I am a Celtic shareholder and the AGM is coming up later this month.
I don’t know if I’ll go as there isn’t any chance of the little people out voting Dermot Desmond et al.
I attended last year and asked a question from the floor.
I thought it was a reasonable enough one to ask about the failure of Celtic to be marketed as an Irish brand in North America.
I got a standard enough answer.
I expected to be fobbed off and I was.
The AGM was a stage managed and happy clappy type of event.
It went reasonably well and the assembled throng left Celtic park in good spirits.
Veterans of these meetings, including my uncle, said it was par for the course.
This year it might be different.
Celtic are currently third place in the SPL.
SPL leaders Rangers, the current champions, are a very good bet for 4 in a row.
Companies borrow money as part of the normal commercial life cycle of any enterprise.
If you borrow money to meet current costs then that’s the road to ruin.
However borrowing to invest in wealth generating assets is the route to real growth.
Celtic should have invested in January 2009.
Remember this guy?
The board did not invest and Celtic supporters paid the price.
That failure to strengthen cost Celtic the league and millions in Champions League revenue.
This left the then Celtic manager Gordon Strachan seriously frustrated.
He had taken the job with the proviso that he make £28 million of savings.
He agreed to this, but in the end the budgetary constraints got too much for him.
After delivering 3IAR and European progress he finally lost the league.
The decline has been slow and steady since then.
However there is a point when prudence becomes deliberate self-harm.
This is death by balance sheet.
Kelvin Wilson didn’t arrive at Celtic last January because of haggling over a few hundred grand.
I know the exact amount and it makes me weep at such short sightedness.
The last transfer window was the last one where I gave this Celtic board the benefit of the doubt.
In the Honest Mistake Handicap Chase Rangers now look quite good for 4 IAR.
As I said AGMs are stage managed affairs.
However this one will have to be artfully scripted to convince the congregation that this board hasn’t badly messed up.
You can all of the people some of the time
You can fool some of the people all of the time.
You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Eventually those doing the fooling run out of road.
The jury is in on this Celtic board.
One should never waste a disaster.
Rangers doing 4IAR at a time of bank enforced austerity and Sherriff Officers on the premises and the word “insolvency” being used about them in court cases IS a disaster.
It is also a disgrace.
Then there is the young manager who has had to endure what no manager in Scotland has ever had to put up with.
The bullets, bombs and assaults.
Despite all of this he has kept on going.
When his team has clicked it has been enthralling to observe.
Neil’s Bhoys can produce flowing, fluent football sweeping forward in green and white waves.
It will be a crime against natural justice if a young manager, having been denied the basic building blocks of a team (a goalkeeper, a centre half to partner Kelvin Wilson and a powerful striker suited to the Scottish game), is made to carry the can for this mess.
If I do go to the AGM then it’s my intention to try and get a hold of the guy with the microphone.
I’m happy to crowd source the question.
What should I ask this time?
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