There comes a point when change is needed, when old ideas and old heads no longer have the fire, the desire and the know-how to keep going. For Celtic, that point passed long ago with the current board.
They have had their day. Whatever credit they once banked has been spent, and the club is now paying the price for years of inertia, caution without ambition, and an inability to read the moment. If those at the top truly consider themselves Celtic supporters, as they often claim, then the most selfless act left to them is to put ego and self-interest aside and move on.
Celtic needs renewal, a new approach, and, crucially, high-calibre football operators who can strike the balance between caution and ambition, not accountants masquerading as visionaries.
For years, this board has been defined by risk aversion. Every major decision has been delayed, diluted, or ducked entirely. Yet in one of the most important moments in the club’s modern history, they somehow took the biggest gamble of all.
Appointing a manager from MLS in Wifleid Nancy halfway through a season, with a depleted and unbalanced squad, was not bold thinking. It was reckless inconsistency. You cannot preach caution for a decade and then throw the dice in the middle of a campaign without consequence.
Relying on former Exeter manager Paul Tisdale to steer Celtic through this period has spectacularly backfired. His fingerprints are all over two dismal windows, and he has been allowed to make calls that look beyond his remit.
The results have been immediate and brutal: three disastrous defeats, a team lacking cohesion, belief, and direction, and a season that now threatens to unravel completely. There is no clear sign that this improves. If anything, the trajectory looks grim.
If you are still backing this board after what we have witnessed, it is hard to call that anything other than cognitive dissonance.
The Aberdeen cup final should have been the moment everything became undeniable. That was a Celtic squad on its knees, physically, mentally, structurally. It was the final confirmation that the summer ahead demanded big calls and genuine renewal.
Instead, what did we get?
Penny-pinching.
Delay.
Then panic buys.
Followed by a patronising and misleading lecture on UEFA Financial Fair Play, while Celtic sit with enormous cash reserves.
The squad has been neglected for a long time. Kasper Schmeichel was drafted in because, when Joe Hart retired, nothing had been lined up. The club leaned on Brendan Rodgers’s Rolodex to get out of a jam. We’re into his second season, and it’s clear he is done at any sort of top level.
Iheanacho, who can’t stay fit for five minutes, was called out of bed on deadline day and asked to rip up his Sevilla contract so Celtic could sign a striker outside the window, hours after letting Adam Idah go with no plan in place. That decision played its part in Sunday’s cup final defeat.
Daizen Maeda was kept in place because they had failed to identify and land a top target for the position. We could not even let Yang go because the squad was so thin. That is a sad indictment of where we are.
We’re about to hit January again, and we’re yet to replace Kyogo, who left last January!
The butterfly effect from August has been catastrophic. A manager walks. The squad weakens through injury and mentality. Hindsight was not needed to see that appointing Wilfried when they did would be problematic. The call should have either come straight after the last international break so he could really bed in, or he should have been allowed to watch from a distance until at least after the cup final, when he then could begin to really look at how to get this team playing.
It was another case of if a misstep can be found and made, this board will find it.
The Kairat Almaty Champions League play-off exit was the fifth consecutive time this club has failed to qualify for the elite competition after being made to play qualifiers. The managers and players change, but the men who pull the strings remain. Peter Lawwell and his board have overseen so many humiliations in Europe against clubs we have financial superiority over; it’s ridiculous.
This board continues to run Celtic as if it were still 2001. Football has changed. The landscape has shifted. The margins are finer, the stakes higher, and the cost of standing still is enormous.
We are weeks away from 2026, and Celtic feel institutionally frozen in time. Processes are outdated. Decision-making is slow. Ambition is capped. Supporters are expected to accept regression as safeguarding. Instead of owning this, Celtic seems more content to shout down fans and ban anyone who dares to question their methods.
That is not how elite clubs operate, and Celtic should never accept being anything less.
If there is any love for Celtic left among those at the top, then the answer is clear.
Go.
Step aside voluntarily. Allow fresh leadership, fresh thinking, and a new direction. Give the supporters a reason to come back together rather than remain fractured and exhausted by constant self-inflicted damage.
This club is bigger than any board, any balance sheet, or any ego. Celtic does not need caretakers clinging on. It needs leaders brave enough to know when their time is up. There should be no need for protests, boycotts and bans.
The board has nothing left to give.
The best thing they can do for Celtic now is to leave and let the rebuilding truly begin.
