Celtic have issued a statement following a strongly worded release from the Celtic Fans Collective, who accused the club’s hierarchy of showing a “lack of humility, awareness and accountability” during a meeting at Celtic Park on Monday evening.
The fan group, representing more than 400 supporters who signed an open letter to the board last month, met with chief executive Michael Nicholson and chief financial officer Chris McKay to discuss growing concerns over the club’s direction, communication, and transfer strategy.
In their summary of the meeting, the Collective said the discussion “produced no tangible outcomes” and claimed the club’s leadership “remains detached from the concerns of its supporters.”
Celtic have now responded, acknowledging recent shortcomings but maintaining that progress is being made both on and off the pitch.
The statement released on Tuesday evening acknowledges mistakes and admits the club isn’t where it wants to be.
These admissions weren’t acknowledged in the statement from the Fan Collective.
In a statement, the club said:
In response to issues raised in recent weeks about the Club’s strategy and operations, we invited representatives of fan groups to meet with Michael Nicholson, Chris McKay and Club executives at Celtic Park and this took place on Monday evening.
It was, and remains, our intention to provide a full minute of the meeting for the interest of the wider fan base. However, with content already being distributed online from the meeting, we are also providing an earlier update.
The Club sought to comment openly on the issues raised to the extent that it is possible to do so, without prejudicing Club operations and confidentiality.
We acknowledged that the Club is not where we want it to be at the moment, that we have not achieved all of our objectives in the summer transfer window and the Champions League, and that mistakes have been made from which we will learn. We recognise the concerns raised, share the frustrations of our supporters and valued the opportunity to hear from supporters last night.
Our immediate objective is to seek to make progress, without negatively impacting on the team on the field of play, and that we continue to focus on delivering success this season.
We intend to issue minutes soon, but outputs from the meeting included a commitment to seek to ensure supporter involvement in meetings with Police Scotland regarding the Fairhurst Report, the review and development of supporter engagement processes, and progressing a new safe standing working group.
The Club offered to continue to meet with supporters’ organisations moving forward and is committed to ongoing dialogue with our wider support. We have always engaged in regular discussions with supporter groups and will continue to do so, with the aim of ensuring that we can work collaboratively and positively in the best interests of our team on the pitch and our Club as a whole.
While the club’s response struck a conciliatory tone, it did not directly address several of the Collective’s more serious criticisms, including questions over internal accountability and allegations of negative briefings about manager Brendan Rodgers.
Celtic said they would continue to engage with fans’ groups and intend to publish full minutes of the meeting “as soon as possible,” after sections of the discussion were shared online.
These issues don’t seem like they are going away anytime soon.
After they have admitted their mistakes are the people who made them still employed by the club, answer is yes.
Is the person who betrayed Rodgers to the Sun newspaper still employed by the club, answer is yes. This Board do nothing because they are protecting each other, in fact they have the shares along with fan shares to vote Desmond out if they want to.
A bunch of charlatans at best.