Celtic Boss Tells The Authorities It Is Up To Them To Deal With Off-Field Misbehaviour.

Speaking at his Celtic press event this afternoon, Ange said – in relation to a question I put to him about the ugly scenes at Ibrox at the weekend – that he sees he and his players as having a responsibility to remain calm and behave in a measured way when confronted by such incidents and that beyond that it is the job of the authorities to respond.

He is, of course, correct.

As usual, the manager’s answer was excellent and thoughtful.

Although I asked him if there was a point where he felt things were getting a little dicey, he spoke in the way he reacted on the day; he took everything in his stride.

There have been managers in this city who would have sensationalised those events and spent days touring the press studios demanding action. In some ways, many of us would have welcomed that reaction from Ange but it’s simply not his style.

Why make matters worse? Why pour fuel onto the flames?

This situation was bad enough without adding to it.

Nobody can accuse this guy of having done any of that, and because our club has reacted to this in a calm, measured and professional fashion the onus on the authorities to deal with these issues in a robust manner is even more obvious.

I didn’t ask him what he thought of officialdoms response.

I didn’t ask him what he thought about Strict Liability or anything like that; those aren’t within his purview.

I asked him a specific question about whether he felt personally that things might get out of hand, and would he have supported taking the players off it things had gotten worse, or supported the players if they’d walked.

His answer makes it clear that he thinks the players and the coaching staff need to appear calm, always, even at the centre of a storm.

Our players and our staff behaved impeccably both during the game and since.

But the question should haunt the game here; as we’re behaving responsibly, what in God’s name are the authorities actually doing?

Ange was very clear that this is their mess to deal with … so how are the dealing with it?

We had Neil Doncaster out the following day telling us what Scottish football wasn’t prepared to do but I have yet to hear a single person in authority say what the next step should be to ensure that we don’t get repeat performances.

I mentioned in my question that the home club earlier in the season refused a member of the Sky Sports broadcast team a pass for their ground on the basis that his safety couldn’t be guaranteed.

Serious questions should have been put to that club then, and the governing bodies should have made an effort to get to the bottom of it. That they failed to do so quite obviously played a role in putting our people in harm’s way.

It’s nearly a week since the game, and aside from the governing bodies telling us that they don’t intend to govern this matter has been tossed to the police. Whilst I welcome the news today that at least one person has been arrested – and in relation to the bottle thrown at the keeper – it is perfectly plain that football is shirking its own responsibilities.

Our manager isn’t the guy to ask about that, which is why I didn’t.

But someone at our club should be asking, and very loudly.

This can’t be simply brushed aside in the hope that the issue goes away. Their fans will be at Hampden. They will be coming to Celtic Park. They didn’t even offer us the decency of a public apology.

There is still a lot to be concerned about here.