No Keith Jackson, the Celtic board does not deserve to ‘begin the campaign in a banner free zone’ for actually doing their job. It’s what they get paid for!

What is it with this massive outpouring of praise for the Celtic board and Michael Nicholson when it comes to the Kasper Høgh deal?

Keith Jackson is even on board with it today in his Monday column in the Record.

At the time of writing, there is still no official announcement of Høgh’s imminent arrival at Celtic Park.

Celtic being Celtic, I’ll only actually believe this when I see it.

Any number of things could go wrong.

Jackson reckons that if the board manages to deliver Martin O’Neill the players he needs to just be competitive, then they ‘deserve to begin the new campaign in a banner free zone’.

Is this guy having a laugh?

It gets even better though, have a look at this section from Jackson’s article:

Because, as much as they have tested the patience of their own supporters and pushed it way beyond breaking point over the last couple of years, Nicholson and his board will already have delivered more in this one transfer window than their harshest critics might have reasonably expected.

There will still be plenty of work for them to do in order to properly turbo charge Martin O’Neill squad and, where this regime is concerned, there is always the danger of complacency creeping in around the next corner.

But – having already laid out a deal worth up to £6m to capture Colombian dangerman Camilo Duran – Nicholson and his men will have gone a long way to fulfilling their part of the bargain and maybe even surpassing the demands which have been placed upon them.

Where to start with this??

Signing players and supplying the Celtic manager with players to strengthen our squad and make us competitive, is not surpassing the demands which have been placed upon them.

This is nothing more than a CEO doing the job he is paid £17k per week to do.

This is the bare minimum we expect from Michael Nicholson and the Celtic board.

We have been asking them to fulfil their part of the bargain for years.

Years.

Yet because the Celtic board gives everybody the impression they do the square root of f*** all, when they actually do do their job, we should be showering praise on them?

For a club of Celtic’s size and stature, landing an £11 million striker should be the norm.

Not the exception.

We have been acting like we’re still in a twentieth century transfer market.

Just as Bhoycie and I discussed on the Bhoycie Bus last week, we paid £5.75 million for Eyal Berkovic in 1999 on a turnover of £36 million.

In addition to that, we paid a then UK transfer record for a defender when we purchased Alan Stubbs for £4 million back in 1996.

On a turnover of £16 million at that time.

That was a quarter of our annual turnover on a single player

30 years ago.

Fast forward to 2026, and Celtic spending of £11 million on a player is being hailed as some kind of huge achievement for this board.

That kind of money probably isn’t even 1/8th of our annual turnover now.

So no, the board and Michael Nicholson do not deserve praise for this.

They deserve nothing other than the minimum recognition that they are doing the job they’re handsomely paid for.

In addition to this, they’re only doing it because their hand has been forced in this situation.

Last week – as we know – there were rumours flying around that Martin O’Neill was close to resigning his position at Celtic.

For the second time.

There is no smoke without fire in situations like this.

I firmly believe that O’Neill told the board that they needed to get the players he wanted in, or else.

He forced their hand, and they shat the bed because they knew if he left, they were finished.

There is no way Nicholson, McKay or Wilson would survive a catastrophe like that.

So make no mistake, Martin O’Neill held the Ace card in this situation, and he used it.

To that end, nobody on the board deserves praise of any kind if they manage to land all the recruits Martin O’Neill wants and needs.

Jackson naively thinks that the support will be ‘quietly impressed’ by this fact:

But, somewhere deep down, even the most reluctant and churlish of them must be quietly impressed with the scale of Celtic’s ambition as this current recruitment drive finally begins to click up through the gears.

The scale of Celtic’s ambition?

Where has this been ambition been up until this point?

I will once again reiterate that recruiting the players the manager requires to have a competitive squad is the bare minimum in Michael Nicholson’s job description.

I don’t get showered with praise every day when I go into work and do my job to the best of my ability, so why should he?

After stating the obvious on possible outgoings at Celtic, Jackson finishes up his article with this:

But Celtic’s big rebuild may only be at its beginning and the reputation of the club’s hierarchy is not out of the woods just yet.

By digging deep over the coming days, Nicholson can also buy himself a bit of badly needed breathing space.

But the chances are he’ll have to keep the big hits coming if he is to have any chance of turning an uneasy, temporary ceasefire into the permanent end of Celtic’s simmering civil war.

The Celtic board’s reputation is not in the woods, it is in the toilet.

And it has been for quite some time.

Pretty much since Dom McKay vacated the premises in September of 2021.

Most Celtic fans are wise enough to know that the board’s hand has been forced in this situation.

By Martin O’Neill.

Michael Nicholson is not doing this off his own back.

If his hand had not been forced, you can be pretty sure that this transfer window would have remained as stagnant as it had been up until this point.

So no, Keith Jackson, if this board manages to supply the manager with the players he requires for next season, they do not deserve to be praised.

It deserves recognition, yes.

Recognition that they’ve finally started to serve the purpose they’re at Celtic for.

But no more, and no less.

This is how Celtic should operate at all times.

That has always been the crux of the matter here.

And it always will be.

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