Last night’s Celtic fan reps were stuck with the monkey not the organ grinder.

I don’t know if last night’s meeting was supposed to show the Celtic board were taking this seriously. In reality, it exposed a profound malaise.

The chairman sat there and tried to speak as if he held real authority. Yet his own comments, along with what our representatives have reported back, made the reality obvious. The board sent them to deal with the monkey rather than the organ grinder.

As I have said before, these are deeply unserious people.

Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay did not attend. Either they chose not to be there or someone decided they should not be there. Either way, the chief executive and the chief financial officer, the two people supporters most want answers from, were absent.

Instead, the chairman tried to act like someone with the authority to negotiate on the club’s behalf. In reality, he cannot move without their approval. And they, of course, cannot move without Dermot Desmond’s approval.

The phrase “in office but not in power” feels appropriate.

I do not know why Nicholson and Mackay did not meet the Collective.

Perhaps they believe it is beneath them. Perhaps their egos cannot tolerate sitting in a room with people calling for their removal. Whatever the reason, the optics are dreadful. The impression created is one of arrogance and entitlement. That is the last image they should want to project to a supporter base that has already demonstrated its strength through organised campaigns and a boycott.

As I wrote earlier, we now appear to have a single individual in a relatively modest role holding the club hostage over the Green Brigade’s return because of a personal grievance. That is where Celtic finds itself. A group of men protecting their own positions and priorities while the strategic direction drifts and a title race moves towards its decisive phase.

Everything I have heard suggests that last night was a holding-pattern meeting. In another context, that might be understandable. Here, it is not.

A holding pattern will not resolve this.

Brian Wilson may be treating the situation as a political exercise. Meet dissatisfied groups. Listen politely. Promise to relay concerns to the people who actually make decisions. Create the impression of progress without delivering any.

That approach will not work here.

If Celtic lose the title while the Green Brigade remain locked out and fan media stay sidelined, those issues will collide with the anger over a January window in which supporters spent more on tickets and merchandise than the club spent on transfer fees.

That combination will poison the atmosphere and drag everyone into it. If the board thinks the pressure is intense now, it hasn’t seen anything yet.

The meeting exposed another problem as well.

For the second time in recent months, a Celtic director openly boasted that the club is still following the same processes it has followed for the last twenty-five years.

It is difficult to imagine a more damning statement.

Even more worrying, it was not presented as a concern. It was presented as a strength. In an industry that has transformed dramatically even in the last decade, they are openly proud that little has changed in more than two decades.

The fact that they do not recognise the problem is staggering.

The reality is that if your club stands still while everyone else moves forward, you are effectively going backwards. Eventually, you fall out of the race.

We cannot keep operating the way we did a quarter of a century ago. That approach is not stability. It is stagnation. When senior figures defend it, they reveal a culture that has grown comfortable, risk-averse and short of fresh thinking.

There are vague promises of change. The club says it will appoint new executive directors. It says an external agency is searching for a new chairman rather than making another internal appointment.

Those developments should offer some encouragement. The refusal to comment on whether Nicholson and Mackay remain under review should as well, because frankly they should be. Yet the central problem still stands.

The chairman offered no meaningful updates because he does not hold the authority to make the key decisions. The people who do hold that authority, or at least are supposed to, did not even attend the meeting.

That looks like either contempt or incompetence.

Neither reflects well.