The Celtic Rumour Mill goes into Overdrive | OneFootball

I saw there was a rumour the Celtic Fan Collective and shareholder groups had piqued interest in outside investors. One of many rumours of late of course, but one I thought worth exploring. It is just a rumour but the timing feels right…

Brendan Rodgers talks to the media after the match. Hearts v Celtic, 26 October 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)

And there’s also another rumour that has emerged since submitting this article to The Celtic Star about Brendan Rodgers closing in on a new one-year contract extension backed by a substantial transfer budget for the January transfer window. Talks with Michael Nicholson, this rumour claims, have progresses positively. Pinch of salt with that one too for the moment. Look at this…

This one is all about the earlier rumours…

Rumours have always swirled around Celtic, often loud, often contradictory and often evaporating as quickly as they arrive…

Last week there was the suggestion that Willie Haughey could replace Peter Lawwell as Chairman. The week before, it was talk of Michael Nicholson stepping down as CEO in January. There has been chatter of non-executive directors changing, and suggestions that shareholder-focused supporter groups have attracted interest from outside parties watching Celtic carefully.

Not all of these things can be true. Most likely, many will fade, as so many rumours at Celtic do.

But the rumours themselves are perhaps not the story. What matters is that they are being believed, or at least, that people find them plausible. Rumours stick when a mood exists for which they feel like an explanation.

Celtic fans Celtic v Sturm Graz, UEFA Europa League, Group Stage, , Celtic Park – 23 October 2025. Photo Stuart Wallace IMAGO/Shutterstock

If Celtic supporters were entirely confident in the clarity of the club’s direction, in the decisiveness of its leadership, in the transparency of its vision, these rumours would be brushed away, laughed off, or barely noticed. Instead, they travel, they gain traction and they feel possible. That is the mark of a club whose foundations are steady, but whose leadership is no longer seen as unassailable.

This doesn’t mean change is inevitable, but it does mean change now feels thinkable at least.

There is a sense that the club is approaching a point where it must choose its next identity. The old one, stability, domestic consistency, cautious governance, has served its purpose. It safeguarded Celtic through volatile football cycles and periods of uncertainty. But what has preserved Celtic has arguably also constrained it. The club is safe, but it is not thriving, it is strong but not growing, it is respected but not feared.

And to many, Celtic was built not to survive quietly, but to stand boldly.

The real question, then, is whether Celtic is about to change, or whether Celtic needs to change.

Celtic Park under the lights before kick off Celtic v Sturm Graz, UEFA Europa League, Group Stage, Celtic Park, – 23 October 2025. Photo Stuart Wallace IMAGO/Shutterstock

There is a difference between change that arrives because the walls are closing and change that is chosen because the horizon is calling. The former is reactive, the latter strategic. The danger for Celtic is that it drifts, secure in the comfort of domestic dominance, while the rest of European football accelerates into new economic and sporting realities. That is how sleeping giants remain asleep.

Yet Celtic is not asleep, but it is restless.

Supporters feel it in their bones. They sense that the club’s current scale does not reflect its potential. They know Celtic could be more, in Europe, in recruitment, in ambition, in identity, in its relationship with its own people. They are not all demanding revolution but they are demanding seriousness.

So yes, some change may be not only likely, but necessary.

But necessity alone does not guarantee good outcomes. Change for the sake of change is as dangerous as stagnation. A new chairman, a new CEO, or new directors would matter only if they came with a shift in philosophy, culture, and strategic direction. Outside investment would matter only if it understood the club’s meaning as much as its market value. New influence would matter only if it strengthened Celtic’s identity rather than diluted it.

Celtic fans banner about Soldier F Celtic v Sturm Graz, UEFA Europa League, Group Stage, Celtic Park, 23 October 2025. Photo Stuart Wallace IMAGO/Shutterstock

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The future will be shaped not by whether Celtic changes, but by who leads the change, and what they believe Celtic is for.

Because Celtic is not simply a brand, an asset, or a platform, it is a lived community. It is history and identity intertwined, it is a club whose meaning has always been larger than the shareholdings through which it is technically owned.

And so, we return to the line that has echoed through every era of the club’s story.

Celtic does not merely belong to those who hold the shares. It belongs to those who sustain it. If change is coming, and it may well be, the task now is to ensure that the next era honours that truth, rather than forgets it.

Celtic may now be entering one of those phases. There is a growing sense, across the fanbase and even among external observers, that Celtic as an institution is shifting. The rise of supporter collectives, increasing dissatisfaction with strategic direction, new interest from potential investors, and speculation around figures such as Willie Haughey all point to a club caught between eras.

None of these things alone signals change. But together they suggest that the model of governance and stewardship that has defined Celtic for the past two decades may no longer feel as secure or inevitable as it once did.

Celtic v RB Leipzig – UEFA Champions League – League Stage – Celtic Park Dermot Desmond in the stands ahead of the UEFA Champions League, league stage match at Celtic Park, on Tuesday November 5, 2024. Photo Andrew Milligan

At the centre of this moment stands Dermot Desmond. His role is not that of a majority owner, but he is the single most influential shareholder. His presence has shaped Celtic’s corporate and strategic identity for over twenty years. When he stated, unequivocally, that his shares were not for sale at any price, and that he intends to pass them on to his family rather than relinquish control, it clarified his position. But it also raised questions about what that means for Celtic’s future.

The language he used spoke not of investment, but of inheritance.

It suggested a view of ownership rooted in permanence, even familial succession. To some supporters, that may feel reassuring. In a football landscape awash with unpredictable owners, leveraged debt, speculative investors and nation-state soft-power projects, Celtic have been steady. Desmond has not bought into the club to flip it, strip it or use it to pursue other geopolitical interests. Continuity like that can feel like safety.

But to others, his comments on succession evoke something Celtic supporters believed they had left behind. The memory of the old Kelly-White regime, the period before Celts for Change forced structural reform in the 1990s. That was an era defined by entitlement and a belief that the running of the club was the natural right of those few families who had always done so.

Supporters were expected to attend, pay, and remain grateful.

When people ask if we have come full circle, it is not nostalgia they are pointing to, it is the fear of a club returning to a mindset in which the board knows best, and supporters should stay in their place.

The Celtic Board at Tynecastle.. Hearts v Celtic, 26 October 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)

There is no financial crisis at Celtic. That is important to say. The club is profitable, stable, and consistently successful domestically, for now. The complaint, rather, is that Celtic are coasting. The recruitment strategy feels risk-averse. The European performances feel timid. The communication from the board feels distant, managerial, even patronising at times. It is not failure that supporters sense, but underachievement. The club does not seem to be operating at the level of its own potential.

And where supporters see potential unfulfilled, outside investors may see opportunity.

Celtic is a club with global reach, a recognisable brand, and cultural identity. It is a sporting institution capable of regular Champions League access, in a league that could become far more commercially significant in the years ahead. It is, to put it plainly, underdeveloped. That is precisely the type of organisation that attracts capital, not failing clubs but sleeping giants.

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So, it is unsurprising that rumours of investor interest continue to surface. This does not necessarily signal a takeover attempt, it signals the recognition that Celtic could be something more but is not becoming it under its current approach. The question is not whether people are watching, it is whether the board is willing to respond to the reality that the wider football world, even our locality, is changing rapidly.

Dermot Desmond prior to the Celtic vs St Mirren Cinch Premiership match at Celtic Park on May 20, 2023 (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

And here we come back to Desmond. If he is unwilling to sell, does that end the conversation? Not necessarily. Control does not always change through ownership transfer. Influence can shift through voting blocs, gradual accumulation of shares among smaller shareholders, boardroom restructuring, strategic partnerships or phased investment. Power in football clubs rarely moves in dramatic, cinematic gestures. It moves slowly, procedurally, through alignment, pressure, and time.

The real debate, then, is not simply whether Celtic should change owners. It is whether Celtic should choose to evolve, or allow circumstances to force evolution upon it.

New investment could bring modernised operations, more ambitious sporting targets, a more dynamic approach to recruitment and a clearer sense of purpose in Europe. It could also, if mishandled, fracture the cultural identity that makes Celtic more than just another football brand. Clubs that hand over control do not often get it back.

This is the heart of the matter. Celtic’s identity and Celtic’s ambition must not be treated as opposing forces. The club does not need to choose between continuity and progress. But progress will not happen automatically. It requires intentional leadership, genuine engagement with supporters, and a willingness to accept that being the biggest club in Scotland should not be seen as the ceiling. There was a time when Celtic looked outward, when Europe was not viewed as a bonus or spectacle, but as belonging. Supporters feel the loss of that mindset. Investors may well see the gap it has left.

We have not come full circle yet. But we may now be walking the same path again, slowly, without openly acknowledging it. The difference now is that supporters understand the stakes. They know what complacency can cost. They know what happens when the boardroom treats the club as its private domain. Celtic’s future will not be decided in a single meeting, a single headline, a single AGM. It will be shaped gradually, by who sets the terms of the conversation, those who want the club merely to endure, or those who believe it can grow while remaining true to itself.

This is perhaps not a crisis, but it feels like a crossroads.

And crossroads demand clarity. Celtic must decide not just what it wants to avoid, but what it wants to become. And the supporters, perhaps more than at any point in the last two decades, must be ready to insist that their voice is not just heard, but respected.

Because the club does not merely belong to those who hold the shares. It belongs to those who make it thrive. And so, the question now turns to the support itself.

Are we still in the era of better the devil you know, reassuring stability in exchange for limited ambition? Or has the moment arrived where Celtic must consider new hands on the wheel, new investment, new energy, new possibility?

Is outside interest a threat? Or is it an opportunity?

Niall J

Celtic in the Eighties by David Potter, signed copies by Danny McGrain available from celticstarbooks.com

Don’t miss the chance to purchase the late, great Celtic historian David Potter’s final book. All remaining copies have been signed by the legendary Celtic captain  Danny McGrain PLUS you’ll also receive a FREE copy of David Potter’s Willie Fernie biography – Putting on the Style, and you’ll only be charged for postage on one book.  Order from Celtic Star Books HERE.

Celtic in the Eighties and Willie Fernie – Putting on the Style both by David Potter. Photo The Celtic Star

Danny McGrain signing copies of Celtic in the Eighties by David Potter. Photo: Celtic Star Books

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