Dermot Desmond Only Seems To Find His Voice When It Gets Personal And Celtic Fans Can See Right Through It.

There is something becoming increasingly difficult to ignore about the communication coming out of Celtic Football Club.

For long periods, we hear virtually nothing.

Supporters can be furious about recruitment, frustrated by performances, watching another Champions League opportunity disappear or asking serious questions about the direction of the club.

Getting meaningful answers from those ultimately responsible can feel almost impossible.

Then something happens that affects Dermot Desmond personally.

Suddenly, Celtic find their voice, I spoke about this last week on The Bhoycie Bus.

That is what really bothers me about the extraordinary statement released by the club following the scenes at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

Tennis balls were launched onto the golf course while Desmond was playing. He stood waiting to take his next shot looking absolutely scunnered as they flew around him.

I wrote earlier that I found the whole thing pretty comical.

I still do.

Nobody was injured. There was no physical confrontation with Desmond. This wasn’t some sinister attack on the man.

It was tennis balls on a golf course.

Yet the response from Celtic was enormous.

A lengthy statement appeared on the official website condemning the protest, announcing the suspension of engagement with the Celtic Fans Collective and talking about behaviour which brought shame upon Celtic Football Club.

Interestingly, nobody even put their name to it.

Who exactly was speaking?

Was it Michael Nicholson? Dermot Desmond? The board collectively?

We don’t know for sure, but we do really.

Someone was happy enough to use Celtic’s official platform to deliver a ferocious response to supporters, but apparently not quite keen enough to stick their own name at the bottom of it.

For me, that matters.

More importantly, though, we’ve been here before.

Go back to Brendan Rodgers resigning as Celtic manager in October last year.

Desmond’s response was incredible.

Rodgers was publicly described as “divisive, misleading and self-serving”. His conduct was questioned and the statement suggested some of his actions had been driven by self-preservation.

Those are huge accusations to level at a departing Celtic manager.

There was always one problem with that statement for me, though.

Celtic’s own timeline didn’t make sense.

Only a matter of months earlier, Desmond and Michael Nicholson had told Rodgers that they wanted to offer him a contract extension.

Think about that.

We’re being asked to believe that Brendan Rodgers was this deeply problematic, divisive and self-serving character, yet shortly before his resignation Celtic were actively trying to persuade him to stay longer.

How do those two things marry up?

If the concerns were genuinely that severe, why offer the guy another contract?

Either Celtic’s judgement was spectacularly wrong when they wanted Rodgers to extend his stay, or something happened afterwards which dramatically changed Desmond’s opinion of him.

I’ve always had my own view on what happened.

Rodgers called their bluff and resigned.

Celtic didn’t get to control the ending.

The tone of Desmond’s response felt like somebody who wanted to make absolutely certain the world knew that Celtic hadn’t been rejected without having their say.

It had that strange break-up feel about it.

You didn’t dump me. I dumped you.

That’s my interpretation.

What we do know is that Rodgers resigned and, suddenly, Desmond couldn’t communicate quickly enough.

Now compare that urgency with the moments Celtic supporters desperately want to hear from the people running their club.

Another European disappointment arrives and meaningful communication is nowhere to be found.

Recruitment isn’t completed in time for the biggest qualifying matches of the season, yet nobody at the top feels compelled to explain how that happened.

Defeats against Rangers hurt the support enormously, but there isn’t an angry Saturday-night statement demanding better.

Questions continue to be asked about the direction of Celtic and supporters are largely left to speculate amongst themselves.

Those are football matters.

More importantly, those are Celtic’s football matters.

They should surely cause far more anger inside the corridors of Celtic Park than somebody interrupting a round of golf.

Instead, a few tennis balls start bouncing around St Andrews and suddenly there’s enough communication to fill half the website.

That’s where Celtic completely lose me.

If we heard regularly from Desmond when footballing matters went badly, perhaps supporters could understand him better.

Imagine him coming out after European failure and admitting he was raging about it too.

Perhaps he could explain why transfer business wasn’t completed sooner. He could tell supporters what lessons had been learned, what Celtic intended to change and why the same mistakes wouldn’t happen again.

Even acknowledging the frustration would help.

That rarely happens.

What apparently unlocks the communication is when the issue becomes personal.

The Fans Collective is now directly in Celtic’s sights.

To be clear, the group has publicly associated itself with the protest and shared footage of what happened.

Celtic’s statement went further by claiming the action had been discussed and planned beforehand at a Collective committee meeting.

If the club has information supporting that allegation, then it should obviously stand behind it.

My issue is with the tone of the response and what happens next.

Suspending engagement doesn’t solve the massive disconnect between Celtic and a sizeable section of the support that they seem to think is a small minority.

It makes it worse.

Battle lines are being drawn now.

Rather than trying to understand why frustration has reached this stage, Celtic appear increasingly willing to fight the people expressing it.

That is a dangerous road for any football club to go down.

There’s also been another development this week which makes the timing fascinating.

Brendan Rodgers is coming back to Glasgow.

Earlier this week it was announced that the former Celtic manager will appear at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall next summer for a live event featuring an interview and questions from supporters.

When that news broke, I immediately wondered what the reaction would be inside Celtic Park.

Actually, I put it slightly more colourfully on The Bhoycie Bus.

I said they’d be s**tting themselves.

The reason is obvious.

Rodgers knows where the bodies are buried in terms of his own time at Celtic.

He knows which players he wanted. He understands exactly what happened during recruitment discussions and knows the nature of his relationships with Michael Nicholson and Dermot Desmond.

Most importantly, Brendan knows precisely what happened in the months leading up to his resignation.

That doesn’t mean he’s coming back to Glasgow to launch some sort of revenge mission.

He might say very little about it.

Nobody knows.

The point is that Celtic don’t control that conversation.

Supporters will be sitting in a room with Brendan Rodgers and he’ll have the opportunity to give his version of events.

For a hierarchy which reacted to his resignation with that extraordinary statement last October, the prospect alone must surely be interesting.

Then, only days after that announcement, Desmond finds himself standing on a golf course with tennis balls landing around him.

I’m not claiming Rodgers’ event caused today’s statement. Nobody outside the people involved could possibly know that.

But what a week.

The manager Desmond publicly slaughtered announces his return to Glasgow for a long-form conversation with Celtic supporters, then the principal shareholder’s afternoon on the golf course gets interrupted by protesting fans.

If you were trying to design seven days capable of rattling the Celtic hierarchy, you’d struggle to do much better.

There is another reason Celtic need to be very careful about how they handle this.

The AGM is coming.

Those meetings have hardly been comfortable viewing for the board in recent times, and this year’s gathering promises to be very interesting.

Supporters have questions.

Plenty of them.

Today’s protest cannot be allowed to become a convenient reason to portray the wider Celtic support as uncontrollable, aggressive or incapable of engaging properly with the club.

That’s the angle they try as they strive for a reason to wriggle out the door after completing the formalities at the November event.

Perspective is needed here.

Tennis balls were thrown onto a golf course.

Should anyone threaten Dermot Desmond, I’ll condemn it.

If someone physically attacks him, the same applies.

Target his family or cross obvious personal lines and I’m not interested in defending it.

This wasn’t that.

For me, it was a jovial protest designed to get a message directly in front of someone Celtic supporters rarely get anywhere near.

Anyone desperately trying to turn it into something darker is way off the mark.

That’s also why I’d be extremely wary of this incident being dragged out again whenever Celtic face difficult questions from supporters, if it get’s to the questions from the floor stage that is.

If an AGM becomes heated, don’t point towards St Andrews and tell us that proves fans can’t behave themselves.

Deal with the questions.

Answer them.

That’s what communication is supposed to be.

One line in Celtic’s statement particularly caught my attention.

The club talked about conduct which wasn’t befitting of Celtic Football Club.

Fair enough.

Can supporters not apply exactly the same standard to those running it?

Unsigned statements attacking sections of the fanbase aren’t particularly befitting of the Celtic I recognise either.

Neither is shutting down engagement because supporters have annoyed you.

A healthy football club should be able to deal with criticism without treating dissent as an enemy.

Right now, the relationship between Celtic’s hierarchy and a significant section of the support feels anything but healthy.

That’s the bigger story here.

Forget the tennis balls for a minute.

Ask why they were being thrown in the first place.

Supporters don’t suddenly wake up one Saturday morning and decide they’re going to travel to a golf tournament to annoy Celtic’s principal shareholder for a laugh.

Frustration has been building.

People don’t feel listened to.

Many supporters don’t believe those running Celtic share their urgency or ambition.

Whether the board agrees with that assessment almost doesn’t matter anymore. The perception exists, and the people running the club have done nowhere near enough to change it.

Instead of addressing that disconnect, Celtic have responded with another statement which risks widening it.

Dermot Desmond may be Celtic’s principal shareholder and an enormously influential figure at the club.

He isn’t Celtic Football Club.

Neither is Michael Nicholson.

Nor is any individual director sitting in the boardroom.

Celtic existed before all of them and will exist long after they’re gone.

The supporters understand that better than anyone.

Perhaps that’s what makes the current situation so combustible.

For years, Desmond has looked like the man sitting comfortably at the top of Celtic’s power structure. Supporter anger could largely be kept at a distance.

That distance is disappearing.

A better way of putting it than saying the throne is being shaken is that the walls around Celtic’s hierarchy are starting to feel a little less comfortable.

Supporters have found their voice.

They’re organising.

They’re asking increasingly difficult questions and finding new ways of making sure those questions cannot simply be ignored.

This week alone, two things have happened which neither Celtic, nor Desmond can control.

Brendan Rodgers announced his return to Glasgow.

Then supporters took their protest directly to Dermot Desmond.

Twice in a matter of days, the carefully controlled world around Celtic’s hierarchy has been disrupted.

Their response to the second incident tells us plenty.

What I’d like to see now is the same urgency applied to the football club.

Next time Celtic suffer a major European disappointment, communicate with us.

Should recruitment fail to deliver what the manager needs, explain it.

After a result which leaves the support raging, show us that those running the club are equally unhappy.

When mistakes are made, acknowledge them.

Do that consistently and perhaps supporters won’t feel they need to travel to a golf course with tennis balls just to get somebody’s attention.

Celtic’s statement says the reputation of the football club matters.

Of course it does.

That’s precisely why supporters care so much.

They’re not protesting because Celtic means nothing to them.

They’re doing it because Celtic means everything to them and they don’t like what they’re seeing.

The people running the club can condemn the method. They’re entitled to do that.

They can suspend meetings, issue statements and criticise the Collective.

None of it answers the fundamental question.

Why have relations between Celtic’s hierarchy and its own supporters been allowed to deteriorate this badly?

Until somebody at the club seriously confronts that, the protests aren’t going away.

Neither are the difficult questions.

And neither, unfortunately for Dermot Desmond, are the supporters who have finally worked out how to make sure he hears them.

Keep Your Eyes On The Board.