Celtic board compared to Manchester United’s Glazers in damning ownership assessment
Former Sunderland and Charlton executive Charlie Methven has compared Celtic’s current boardroom situation to Manchester United’s controversial Glazer ownership.
Methven has emerged as a vocal critic of the Parkhead hierarchy in recent months, questioning the club’s financial strategy and reluctance to invest more heavily in European success.
The businessman has previously accused Celtic’s board of prioritising cash reserves over progress on the pitch, arguing that the club’s approach risks limiting its ambitions.
Speaking during a discussion with A Celtic State of Mind and The Celtic Exchange, Methven drew parallels between Celtic’s leadership and Manchester United’s ownership under the Glazer family.
He said: “I regard it as being one of the big sports business stories of today. No one understands or knows what [Dermot Desmond’s] motivations are.
“If you look at a comparable situation, it’s Manchester United. Manchester United have had a disastrous ownership for pretty much exactly the same period that Celtic have had this management.
“Very similar time periods, very similar stadium decay, very similar coasting along at first and then falling off a cliff, because you’re never standing still, you’re either going forwards or you’re going backwards. Similar fan unrest.
“Also both clubs, highly unusually, are both profitable. One of the big tensions you have in the clubs I run is that the club loses money and the ownership spends. So there’s a degree to which you can sit across the table from the fans and say, ‘We’re putting in millions, here. This is not easy, not cheap. We are putting everything we can into this.’
“In this situation and the Man United situation, effectively, the fans are not only paying for the club — they’re actually producing a profit. So they have every right to say, ‘What the hell is going on with our money?’
“If I look back over those 20 years, has there ever been, laid out in any meaningful way, a basic vision and plan? I’ve not seen it, and that’s very unusual — but it’s also true of the Glazer tenure at Man United.
“There are other failed ownerships who do, nonetheless, have a plan. The plan just fails. But what’s particular to the Glazer ownership of Man U and the current board management at Celtic is that they’ve never actually laid out a plan.
“They are judging themselves by their own benchmark as opposed to making themselves accountable to any publicly declared situation.”
