Two Weeks Until Flag Day — Celtic Supporters Are Being Gaslit, and the Board Must Face the Fury

Two weeks tonight, Celtic begin the new league season against Dundee under the lights at Celtic Park.

Flag Day should be a celebration. The championship flag should be raised to a deafening roar, last season’s success should be honoured and the new campaign should begin with excitement, pride and belief.

Instead, Dermot Desmond, Michael Nicholson, Brian Wilson and the rest of Celtic’s discredited hierarchy should prepare themselves for one of the most hostile opening nights the directors’ box has witnessed in years.

The anger will not simply be about a shortage of signings.

It will be about the growing belief among supporters that they are being gaslit.

They are being told that what they can see happening in front of them is not really happening. Failures are repackaged as unfortunate circumstances. Protests are explained away. Delays are blamed on everyone except those responsible. Convenient stories emerge to protect the board, while supporters are expected to doubt their own judgement.

Celtic fans are not imagining the stagnation.

They are not imagining the lack of urgency.

They are not imagining the repeated failures to support the manager properly.

Yet every time they challenge it, another explanation appears asking them to believe the opposite of what the evidence suggests.

When thousands stayed away from the Middlesbrough friendly, Celtic Park delivered an unmistakable verdict. Huge areas of the stadium were empty. The upper tiers were closed. A ground that should have been alive with anticipation looked utterly drained.

Michael Nicholson and Brian Wilson did not appear to be there to witness it.

Presumably, they were working tirelessly on transfer deals.

Perhaps Nicholson was locked in another heroic struggle with those agents he finds so difficult. Perhaps Wilson was drafting another speech about lessons being learned from mistakes the board continually repeats.

Dermot Desmond was absent too, although his distance from the support is now so familiar that it barely surprises anyone.

Then came the attempt to explain the low crowd through the cost of attending football.

Of course football is expensive. Celtic supporters know that better than anybody. They pay for season tickets, European packages, merchandise, travel and subscriptions.

But around 55,000 attended the Newcastle United friendly last summer.

The difference was not that Celtic supporters suddenly became wealthy last year and poor this year. The difference was enthusiasm.

There was excitement then. There is resentment now.

Supporters stayed away from Middlesbrough because the board have sucked the life out of the club. It was a protest, yet the explanation offered effectively told fans that their message was not really the message they were sending.

That is gaslighting.

It turns a visible act of rebellion into a misunderstanding about ticket prices.

Then there was the delay in confirming Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham.

Martin O’Neill said:

“All this thing about the backroom staff, that is totally down to me delaying. Seriously, it was my fault as much as anything else.”

I have enormous respect for O’Neill, but supporters are entitled to question that account.

He had already been back at Celtic for around three weeks. Maloney and Fotheringham were known to him, known to the players and already familiar with the club.

These were not complex appointments involving unknown coaches from distant countries. O’Neill wanted them retained.

Yet they still took weeks to complete.

Once again, supporters were effectively asked to ignore the obvious questions and accept an explanation that removed responsibility from the boardroom.

That is the pattern.

Something goes wrong. Somebody else accepts the blame. The hierarchy walks away untouched.

The Kelechi Iheanacho saga raised even more serious doubts.

After Celtic failed to complete a deal for a player O’Neill clearly wanted, reports emerged claiming his representatives had demanded approximately £47,000 per week.

Where did that precise figure come from?

There was no direct quote from the player, no attributable statement from his representatives and no publicly available proof confirming the demand.

Yet the figure changed the entire narrative.

Suddenly, Celtic were not a club that had failed to close another deal. They were portrayed as the sensible party refusing an outrageous wage request.

The story was incredibly convenient for the board.

Supporters are entitled to wonder whether that number was leaked, exaggerated or selectively presented to make an unsuccessful negotiation look impossible from the outset.

When trust has been destroyed, every unattributed briefing looks suspicious.

That is not paranoia. It is the consequence of years of secrecy and manipulation.

Michael Nicholson’s reported explanations follow the same script.

Agents are difficult. English clubs have more money. Glasgow is supposedly difficult to sell to players.

None of this is news.

Every football club deals with agents. Every Scottish club competes with wealthier leagues. Every serious executive must persuade players to relocate.

Nicholson is not paid a massive salary to list the obstacles. He is paid to overcome them.

Yet supporters are repeatedly presented with these basic challenges as though they excuse Celtic’s failures. They are expected to believe that the club’s enormous advantages somehow count for nothing.

A 60,000-seat stadium. European football. Domestic trophies. A worldwide support. Outstanding training facilities. A club capable of transforming careers.

Apparently, none of that matters because agents are difficult and Glasgow is cold.

It is insulting.

Brian Wilson has spoken about the board learning from its mistakes.

But where are the lessons?

The same delays continue. The same lack of preparation continues. The same excuses return. The same people remain in place.

Telling supporters that lessons have been learned while repeating the same failures is another form of gaslighting. It asks fans to believe words rather than evidence.

Dermot Desmond remains the dominant figure above it all.

He rarely faces the support, does not explain the club’s direction and remains insulated from the consequences of the structure operating beneath him.

Nicholson offers excuses. Wilson offers assurances. Desmond offers silence.

Meanwhile, supporters are told that everything is under control.

It plainly is not.

Two weeks tonight, more than 50,000 fans will surround the directors’ box. Their anger will not be manufactured by social media or supporter organisations. It will be the natural response of people who are tired of being patronised and told that their own eyes are deceiving them.

Flag Day should be joyful.

Instead, it could resemble the atmosphere of the 1990s, with “sack the board” ringing around Celtic Park.

And rightly so.

The supporters are not confused. They are not unreasonable. They are not imagining the decline.

They know exactly what they are watching.

For 90 minutes, Desmond, Nicholson, Wilson and the rest should be forced to hear the truth they have spent so long trying to disguise.