The well-heeled attack on the Celtic Fans Collective

The sudden arrival of the well-heeled saviour is a pattern of institutional survival, not an act of spontaneous charity. Meet Willie Haughey from Celtic.

The announcement by the former Queens Park benefactor on Go Radio is a textbook intervention at the exact moment the establishment’s leverage has evaporated.

By dangling a ten-million-pound carrot, he attempts to buy back the narrative from a working-class collective that has spent months absorbing the blows of bans and boardroom slander.

The maths of his two-million-pound pledge for every ten thousand signatures is a calculated ransom, reducing the support to a database of compliant signatories for the price of two hundred pounds a head.

It is the ultimate class insult to suggest that a voice is something to be granted by a benefactor rather than a right held by those who provide the club’s lifeblood.

Haughey’s claim that he will be involved in this new Season Ticket Alliance is a fiction that collapses under the weight of his own admission. You cannot be a neutral observer while simultaneously bankrolling the secretariat, renting the office space, and hand-picking a legendary frontman to act as an emotional shield.

PIGGY BACKING ON THE CELTIC FANS COLLECTIVE

This is a coordinated pincer movement, mirroring the earlier “Evolution, not Revolution” salvo from David Low and Duncan Smillie, which sought to foreground “reasonable” engagement just as supporter pressure forced the board into a defensive position.

These intermediaries do not exist to facilitate change; they exist to neutralize it by moving dialogue back into the sanitized comfort of the boardroom where the “Establishment” remains unchallenged.

The mask slipped definitively at the last AGM, where Ross ‘help me Peter’ Desmond, shaking with the visible nerves of a man out of his depth, explicitly labelled the board as the “Establishment” while dismissing the fans as “anti-establishment bullies with nothing better to do with their lives.”

It was a staggering admission of how far the hierarchy has drifted from the club’s founding principles. They no longer see Celtic as a challenge to oppression, but as a corporate institution to be protected from its own people.

The moment the AGM got a straight Red. #CelticAGM pic.twitter.com/8Ei4nzbfbn

— Glasgow Dave (@glasgowdave571) November 21, 2025

The machinery of the Haughey intervention relies on the disposable use of sentiment to protect this new establishment, weaponizing club icons to provide a polished face for a boardroom-friendly agenda.

CHAIRMAN WILSON PLOTS THE DOWNFALL

We have seen the fallout of prominent figures like Paul John Dykes, whose A Celtic State of Mind platform is the largest fan media channel in the support.

Once a loud advocate banging the drum for the collective, his sudden migration to the comfort of corporate hospitality while grooming his audience for a Haughey-led takeover reveals a man whose conviction was as temporary as a guest pass.

This shift in fan media mirrors the political theatre of Brian Wilson, a veteran politician now using his experience to buy time for a failing regime. Wilson’s talk of “good faith” is a tactical weapon used to imply the fans are the aggressors, but his olive branches only appear when the board feels the heat of a boycott.

The Collective has been anything but silent; the strategy has been relentless, from delayed stadium entries and tennis ball protests to the ongoing ‘Not Another Penny’ campaign that is currently bleeding the establishment of its arrogance.

This sustained pressure has worked, and it is precisely why men who sat silent during the dawn raids and the sham AGMs suddenly find their voice for ‘harmony’ just as the eight-thousand-strong waiting list is exposed as a ghost.

The time has come to remove the board and their ‘reasonable’ intermediaries from the conversation entirely.

THE POLITICAL FOOTBALL

There is no “good faith” while the CEO and CFO remain in power, the seven questions regarding recruitment and strategy remain ignored, and the Green Brigade is now locked outside the gates.

By disengaging from their dictated terms and refusing to be pacified by Haughey’s two-hundred-pound-a-head bounty, the support controls the tempo.

The so called board establishment is circling not because they care about the future of Celtic for generations to come, but because they fear the power we have as fans, the consequences and the reality of a not another penny campaign going on as indefinitely as their punitive Green brigade ban.

We hold the power. The board have run out of road and Brian Wilson is unable to politic out of their own mess – believing some slick talking Desmond fans are credible enough to change things.

Not Another Penny means we won’t be buying your koolaid.

They dictated the terms.

Not anymore.