Celtic Board Rejects Calls for Five-Year Plan — What Exactly Are We Supposed to Be Trusting?

If there was any doubt about the scale of the disconnect between Celtic supporters and the people running our football club, the latest AGM developments should put that to bed.

The Celtic board is facing another major confrontation ahead of the December 1 AGM, with directors recommending that shareholders reject three of the four resolutions put forward by shareholders.

And one of those proposals is particularly interesting.

Shareholders have called for Celtic to produce a proper five-year strategic plan, covering the footballing, financial and wider direction of the club. You would think that would be a fairly reasonable request from supporters who simply want to know where Celtic are heading.

Apparently not.

The board’s response is that publishing such a detailed plan could place the company at a competitive disadvantage.

Now, I understand that football clubs cannot reveal every detail of their transfer strategy or commercial negotiations. Nobody is asking Celtic to publish a list of targets, wage offers or confidential business information.

But surely we are entitled to understand the overall direction of the club?

What is the ambition? What is the plan for European football? How are we going to improve recruitment? What are the expectations for the first team, academy and infrastructure over the next five years?

These are basic questions that supporters should not have to fight to get answered.

The other resolutions also raise serious issues. Shareholders have called for a review of security operations at Celtic Park and an apology over Ross Desmond’s statement at last year’s AGM.

The board has recommended rejecting those proposals too.

That last point is particularly difficult to ignore. Last year’s meeting descended into chaos after Ross Desmond delivered a statement on behalf of his father, criticising sections of the support. The meeting was abandoned before shareholders could properly complete their business.

And now, rather than accepting that trust needs to be rebuilt, the board appears unwilling to support a formal apology.

What exactly have we learned from the last twelve months?

We have had protests, supporter boycotts, European disappointment, questions over recruitment and a relationship between the board and the support that remains in a dreadful state.

Yet the response continues to feel like a defence of the people in charge rather than an attempt to understand why so many supporters have lost confidence.

Celtic Connect has been presented as a way forward, but a supporter engagement group cannot replace proper accountability. We can have all the meetings in the world, but if the board refuses to accept the need for a transparent long-term strategy, what are we actually achieving?

The December AGM should be about more than another exchange of statements.

Shareholders deserve answers. Supporters deserve to understand the direction of their club. And the board needs to recognise that asking difficult questions is not an attack on Celtic.

We are not asking for the impossible.

We are asking for ambition, transparency and accountability.

If the board genuinely believes its decisions are right, it should have no problem explaining them.

Celtic is far too important to be run on the basis that supporters should simply trust those at the top.

That trust has to be earned.