There is a way to get Dermot Desmond out of Celtic, but it would be extremely painful. Are we ready to face that and go to war with him?

On Wednesday evening I wrote a piece about Dermot Desmond playing Football Manager with our football club.

It ended with me asking you to sit with the thought that he could burn Celtic to the ground and barely dent his portfolio.

A lot of you came back with the very same question.

So what do we actually do about it?

It’s a fair question, and I’ve been part of the problem on that front.

Because I’ve written more than once that the only way the reign of Dermot Desmond ends is when he’s six feet under.

I’d like to take that back.

There is a way to get him out.

I just don’t think many of us are going to like what it costs.

Twenty two years ago he sat down with a magazine and told us exactly what he thinks of people like us

Ten years ago, the Irish magazine Business & Finance went back through its archive and republished an interview it did with Desmond in October 2004.

He was 54 then, and the God King was a lot less guarded than he is now.

Here is what he had to say about the rest of us. Read it twice:

If you were to go by what the majority say, you’d never do anything.

We’ve all got to realise that the majority doesn’t succeed; it’s always the minority.

So I am always looking for a minority view.

Does that remind you of anything?

It should, because it’s the very same thought that resurfaced decades later in his infamous line about the million and one.

We all filed that one away as arrogance.

But what if it was never arrogance at all?

It was a man repeating a belief he’d already held for twenty years, and he has never once thought the majority worth listening to.

Which means every banner, every poll and every strongly worded statement is water off a duck’s back to him.

You cannot appeal to a man like that.

You can only cost him something.

In that same interview he handed us the only key that actually fits the lock

This is the part that changed my mind, and it’s why this article isn’t a fantasy.

Asked how he decides whether to hold something or sell it, he said this:

I don’t have any rules about holding on to something or selling.

I’m not a seller, nor am I a buyer in the sense that if I believe something is right for the business and right for me as a shareholder, then I will take that course of action.

Right for the business, and right for him as a shareholder.

He has told us the precise condition under which he walks away from a thing.

So do you see it now?

Our job was never to remove him, because we can’t.

It’s to make holding on to Celtic not worth the bother.

The first thing we hand over is the only thing that has ever kept us quiet

Domestic bliss.

The trophies, the flags, the days out in May.

That is what has kept the peace for the guts of fifteen years, and it’s what lets a boardroom sell your best players every summer and still take a standing ovation in the sunshine.

Desmond banks on it every single year.

Take it away and he’s a principal shareholder presiding over failure with nothing left to hide behind.

I’m not going to pretend that isn’t a horrible sentence to write.

Winning nothing may have to become a NECESSARY EVIL.

Not Another Penny already worked once, so why on earth would we be softening it now?

We know this one works, because we’ve already done it.

It got under their skin in a way nothing else has managed in years.

It worked because it’s the one protest that doesn’t ask them for anything – it simply stops giving.

So we widen it.

Then we boycott the games that make the point, and I don’t mean the European nights or the ones where the team needs us.

Because a half empty Celtic Park is a photograph, and a photograph travels.

Then there are the season tickets, and this is the hard one.

What do you imagine a full renewal in the spring tells him?

It tells him nothing has changed, and that he still has us.

That is precisely what he power trips on.

Make no mistake, the man doesn’t need our money, and I won’t insult anybody by pretending a boycott bankrupts a billionaire.

What it takes off him is the control.

For someone who once said he left Ireland for the freedom to do what he wants, losing his grip on his favourite shiny thing is the only punishment we have.

Whatever happens next, Martin O’Neill gets backed to the hilt, because none of this is his doing

The LASK collapse, two derby defeats to the Ibrox side and a 3-1 hammering from Ferencvaros at Parkhead have left a 74 year old carrying the lot on his own.

Silent Mike has backed him publicly, which tells you how much trouble everyone else is in.

Mark Guidi told the Go Radio Football Show this week that the manager isn’t going anywhere, as reported by Conor Spence at Celtic Shorts.

Here’s the bit that matters:

They don’t have any of those three players anymore.

Johnston’s injured, Engels has been sold, Maeda has been sold.

It’s a much bigger picture than the manager.

Even the media can see it.

Desmond put Martin O’Neill in this position and Desmond stripped out the squad that won us a double.

So the manager doesn’t carry the can for it.

The man who hasn’t put a penny into Celtic since December 2005 does.

We did all of this once before, in 1994.

But I’d be lying if I said this was the same.

In 1994 the enemy was broke, and we beat them by staying away until the bank came calling.

Desmond cannot be starved out, because there’s nothing there to starve.

The only thing we can take off him is the feeling that he owns us.

He’s hell bent on a scorched earth policy with our club – so we adopt the very same mentality, or he wins by default every time.

There are tens of thousands of us, and there is one of him.

People power is real, and the only reason it ever fails is that the people talk themselves out of it first.

In 2004 he told that magazine that everything he does, he does of his own volition, and that there is no hardship in it.

No hardship for him, right enough.

All of the hardship has always been ours.

So the question isn’t whether there’s a way to get Dermot Desmond out of Celtic.

There is.

The question is whether we can stomach handing over our dominance and watching the Ibrox side enjoy it.

I honestly don’t know if we can.

But I do know what the alternative looks like, because we’re living in it.

So, metaphorically speaking, are we ready to go to war with him?

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