quick News ...
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