Celtic Diary Thursday December 17: Cover Up or Clean Up ?

On Saturday, Celtic will unveil a statue of living legend Billy McNeill. The man who led the club on its greatest day will be immortalised-like he wasn’t already-with a statue outside the ground.

He’s chuffed;

“I am sure Saturday will be a fantastic day for myself and my family, if somewhat emotional. I have said this before, but when Peter [Lawwell, chief executive] contacted me regarding the statue I was completely taken by surprise and to now think that I will be honoured alongside such great men as Brother Walfrid [club founder], Jock Stein and my pal Jinky [Jimmy Johnstone], really does fill me with great pride.

“Celtic has been in my blood and a part of my life for so many years and to be recognised in this way by the club I love is truly humbling.”

There aren’t many like him. 

It’s thoroughly deserved, and couldn’t happen to a better bloke.

The Dairy didn’t appear yesterday, it was one of those days when everything had to be done five minutes ago, and as a result hardly anything got done.

Did I miss anything?

Well, it appears so. something quite significant, by the sounds of it.

Scottish football is at a crossroads.

Again.

But this time we need to make a firm decision about the direction we take, and stick to it. Without fear or favour.

Lets get it into context first of all.

A few weeks ago, at Celtics AGM, chairman Iain Bankier showed a bit of support for his under fire colleague Ian Livingston, largely by accusing the support of having a racist element, and they then went on to name and shame a couple of fans who had, it seems, made outrageous comments. In fact, I remember reading somewhere the police were investigating. As far as I know, they still are, and happily for the board, it’s relieved a bit of pressure on them, especially as the fans are now more concerned with arguing over whether or not Ronny Deila is any good again.

So, wee bit of deflection, and its all gone away.

The fans were brushed off, kind of as an inconvenience.

And all is quiet in the boardroom again.

Come to think of it, looking at the wider picture, theres a fair bit of that going on in the Scottish game.

Comedy duo Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster have, amid a wee bit of controversy, announced new formats for the league cup, hinted at league reform, and had Dave King, chairman of stricken Ibrox club Rangers International, round for a chat.

Whereupon King, in court for the umpteenth time, allowed his lawyers to state that Mike Ashley had been paid his £5m and everyone could stop whinging.

Except, of course, he hadn’t, and still hasn’t, been paid.

King then went on to announce he was more than happy to meet up with club chairmen and plan the way forward for the game.

Celtic have stayed quiet, but Aberdeen haven’t. Their chairman Stewart Milne, somewhat surprisingly, spoke out in the Aberdeen Evening Express, saying;

“We want to have all of the top clubs up in the Premiership,”

“If Rangers come up with the right approach – and everyone allows them to put what happened in the past behind them – it would be good for the game.

“It would be fantastic if Hibs were able to get back up to the Premiership this season as well.

“When you look back over the last five to six years we have come through some horrendous times economically.

“Some of our top clubs not being in the top division for a substantial part of that period didn’t help.

“We are bringing less money into the game through media deals than we were back in 2007.

“The Sky contract was renegotiated when we lost Rangers because they were part of the deal.

“We could no longer fulfil our agreement with them so money was pulled back.

“What we have to do now is find ways of bringing more money back into the game.

“Having Rangers and Hibs back at the top level again would help.”  

It’s the second line which is concerning me. 

Are we now seeing a shift in policy from chairman to align themselves with the authorities to allow the past record of the Ibrox club to be , well, forgotten about ? 

We’ve seen how other football associations deal with cheats-in the cases in Spain and the Netherlands, where Real Madrid and Twente Enschede, swiftly and without fear or favour. Real had fielded an ineligible player in the Cup, and were expelled. Twente were charged with having a ridiculously unpronouncable name and told they couldn’t compete in Europe for three years. 

Yet here in Scotland, a club was liquidated after years of finacial irregularities and whispers-alright, shouts -of collusion between the authorities and the club. They were allowed to start again, albeit at the bottom, and incredibly have been allowed to pursue the myth of being the same club. 

Everyone knows this, and yet Milne insists that if 

 everyone allows them to put what happened in the past behind them 

everything will be hunkydory again. 

He claims that clubs have suffered 

some horrendous times economically 

when , in fact, most have cut their cloth accordingly and are seeing the accounts if not in the black, then certainly with a less glaring shade of red. 

All of this, he says, is down to media income; 

“We are bringing less money into the game through media deals than we were back in 2007.

“The Sky contract was renegotiated when we lost Rangers because they were part of the deal.

“We could no longer fulfil our agreement with them so money was pulled back.

Thats the second club chief to confirm-Lawwell is the other-that the Sky deal did indeed require four Celtic -Rangers games. Thus eliminating any sense that it was a sporting competition judged purely on merit.

Apart from the fact that the deal was entered into in the first place on those grounds, which in itself is at best immoral, and at worst illegal, it throws up another question.

You see, we have all known for quite some time that the old Ibrox club were in a bit of bother with Hector, and other creditors. It was obvious that they would not survive.

In fact, here’s a picture from a meeting at Hampden when the issue was raised;

There was an attitude that it would never happen in those corridors of power, and when it did, there was a collective howl of anguish, and incredible, when you look back, movement towards just letting them get away with it.

Thankfully, men such as Turnbull Hutton wouldn’t stand for it.

Now, after four years finding their feet in the game, the new club want to be allowed back at the top table. Hearts scuppered their plans last year, although its fair to say Ally McCoist helped out probably more than he had intended to, and there seems a real fear that Hibernian might put a stop to it this year.

And don’t write off Falkirk either.

With Regan and Doncaster desperately trying to avoid the real issues, Milne is the first chairman to publicly ask the fans to forget the past and use this as a base for building for the future.

Desperate Doncaster and Renegade Regan will one day seek alternative employment-the sooner the better-and they will have to face an interviewers question as to how they handled this fiasco.

Well, they haven’t handled it at all.

With this in mind, bith have flung together ill thought out plans to improve the game, whilst neatly side stepping the only thing that would improve it.

They want to restructure it, paper over the cracks, and the idea of an expanded top division has surfaced again. Perhaps as early as next season. For obvious reasons, linked possibly to Milnes outburst the other day.

The idea here is to get money back into the game, money which , and I cannot believe they genuinely think this is true, will not be there unless some form of Rangers is there too.

As Milne said;

“What we have to do now is find ways of bringing more money back into the game. 

Yes we do.

We could start by cleaning up its image. The Ibrox shennanigans left a foul odour around the game. Sponsors do not want their product associated with it.

We could stop telling the world the product is poor. The media are particularly complicit here. Who reallistically would invest in the game when all and sundry are decrying it’s quality ?

We could be seen to do what every other country does.

Punish the cheats, retrospectively, and ensure that it could never happen again. Ban those responsible from the game.

There is room for a spirit of Rangers club, but only if they promise to behave.

The support are largely blameless for the actions of those who killed their club, and those who were involved in pretending that a “basket of assets ” was, in fact, still the same club were not only allowed, but positively encouraged by the media to line their own pockets from the pockets of the support.

Until this is dealt with, and finally put to rest, the game cannot recover. All of those involved, be they based in Hampden, Ibrox or elsewhere , including those who wrote about it or spoke about it in the media as though nothing bad had happened must also be banned from future involvement in the game.

We need a clean up crew, and we need it now.

If we don’t, then there will be a lot of empty stadia soon, and we all know that football without fans is nothing.

Thats no idle threat. Thats just how things are going, based on reading and hearing what fans think, and not just Celtic fans either.

Everyone is sick of it.

It’s time to put it right before it all goes wrong again.

Either we clean it up and start over, or we cover it up and carry on.

It’ll be the fans who decide, because no-one else appears to have the stomach for the job ahead.

Thats perhaps why I mentioned Billy McNeill at the start of this Diary.

You might be thinking that a man of his calibre has no place on this page, which contains the names of so many, shall we say, wrong ‘uns ( Thats not an h missing there, by the way. )

Guys like him are what football is all about.

There are few like him, and his honesty and integrity should be held up as an example of everything that isn’t there in Scottish football at the moment.

We need to be reminded of that sometimes, and show the contrast between the world of yesteryear, where eleven lads from Glasgow conquered Europe, with honest endeavour and skill.

There is a game out there worth saving.

Somewhere….