CELTIC FANS AND THE MYTH OF ENTITLEMENT
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Oct 11
- 3 min read
If there’s a single word or phrased that I’ve seen misused the most in Scottish football in recent years, apart from “The Rangers are Coming” obviously, it is “entitlement”.
Entitlement is a word that plenty of Celtic’s detractors, and indeed some of our own fans like to throw around sometimes. Yet very few seem to actually grasp what entitlement means when it comes to following Celtic.
With Celtic Fans, Expectation is not Entitlement
Let’s start with fans of other clubs, and I don’t just mean the Ibrox £1.49ers.
I often these folks say “You’ve won the league almost every year for the past 2 decades, you won 4 trebles in a row. You’ve got more money than the rest of the league put together, so what are you greetin’ about?”
If, indeed, Celtic’s criteria for success is to expect to win a league where we have, due to our sheer size and worldwide support, such vast financial advantages, then I don’t really think you can call that entitled can you?
I’d call it the minimum acceptable standard for a club in Celtic’s position of strength.
Entitlement is the belief that you deserve to have something that isn’t merited. If Celtic fans threw a collective tantrum after losing to Bayern Munich last season, that would have been entitlement.
We massively overperformed in that game. However, it meant that the bar for what is acceptable to the Celtic support has, rightly, been raised.
In all honesty, when Rangers died in 2012, and any serious domestic rivalry ended, measuring Celtic by domestic achievements alone ceased to be a viable metric.
However, our European record since then (occasional outstanding results like Barcelona notwithstanding) has been wretched.
Truth be told, we’ve actually depended on the massive overperformance of the Govan tribute act in the Europa League to keep the coefficient high enough for us to play in the Champions League without having to qualify, a privilege that has now been withdrawn.
So, no, it’s not “entitlement” to expect to win the Scottish Premiership 9 times out of 10 when you are Celtic.
Nor is the current fan unrest with our board entitlement either.
Again, this is a point that even some Celtic fans will disagree with me on.
I read one comment today from a Celtic fans page on social media that juxtaposed the current board with disgruntled fans in the crudest of binary choices.
They asked: “Who would you rather have running our club, experienced business people who are financially astute, or angry neds writing slogans on bedsheets?”
Attached was an image of a crudely painted protest banner, which I’m assuming was put up somewhere near Celtic Park recently.
This false imposition of “one or the other” is a bad faith argument and one that does not stand up to scrutiny. Fans can protest however they wish, and if such banners are the easiest available means to them, then so be it. I won’t belittle anyone for simply expressing their right to peaceful protest.
My thoughts on the Celtic Board are well documented at this point. I believe they are incompetent almost to the point of malice on a number of levels.
But as usual, whenever someone tries to brand you “entitled” for simply demanding the best possible standards from people in positions of power and trust, I suspect there was an agenda behind this comment, and many others like it that have shown up online from previously inactive accounts since the Celtic Fans Collective formed.
It is not and never has been a binary choice between business people or fans. Anyone who says so is, simply put, wrong.
There is room for both financial prudence and passionate support in the Celtic Boardroom. However, it must sit alongside fan involvement. We, the fans, are the ones who bankroll this club. We buy the season tickets, the jerseys, the merchandize that keeps Celtic operating as a going concern.
We may not all be shareholders in the a business sense, but by way of emotional and financial commitment, we are all stakeholders in the cultural entity that is Celtic.
Monday’s meeting suggested, sadly, that our current custodians have forgotten who is the true holder of power in this relationship.
They are in a rude awakening if they don’t change their attitude soon, as are these “fans” who think demanding meaningful progress on and off the park is somehow “entitled”.
