A third perspective emerges from Monday night meeting | OneFootball

One of the Celtic Fans Collective representatives present at the Monday Night Meeting at Celtic Park has added a third perspective on what actually happened in the Jock Stein lounge as senior members of the Celtic Executive met representatives of the Celtic support to discuss the fans collective concerns around the management of our football club…

Celtic Fans Collective, Founded September 2025.

Paul Thompson made an appearance on the quite excellent RGC Podcast

“The meeting itself, very civil, very generally even tempered, I’d say. There wasn’t any raised voices at all, which was quite surprising, apart from a couple of guys had to raise their voices to speak over the noise that was coming from the air conditioning units in the bar at the Jock Stein Lounge, but I wouldn’t say it was convivial.

“It was quite formal, it was quite definitely clear that there was a degree of discomfort, and probably from our side as well as theirs, because there’s obviously been a lot of emotion in there the last few weeks, but it was, I guess, without going into the massive amount of detail on it, it was just a real disappointment.

Celtic Chief Executive Michael Nicholson sits in the directors box with Celtic s Chief Financial Officer Christopher McKay to his right. Celtic v Hibernian, Scottish Premiership, Celtic Park, 27 September 2025. Photo Stuart Wallace IMAGO Shutterstock

“We looked at it from the perspective that we wanted to to take each question that was posed in the open letter, and effectively that served as the agenda, those seven questions which everybody’s seen and read, and that the board had decided not to respond to, but to be fair to them, they did have responses to each of the questions last night, if you could call them responses, but they were very laboured, very slow to address any actual action.

“There was no real commitments, maybe one commitment towards the end which we could pick up on, and it was really a case of, yeah, we think we do everything okay, guys, what’s your problem exactly?

“And it kind of was a recurring theme for the night was, you know, everything’s fine, and we’ve qualified for the group stages 19 times in the last 20 years, what are you worried about in Europe? You know, what’s the transfer policy?

“One of my favourites, which will come in the minutes, I’m sure, but the question around the communication strategy was answered by, ‘we put a statement in the AGM every year, and we also had Paul Tisdale, he did a presentation for 40 minutes at the Fans Forum once’, so that’s the communication football strategy to the wider support, and it kind of went on like that.

Michael Nicholson at Celtic Park. Sunday 18 May 2025. Celtic v FC Women v Motherwell. Photo AJ (The Celtic Star)

“It just felt like, I don’t want to get personal about it, because sometimes these processes need to be de-personalised, but the Chief Executive didn’t look like he was really particularly engaged or prepared for the meeting.

“The Finance Director was definitely more engaged and definitely more articulate in terms of the answers we got, not particularly detailed, but definitely articulate, and I think the challenge for the guys around the table at our side, and it was a big round table, if you want to picture it, we were all sitting around the table together, but the challenge for us was actually got to the point we were trying to get them to understand that we were trying to help them, rather than being adversarial and confrontational in any way.

Celtic CEO Michael Nicholson at Rugby Park, Kilmarnock v Celtic, 14 September 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)

“It was myself and one or two other guys going, ‘look, do you actually realise what you’re saying here? Do you realise the opportunity you’re missing here? Just give us something we can go back to people with and put their minds at rest that you’re actually in control of the situation’, and it was really difficult, it was like drawing blood of a stone, it was just constant references back to fans forums, the information that’s been provided before, stuff that we’re thinking of, stuff that we’re looking at, stuff that we could maybe communicate a bit better, if only we had a communications infrastructure we could use to do it guys, you know, it was that kind of thing, it was really, it was not becoming of conversations.”

The RGC Podcast opens by condemning those who couldn’t hold their water until the agreed plan to share and approve a version of minutes that could be released. Instead a few couldn’t wait and rushed out their own subjective and emotive version of events that set the tone for the support’s reactions and perhaps set back the process that was underway that night with the Celtic Fans Collective succeeding in bringing Celtic to the table.

RGC promise a more detailed assessment of the meeting in their Thursday night podcast and that should be an interesting listen…

Celtic fan protest. Partick Thistle v Celtic. Premier Sports League Cup. Sunday 21 September. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)

After the leaks the Celtic Fans Collective were forced to released a summary of the meeting (see below) and the club thereafter released their own statement giving the perspective from the other side of the round table. Both parties have committed to releasing the minutes which will be important in getting supporters properly informed and thereafter next stages can be discussed with the club.

Rome wasn’t built in a day…