REID - WE WON'T RUIN CELTIC

Celtic will not be allowed to fall into the same financial turmoil which is currently enveloping Old Firm rivals Rangers, according to Parkhead chairman John Reid.

Reid and chief executive Peter Lawwell met shareholders at the club's AGM at Celtic Park on Friday morning, where they rejected accusations that failure to bolster the squad sufficiently in January had cost the club their fourth Clydesdale Bank Scottish Premier League title in succession.

Reid pointed to the troubles of their rivals, who are reportedly around £30million in debt and, according to boss Walter Smith, being run by the club's bankers Lloyds.

While Lloyds subsequently denied that claim, the search for a new owner continues at Ibrox.

Former Home Secretary Reid returned to darker financial days at Celtic Park 15 years ago as he discussed the issue of clubs in serious debt.

He said: "In the past week alone that could apply to Hull, Portsmouth and Rangers and in principle it could apply to the Royal Bank of Scotland, to anywhere else.

"That's why I say look around you, great institutions are falling apart or finding themselves in hock to others, from banks to commercial concerns and governments.

"You don't become dependant on a financial institution because you borrow some money from it.

"You become controlled by a financial institution and utterly dependant on it if your level of debt to that institution is greater than you can afford.

"You can't just borrow endless amounts of money to try and make up for the financial advantages that your competitors have.

"That way lies ruin.

"The vast majority of fans and shareholders know that.

"You have to make sure you don't fall in to the populist trap of trying to buy an easy ride for the next few months by selling the future of the club and that is what we won't do."

Reid added: "I think we ought to remember the video shown at the AGM, it showed Celtic 15 years ago on the bank of bankruptcy.

"The experience of being three hours from bankruptcy and administration, as we were in 1994, is something that those of us whose hearts belong to Celtic will never forget.

"That is what motivates us, not the fear of debt. We have learned our lesson in the past.

"If you spend money you don't have to such an extent that you get debts that you can't afford, then you lose control of your own destiny.

"This board is going to do everything we can to make sure that never happens again to Celtic."

While assuring manager Tony Mowbray that money will be available to strengthen the side in January, Lawwell concurred with Reid's ideas on fiscal frugality.

He said: "The objective of the club is that it remains under the custodianship of the people which holds the values and traditions.

"But we are flexible about the debt, it is not an obsession.

"If you do the right things elsewhere the debt looks after itself and we have proved that over the years.

"But we know what can happen when clubs actually go beyond that line.

"This week it is Hull, Portsmouth and other clubs that are local and who have had a lot of publicity.

"But that is irrelevant to us, we have to get on with our own business."

Reid, who hit out last year at Rangers fans for singing 'The Famine Song' - which refers to events which killed an estimated one million people in the 19th century and led to a mass migration from Ireland - claimed racist behaviour from visiting fans at Celtic Park was still a problem.

However, the Celtic chairman used as evidence the recent Europa League home game to Bundesliga side Hamburg.

He said: "It still goes on and we heard it in the Hamburg game the other night.

"I have two uncles who died fighting a poisonous regime, at the heart of which was racism. They were called Nazis.

"So since I was 17 or 18 I have held the view that the vast majority of British people do, that you judge someone according to their inherent values and actions not their races, or background or colour.

"Nobody is saying that anyone has a monopoly on offensive singing but the worst type is racism, whether against people because of their colour, religion or ethnic origins."

Most of the AGM was good-natured with one shareholder calling for Mowbray to tell striker Georgios Samaras to get his hair cut.

Another, to great cheers, said defender Gary Caldwell should have been sent home on the day of the Europa League game against Hapoel Tel Aviv in Israel last month for discussing his contract demands with the media.

When a spokesperson from the Celtic Supporters Trust complained about the atmosphere, Reid, with another jibe at Rangers, replied: "If you want a boring crowd of Holy Willies, go over to the other side of the city."

Looks like yer getting feck all in january Mogga!

What an arrogant prat Reid is. More defiant garbage from a truly talentless man. Good natured AGM? The Celtic PR machine does exist, but they only bring it out for preservation of the board, and not for the things the support find important. Sums it all up really. Money in January? Looks like there won't be much judging from that statement, certainly not what a new manager should have at a club with any modicum of ambition.

The mediocrity begins at the top and the last thing we need is to celebrate it with these types of statements. There really is no humility at the top of the club, no appetite for the scale of the job at hand, no ambition. We need to improve and this bampot should be driving it instead of playing some PR game of self preservation. I am really not interested in the "Rangers are rubbish therefore we are fantastic" argument, it makes no sense and is small minded and petty (actually quite Rangers-esque) and here is the Chairman of Celtic, being a whiny little self triumphant fool. Need anyone remind him there is nothing to celebrate at all, we lost the league to that shower of broke "Holy Willies"). Put your head down and find a way to make things happen ya daftie.

It continues to be to Celtic's loss and great shame that this man is still at the club, no less in the Chairman's seat.

A bit rich for the the fascist to talk about the Nazis as well, his time as Home Secretary was peppered full of statements that are far too similar to what the Nazis came out with pre-war. His problem with them might well be simply over the fact that history judges them poorly because they lost the PR battle. John Reid, the Celtic Chairman.

Oh and Lawwell...

The PLC need to stop comparing this club to ones that have failed, and start looking at ones that are successful and work from there. Be positive, start looking for reasons for success and not reasons for failure. We have had four years of our players, management and club representatives mired in negativity telling us all why we should understand how rubbish we are and why we should be happy for just about anything, and if they think their business model can sustain this level of prolonged disenchantment from their "customer base" then they have another thing coming.

How close are they to ruiniung the club?

Tumbling crowds
Depleted quality in the playing staff
Huns only one point behind
Out of three major cups before Christmas barring a Europa miracle
No evidance of a change in policy from the plc
Fan apathy at it`s worst for 18 odd years or so

At any time in the last three years the plc could have spent a fraction of the transfer budget and blown the huns to hell. We didn`t and sat back like we did in 88 and allowed them to regroup and focus while we could all see in the terraces that things were far from right.
We cried out for a striker last two windows and got a £50k midfield signing from Cardiff!

They have brought the club to it`s shuddering halt not the economy. Prudency is great, but a prudent couple of signings would have heaped misery on those bastards and we let them off scott-free!

What will future Celtic historians say about that Reid?

In my mind anyway this man should never have been allowed near the board. He is a nasty bastard more at home with the crown than the people.

What did Lawell come out with anyone know?

When do we do something to appease the peasants Captain Mannering?

Celts For Change!!

I dispise this man with every fibre of my being.

He sums up everyting that is wrong with the modern Celtic.

In fact there isn't very much to like about modern Celtic at all.

Well done Dr Reid - the only man at the club with the balls to put the boot into the huns, without fear or favour.

(Just hope it doesn't come back to haunt him like Murrays tenner for a fiver classic!)

He isn't doing a thing though. Talk is cheap as they say. He needs to actually do what needs to be done and back the manager instead of playing to the gallery IMO.

Surely the best way to boot the huns in the baws was to spend at any point in the last two windows and bury them?

He has, as have the rest of the faces on that plc board, treated the fans as fools. They gambled that the ramshackle band put together over three years were good enough. They weren`t and they aren`t now.
Now though he suggests we will have five relatively quiet years to keep the balance book level.

Go and feck yourself Reid. Should never have been allowed near the front feckin door.

So whay he's saying in essence is:

1. The Old Firm is alive and well and everything Celtic does should be judged in the context of our relationship with them across the river.
2. Mogga's getting 50p in the January window, but that's ok becuase the Huns are in freefall.

This parochial crap will never go away as long as it suits the Suits at Celtic Park and Ibrox, so we'd better get used to it and learn our place.

Sums it up perfectly.

We have been had, unknowing customers of this big con. This is why he says he won't ruin Celtic, as this is the job of the PLC, maximise a return from doing a minimal amount of work for the benefit of the investors or for the sake of capital. A pliant customer base, the dream of every company interested in only a financial return. All it needs is the bully/ex-Stalinist/new fascist in charge to tell us plebs what it is we should be singing/thinking/saying/buying.

Stuck following a bunch of unimaginative suits running this wonderful institution, created for the noblest of goals, into the same cul-de-sac as those who created the conditions for the oppression of immigrants in the first place.

Shame on them.

Here ya big war mongerer.... doesn't matter how much debt anyone has when we can't exploit the situation and finish top of our league.

Bampot.

This is what Reid is actually saying...

"We won't ruin Celtic [cause we've already done it]."