Celtic fan concerns are growing the more information about Police Scotland’s operation becomes known.

I’ve been in Krakow since Monday, and I was very glad to get away from this city and all the craziness that I knew would be going on in the media and elsewhere. But as per usual, I underestimated the level of craziness we were going to see. So I’ll be covering a lot of that over the next couple of days.

My last act before I left on Monday was to do the latest episode of the podcast, and in it I was very unsympathetic towards the Green Brigade in regards to their absence from Celtic Park. I’m still not convinced that they couldn’t have been more cooperative with Police Scotland. But I’m no longer quite so ready to believe Police Scotland’s statement because it now very clearly contains a number of glaring contradictions. And some of it, in fact, has been exposed as less than honest.

I’ve spoken to a bunch of people on the subject of what took place. And the more I hear, the more disturbing it gets. There was a question that bothered me right from the start of this, and it was how the police know, when they’re kettling a group of fans, that they’ve got the right people in that group? Because in a civil society, if even one person is detained on less than solid grounds for even one minute, that’s an infringement of civil liberty that shouldn’t be allowed.

And the police basically blocking off a street and not allowing fans whose only concern was going to the game to watch their team can’t be justified in any way, shape or form. What makes it worse, of course, is they claim this was some kind of successful operation and that it affected both sides equally.

But if that’s true, then how come there were flares in the Ibrox end? Now, Police Scotland said that this whole thing was about stopping that from happening. Well, they didn’t stop it. So how can they claim it was a success? It was certainly a success in that they kept the Green Brigade and Celtic fans out of the ground. And yet somehow, not only did they allow Ibrox fans with flares into the ground, but they then basically stood back as they let them off and then broke a bunch of seats.

Celtic might not be banging the drum very loudly, but Celtic supporters’ groups of every shade and stripe either have members who were affected by this, or they know people who do. And I’ve been listening to some of the reports from those people, and they’re shocking. I have no problem with the police enforcing the law. I have no problem with them preventing people from entering grounds who won’t follow the rules. I have no problem with them demanding personal information from people wearing face coverings and other things to disguise their identity. But this went way beyond that.

And although the Union Brats are stamping their feet and claiming that their fans were treated just as abysmally, I think you can see clearly from the fact that they somehow got flares in the ground that this is not the case. So, this does seem like a case of two-tier policing. I’ve heard that some of their ultras were not kettled in the same way but escorted to the meeting point by police and then allowed into the stadium.

I’m not a great lover of the culture that surrounds Ultras. I don’t believe there’s any cause for going to a game as if you’re going to a paramilitary rally. Get a grip. You want to do that? Stay home and play toy soldiers. It’s preposterous. Football clubs don’t need it, and the rest of the football support doesn’t need it. And the police are only going to tolerate so much before they take action. And if fans refuse to follow the law, then there are going to be consequences. That is natural.

But my concerns about Police Scotland go well beyond this situation. And I repeat again what I said in the blog on the date of the game: they don’t police properly. They allow law-breaking to happen in front of them and don’t go in and make immediate arrests. That’s why the flares were lit at Celtic Park with no consequence. That’s why the seats were broken at Celtic Park with no consequence.

We have the most bizarre policing style in Western Europe here. They claim to be non-confrontational and then they do this to our supporters. They claim to be acting aggressively towards law-breaking, but don’t do anything when it actually is taking place in front of their eyes. I’m not buying this. It paints a confusing picture, and the suggestion of two-tier policing is clearly still a live one.

Because the complaints aren’t just coming from members of the Green Brigade – they weren’t the only people who were detained. They weren’t the only people who were stopped from being able to go and watch their team.

And as I said, the more I hear, the more disturbing this becomes, and the more questions Police Scotland owes us answers to.

I hope to God that the club is trying to get those answers. The club isn’t saying an awful lot, but fan groups are furious and fan groups are talking about action of their own. And while I am uneasy about seeing this escalated, and I’m aware that further causes problems, if the club does nothing, what does the club expect to happen?

We are not Statement FC, and I sometimes think that stand makes us look more reasonable and responsible and professional. But there is a time and place for going public with concerns and if the club shares the concerns of the fans, then it should have no problem with putting that front and centre and saying so.

There are allegations here that the club itself actually colluded with the police to deny the Green Brigade entry. If the club thinks that allegation is going to go away, they are dead wrong. And if that is something that did actually happen, and if the club does have some responsibility for this, then there are people at the club who don’t belong there. People in the boardroom, especially since the police response was so obviously scattershot and affected more fans than just that group.

As regular readers will know, I am not a bleeding heart. I’m a law and order guy. I believe the police have a job to do, and they should do that job. And I don’t believe that those who choose to follow only the laws which suit them should be somehow immune from consequences.

I think if fans are going to continue to break the law by bringing flares and pyros into the ground, then there are going to be consequences, and one of the reasons the club has asked them to stop, and other fans have asked them to stop, is that those consequences, more and more, are going to affect other supporters.

But this was not the well-organised and well-performed police manoeuvre that Police Scotland would have had you believe in their statement.

That statement was rendered utter rubbish by what happened in the Ibrox fans section of the ground. The police operation on the ground failed in two respects: it did not prevent pyro from being smuggled into the ground and used inside the stadium, and it did not prevent seats being broken in large numbers.

So, while they’re patting themselves on the back, Celtic is counting the cost and Celtic fans are in uproar – and many of them are quite right to be.

I’m broadly supportive of the Scottish Government, but in terms of their relationship with Police Scotland, I think they have failed lamentably. Police Scotland is more interested in public relations than in genuine policing, and I believe that. I have a lot of respect for the guys on the ground doing the job. I think that Pig Watch, for example, is abhorrent, and it’s the last thing I want Celtic fans to be doing. Those who’ve condemned it are absolutely 100 percent right.

But justice policy is screwed up in this country and, as a consequence, Police Scotland’s operational leadership is a joke. They don’t behave in a manner that builds or inspires any public confidence and this goes way beyond policing football matches and into other areas. If we ever have social strife on the level we saw in England against immigration centres, it’ll grow into something much worse because of the lack of competence of those at the top of the organisation here.

Football policing has always been highly suspect. I have previously accused them of not wanting to properly police football stadiums, but at the same time using football fans as a nice lever for getting extra overtime and building little fiefdoms like the so-called intelligence unit – which is a contradiction in terms if ever I’ve seen one.

And yeah, there are clearly questions to answer here.

But the biggest question of all might be: who exactly is asking all these questions, or who is prepared to ask them? Who stands up for football fans in Scotland? Nobody who matters. Nobody who’s willing to make their voices heard.

And the irony is that makes policing harder to do, because policing depends on mutual respect and trust. And if there’s none of that on one side, then there’s none of it on the other and they have eroded trust amongst our support, big time, with the way they handled this. It’s not good enough at all.