It seems that rainy days have arrived at Celtic. Surely then we can applaud the board’s prophetic foresight for anticipating all the external factors that caused this downturn in both our business and playing fortunes?

We are fortunate to have such wise, visionary leaders guiding us on this severe downward trajectory. I’m reminded of the heroes of The Odyssey. Mainly because, as mountaineers will attest, you really need a strong Achilles for such a precipitous descent.

That noise you hear is years of board mismanagement and an entire industrial poultry farm of chickens coming home to roost. We are currently staring down the barrel of a multi-tiered, highly damaging & dangerous scenario, highlighting the deep dysfunction at every level of the club.

However, despite my earlier sarcasm, we are not caught in a vortex of unexplained and unforeseeable events. Instead, we are being dragged down by arrogance, intransigence, complacency & incompetence.

Desmond and his determinedly defeatist band of myopic minions have wedded aimless inertia with a culture of regressive, blinkered parochialism. The resulting institutional cowardice has us enthusiastically embracing a spiral of self-implosion as an acceptable business model.

For years I have maintained what seems an obvious fact to those not pursuing a deliberately negative agenda, usually demonstrated by an almost deranged obsession with insolvency events, which we were still being quoted after our best financial year ever, while simultaneously holding historically unimaginable cash reserves.

Our European ambitions must be foundational, not aspirational. In complete contravention of the board’s actions and the unacceptable utterances of the nepo baby at the AGM. That basic premise must be carved on our boardroom table.

Board members should have to swear an oath to the truth of it. The targets set for the team must include the specific round in the specific competition, including an ever-ambitious final placing.

Clear, public targets. Not the deliberate and obtuse vagueness we are dismissed with by fearful functionaries, quivering in terror at the thought of accountability, or the wrath of the God King Desmond.

This ambition, allied with a vision for the future we have been bereft of since the departure of Fergus McCann, would see us in regular competition with our financial peer group in the elite European competition. Ensuring domestic dominance by default (the other vague target) and building a stable financial future for the club.

If you didn’t previously understand the importance of those European ambitions and targets, I hope the latest set of accounts have set out for you the stark reality.

Many have been content with the regular parade of domestic silverware, including this cowardly board. A group that I contend is utterly unfit to be guardians of the dreams, hopes and ambitions of hundreds of thousands of supporters.

Of course, it is within the gift of the God King to change all of this. On the proviso that he appoints the right people to the right departments, who then quite expectedly do the right things. Proven failures, such as the axis of feeble, cannot be allowed to remain in position. Nobody should survive a fraction of the implosion we have witnessed in the last few seasons.

If Desmond could suppress his megalomaniacal ego for a time and embrace properly qualified individuals who would by default challenge his absolute rule, and the embarrassing charade of corporate governance acted out by this family business masquerading as a PLC, then there is a bright and successful future possible for our club.

All fans must keep up the pressure until, at the very least, the narrative is so entrenched that he can’t turn up at a pro-am without encountering extremely verbal Celtic fans, and the board apologists are embarrassed into silence. Our voices can make a difference if we can finally pierce their bubble of contempt and denial.

Last season, despite averting disaster at the death, we were nearly displaced domestically by a 14-year-old team of proven losers and a plucky but financially poor capital team, one year into their projected 10-year journey to success. Not to mention suffering yet another Euro humiliation at the hands of a team completely unknown to the vast majority of football fans.

That European humiliation by a relative financial minnow has now been repeated this season. And given how we’ve been playing, with four of the most abject defeats I’ve seen in my lifetime, no change in the coaching team imminent, no change in personnel possible, disharmony in the dressing room and dysfunction in the boardroom, logic would suggest that the pain has only just begun. Even the most delusionally optimistic fan would be hard-pressed to find genuine grounds for positivity at the moment.

Every problem at the club stems from the board. What about the responsibility of Martin, the coaches and the players, I hear some of you say? Who appointed the elderly man, out of the club game for a decade, and his band of failed misfits? Who consistently failed to improve and manage this squad? Who let the legendary manager down badly in two successive transfer windows? Who refuses to create a functional football and recruitment department?

The list goes on, and despite deflections, behind-the-scenes briefings and crisis PR companies, there must finally be accountability where it matters.

I would ask you to ponder this for a moment.

Having ruthlessly exploited the Lisbon Lions with a full range of merchandise in this anniversary season of our greatest achievement, we have already been humiliated on a global scale with our worst-ever European result.

On the 20^th of October, we now face more likely European humiliation.

In Lisbon.

They are reducing us to less than a shadow of ourselves.