Celtic Quick News Has Crossed the Line With This Appalling Attack on the Fans

Paul Brennan blames supporters for deterring potential directors, but Celtic’s poisonous atmosphere was created inside the boardroom. has crossed the line with an appalling attempt to blame supporters for the poisonous atmosphere surrounding the club.

There are moments when criticism becomes unavoidable, even when the person being criticised is a fellow Celtic writer who has spent years building a respected platform.

This is one of those moments.

Paul Brennan founded Celtic Quick News in 2004. Over more than two decades, he has built a substantial audience and provided an alternative to a Scottish mainstream media that Celtic supporters have every reason to distrust.

Brennan has produced informed work and regularly challenged lazy reporting. That deserves recognition.

However, it makes his latest intervention even more disappointing.

Writing about Celtic’s inability to fill important boardroom positions, Brennan claimed: “I have spoken to multiple people who have politely declined to be considered for board positions, all for the same reason, fans have made the role toxic.”

He then added: “The environment that demands change, makes constructive change almost impossible.”

That is an extraordinary inversion of responsibility.

Celtic Quick News Crossed the Line

Who allowed Celtic’s football operation to deteriorate? Who oversaw the failed appointments, disastrous recruitment decisions, European humiliations and devastating collapse in trust?

It was not the supporters.

The fans did not create an organisation where almost every significant decision appears to run through Dermot Desmond. They did not construct an executive structure seemingly incapable of acting decisively without the approval of Celtic’s dominant shareholder.

Brennan presents unnamed conversations as proof that supporters are preventing capable people from joining Celtic. However, he provides no names, meaningful details or serious examination of whether prospective directors might instead be discouraged by the club’s internal power structure.

Indeed, one contributor beneath Brennan’s article claimed that a potential non-executive director was concerned that Desmond’s influence “undermined the independence of the non-execs.”

That possibility cuts straight through Brennan’s argument.

Perhaps capable and independently minded people are not frightened of Celtic supporters. Perhaps they are reluctant to enter a structure where their influence could be severely restricted.

This Sounds Like Boardroom Apologism

There is no evidence that Brennan was paid or instructed by Celtic to produce this article. Claiming otherwise as fact would be unfair.

Nevertheless, its central argument reads like something created inside a boardroom communications department.

Dermot Desmond previously accused others of creating a “toxic atmosphere.” Now supporters are being told that their entirely legitimate demands for change are preventing Celtic from delivering change.

How remarkably convenient.

Paul John Dykes of A Celtic State of Mind has repeatedly warned that supporters would eventually be blamed. Joe McHugh at Video Celts has also highlighted this astonishing attack on the support.

We knew this narrative was coming.

The “Not Another Penny” campaign will be blamed. The banners will be blamed. The protests will be blamed. The “sack the board” chants will be blamed.

Anything will be blamed except the decisions that forced supporters into organised resistance.

The Celtic Board Created This Anger

Celtic supporters did not wake up one morning and decide to manufacture hostility.

The anger grew from years of poor communication, repeated strategic failures, questionable appointments and a board apparently resistant to meaningful accountability.

Multiple supporter organisations were formed to campaign for change because the relationship between the boardroom and the stands had become intolerable.

These are not troublesome customers attacking a blameless company.

They are the people whose season-ticket money, merchandise purchases, subscriptions and emotional commitment sustain Celtic. When the board wants tickets renewed or another shirt sold, the supporters are celebrated as the lifeblood of the club.

When those same supporters demand accountability, they are suddenly presented as an obstacle to progress.

Brennan has every right to defend the board. However, after more than two decades writing for Celtic supporters, he should understand the difference between demanding accountability and creating toxicity.

The poisonous atmosphere did not rise from the stands and infect an innocent boardroom.

It flowed in the opposite direction.

Too Close to Celtic’s Powerbrokers?

When fan media becomes too close to those in power, it risks losing the perspective of ordinary supporters. Scrutiny begins to look like abuse. Protest becomes disloyalty. Accountability is treated as an inconvenience.

The danger is that fan journalism stops challenging the establishment and starts protecting it.

Paul Brennan once offered supporters an alternative to establishment journalism. In this article, however, he sounds painfully like part of the establishment he was supposed to scrutinise.

The supporters did not create Celtic’s dysfunction. They merely stopped remaining silent about it.

This was not a defence of Celtic.

It was boardroom apologism — and Celtic supporters deserve far better.

Key Takeaways

• Paul Brennan claimed that Celtic supporters have made boardroom positions “toxic.”
• His unnamed conversations do not prove that fans caused Celtic’s recruitment problems.
• Dermot Desmond’s influence and Celtic’s internal structure may be greater deterrents.
• The supporters’ anger is a consequence of boardroom mismanagement, not its cause.
• Celtic fan media must scrutinise those in power rather than repeat their preferred narrative.