Chris Gallagher of Celtic- The Cynic has delivered a great insight into Monday’s meeting in Greenock attended by the Celtic Board of Directors and senior employees.
Demonstrating how out of touch they are the club headed to Greenock on Monday night for what they thought was a secret meeting to be congratulated for their brilliant leadership of the club.
With the AGM scheduled for December 1 Michael Nicholson, Brian Wilson and Chris McKay could mention how in touch they are with the customers.
As a bonus Martin O’Neill was brought along to charm the punters with his favoured Q and A repetoire.
Tales about his age, Seville, Lenny and Larsson and the pesky fans will go home happy and contended while Celtic crash through the floor of European competition. Supporters normally pay for the level of banter, in Greenock they could listen for free!
After a morning of speculation following the meeting Celtic put out a typical drab story about their trip to Greenock.
Chairman Wilson claimed that the questions were hard but fair, Nicholson nodded along with the bland comments that are his trademark.
Day by day different aspects of the meeting have emerged. None of it paints the Celtic executives in a positive light.
Gallagher detailed the information that he got from the now infamous Greenock meeting.
https://youtu.be/3VmN6aivf4w?t=3110
Just before 52 minutes Gallagher ran through an email that he received from a Cynic subscriber who had attended Monday’s meeting.
It did shine a light on some additional areas as well as the circumstances that led to the meeting and the tone of how it went.
HOW DID THE GREENOCK CSC MEETING COME ABOUT AND WHO WAS IN THE AUDIENCE?
He says just for clarity the decision to hold the meeting wasn’t unanimously popular within the membership. So that’s something to bear in mind.
The meeting itself, our club (Greenock CSC) has a loose affiliation with the Collective going in under the Celtic Supporters Association.
We’ve been trying to get a meeting with the board, independent of both (the Collective and CSA) for years to get across our dissatisfaction.
It was due to happen in late summer, but the transfer window made schedules difficult. As for how it came off, there was a sense of fair play for coming down, but they got a doing and gave plenty of the corporate answers you’d expect.
Words like lazy, incompetent, and unsuitable were all used to describe them to their face.
O’Neill apparently only heard about the meeting at the 11th hour and decided to attend to hear the direct views of fans.
It seems that the Irishman rose to the challenge in his role as Human Shield. He took every opportunity to step in and answer questions aimed at Nicholson, Wilson and McKay.
That reduced the talk time of the three executives, something that all three clearly lack.
Nicholson loves this tactic. At the AGM his favourite defence is to deflect questions directed at him to others on the podium, notably Brendan Rodgers or McKay.
Martin O’Neill filibustered and shouldn’t really have been there as he probably ate up 20 to 30 minutes on his own.
Fan media was backed by the attendees, though it that hasn’t made it into the wider headlines.
I put a two-part question to Nicholson. Why can’t he use fan media to communicate something his predecessor wanted to do given we hadn’t heard from him since January? And why does the board not protect fans enough?
Citing Tannadice and the knife incident, (Mark) Hargreaves was left to answer and Nicholson didn’t bother his ass. Hargreaves did concede they could do more to combat narratives.
CELTIC FANS- THE OPEN BLADE TAKEN TO TANNADICE
At Tannadice in December the Daily Record ran with a story of how a Celtic fan threatened board members with a sword! The picture showed the luminous jacket of a Police Officer and was interpreted as a blade.
The Record first ran the story online with the reaction to trash it. The Record used the story the following day in their print edition. To this day the Record is one of Celtic’s favoured media partners with extensive access to Celtic staff and match day facilities.
Nicholson’s refusal to answer is typical. At a meeting with fans in October 2025 he was asked about Rodgers referencing club signings, the answer from the CEO was a shrug of his shoulders.
A couple other questions covered the strategy over three to five years supposedly appears in the AGM pack every year.
European ambition. A fan made the point that winning the next five league titles being back in the Champions League within two years and winning a knockout tie within four shouldn’t be unreasonable. Martin O’Neill agreed and got tepid nods from the board. Tepid nods?
Recruitment.
Martin pointed to the various parties involved as part of the issue. He said the likes of Kelechi Iheanacho and Marcelo Sarachi peddled a narrative that doesn’t meet reality with wages, bonuses, signing on fees, and agent fees all astronomical and enough to put them put them among the top earners.
Those claims have absolutely been shot down. Iheanacho is being paid £23,000 a week at Bursanspor, Saracchi signed for Houston Dynamo and is part of their wage cap.
O’Neill also accused Arne Engels of downing tools during the summer, he seems keen to trash the image of three players pivotal in the 3-1 title clincher against Hearts.
Recruitment staff will no longer be named essentially for security reasons almost pointing to the incidents involving Tisdale and Lawwell Jr.
We invested in data anal analytics in January and Martin took responsibility for January.
How much was invested? Was it a £50 a month subscription or a bespoke system tailored for the unique demands required at Celtic in domestic and European football.
If O’Neill was responsible for the January 2026 recruitment he has just stated the case never to be involved again and why Celtic needs a Director of Football.
On Rodgers, Wilson said they can’t speak about him because of legalities, although we should have challenged that given Dermot’s statement. On fan media, Wilson said the arrangement predated him, but cited a breaking of trust.
If there are legalities relating to Rodgers’ departure then it was very foolish of the CEO to allow Dermot Desmond’s statement to be published. A year later it remains unaltered on the Celtic website.
