The Gineitis debacle has fractured the relationship between the Celtic board and the coaching team. They have eroded trust everywhere at our club

Yesterday, I wrote about the £6.85 million the Celtic board could not bring themselves to spend – you can read that one here.

The reaction to it has been something else.

It has been all over Celtic fan media ever since, and it has not stopped yet.

Which tells me something important.

Because if it is being picked up by the board’s selected messengers, then it is being fed straight back into the boardroom.

Good.

Let them sit with it.

Even the people who broke the original story have felt the need to respond to it.

CeltsAreHere put this out on X yesterday afternoon.

Our reporting on this story comes from solid sources. What we can’t and won’t vouch for is the claim, heavily pushed in this article, that Celtic have briefed a higher price.

Celtic remain a closed shop for the most part, so we find that difficult to believe.

— CeltsAreHere (@HereCelts) September 9, 2026

Now, I have no argument with CeltsAreHere.

Their sources on Gineitis have been solid from what I can see.

But look at the reasoning there, because it is doing my job for me.

Celtic are a closed shop.

Agreed.

So how did a £13 million valuation nobody had ever printed before appear in the Record on the second last day of the window?

Closed shops do not leak by accident.

They leak when somebody inside them wants something out.

And that is the whole point of this, isn’t it?

The one time the shutters come up at Celtic Park is when the board need the support pointed at somebody else.

Anyway, the fact that people are arguing about it at all tells you the story has landed.

But there is a bigger story buried in that LRT interview, and I have been sitting on it since yesterday because it deserves its own piece.

It is not about the money at all.

It is about who actually runs Celtic Football Club.

The agent said the coaching staff were desperate for this player, and that the men above them were not.

Dmitrijus Vinokurovas did not have to say that.

He was asked a question about a failed transfer.

He could have given the usual diplomatic guff about the deal not being right for either party.

That is what agents do when they want to keep a door open.

Instead he said this:

The interest from the coaching staff and their sporting people was genuine.

We had a video call with the coaches, they were very positive about Gvidas.

But in the end I think the main problem was that not everyone in the club’s leadership was as convinced about this transfer as the coaches were.

Read that last line again.

Not everyone in the club’s leadership.

That is an agent, on the record, telling a national broadcaster that Celtic’s football people wanted a player and Celtic’s suits blocked him.

And then he explained exactly how that works.

He said a transfer at that financial level needs everybody on the buying side to agree, usually four or five decision makers including the head coach.

And he said if one of them doesn’t want to do it, especially the one who controls the money, then it simply doesn’t happen.

We all know who that is at Celtic, don’t we?

So Martin O’Neill was overruled by men who have never picked a team in their lives.

Think about what that means for a second.

He is 74 years old, back in the dugout because this board could not organise a proper managerial appointment.

We were told he had the club’s backing.

We were told the football department would be given what it needed.

What actually happened is he got on a call with an agent, told him he wanted the boy, and watched the people upstairs sit on their hands until the window shut.

It gets worse.

Because according to the agent, O’Neill was the one pushing to go back in for Gineitis after Linz.

The manager was still fighting for a signing while the board were still counting the Arne Engels money.

And then there is what O’Neill said to the board’s faces after Austria.

This is the part that should stop every Celtic supporter dead.

Here is Vinokurovas again:

I know that after they messed up in Austria, O’Neill went to the board and told them that if they had signed Gineitis and one other target beforehand, Celtic would now be in the Champions League.

And I think that is true.

So do I.

So does anybody who sat through that shambles in Linz.

The agent went further, saying some of the players who came off our bench that night were not good enough, and that Gineitis is stronger than a few of them.

He is not wrong, is he?

We watched it happen.

A 3-0 lead, thrown away, 5-1 in extra time, and a bench that had nothing on it.

And our manager marched upstairs and told them to their faces that this was their doing.

That is not a healthy football club.

That is a manager and a boardroom at war.

The damage here goes way beyond one Lithuanian midfielder.

Because trust is the thing this board has spent, and they have spent all of it.

The coaching staff now know their recommendations mean nothing if the money man says no.

Torino now know Celtic will waste two months of their summer and never table a final offer.

Agents across Europe know it too, because one of them just told everybody.

And the support know it, because we have watched this exact film about nine times.

The only people who still have any credit left are the ones on the training pitch.

Of course, we will hear nothing about any of this from the club.

We never do.

The board will say nothing, their favoured messengers will move on to the next shiny thing, and we’ll be expected to forget it by tomorrow.

Not this time.

Keep talking about it, keep sharing it, and keep it in front of them.

Because the one thing this board has never been able to handle is being looked at.

Sack the board!

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