Here's a plan - build a team!
There's not a real football fan in the world who gets joy from being "on plan"
By Donal Glass
You know what's great about modern football? Plans. Oh, how I love plans. Apparently, Celtic’s no longer just a club—it's now a sophisticated incubator, a high-tech football nursery designed to nurture talent until they're ripe enough to be plucked by the real football teams down south or across the continent. Welcome to Paradise, the world's greenest conveyor belt.
"On plan," "off plan"—spare me this nonsense brought to you by one of Peter Lawwell’s favourite mouthpiecs. I've heard less jargon from a reality TV producer desperately trying to convince me a bunch of love-struck influencers actually have a genuine plan beyond getting verified on Instagram. Whatever happened to simply being a football club? Winning trophies, lifting cups, actually beating teams in Europe? Or is that hopelessly outdated now? Maybe I missed the memo where Celtic transformed from Glasgow’s premier football institution into a cold, clinical incubator, a sort of Scottish Ajax-lite without the European pedigree or suave image.
Call me old-fashioned (or worse, if you prefer), but football clubs shouldn't spend every waking moment obsessing over the precise resale value of their centre-backs or whether their left winger is "on trajectory." What happened to valuing results, winning football matches, and building teams that stick around long enough to win more than a 'best training ground facility' award?
We seem stuck in this never-ending merry-go-round, always looking for the next "great investment." But investments don't score goals; footballers do. Remember when our ambitions were about trophies rather than profits? When the plan involved actually trying to build something lasting rather than flipping footballers like Glasgow's favourite property developers flip overpriced West End flats?
Look, I'm not naive. Players come, players go; it's football. We understand reality. But this tedious fixation on “plans” reduces supporters to mere consumers, fans turned accountants, poring over spreadsheets instead of match reports. Is that really what we signed up for?
Maybe I'm the idiot here. Perhaps our boardroom geniuses truly believe football matches are won on balance sheets rather than pitches. But ask any real supporter, and they'll tell you Celtic means more than being football’s most successful temp agency.
This obsession with being perpetually "on plan" is ridiculous. Plans go awry. Injuries happen, form dips, and—brace yourselves—some footballers actually just enjoy playing for Celtic rather than using us as a stepping stone. Shocking, I know. If your entire existence revolves around sticking to a rigid transfer "roadmap," what happens when life, football, or reality simply refuse to cooperate? You panic, of course—just before you issue a press release to reassure supporters everything remains perfectly "on track."
Maybe, just maybe, Celtic should rediscover being a football club again—one that aims for trophies, European progress, and genuine stability, rather than celebrating the fact we occasionally turn a modest profit selling promising teenagers to Brentford.
Give me footballers who want to be here, who aren't primarily focused on their exit strategy, who aren't judged as successes purely by how closely their sale price matches the plan. Because honestly, if all Celtic represents is a flashy incubator, you can keep your spreadsheets, trajectories, and your tiresome business buzzwords.
I’d much rather have a proper football team.