This Celtic board talks about change … but they cannot deliver it.

Last week there appeared to be a strategic leak from Celtic Park. At least it looked very much like one. The story talked about a three-man managerial shortlist. The names mentioned were hardly inspiring. I will come back to that later. More interesting was the familiar promise attached to the story.

Radical change is coming. That is the message we are supposed to take away. The club is about to evolve. Big decisions have been made. A new direction is being mapped out.

Curiously, this message arrives at a very familiar moment in the calendar.

Season ticket renewal time is approaching.

Nobody should be surprised that talk of transformation suddenly fills the air at this point in the year. Maintaining the line that everything is fine would be impossible. The past season has exposed too many problems for that.

And promising change and delivering change are not the same thing.

Basic human psychology tells us something important about how institutions handle moments like this. In politics, marketing and public relations there is a well understood principle. Organisations can survive reversals and U-turns. People are perfectly willing to accept change if it is explained honestly.

What destroys credibility is pretending that the reversal never happened.

Theresa May’s government struggled not because it changed its approach to Brexit repeatedly, but because it refused to admit that those changes were happening. The public saw the manoeuvres clearly, yet the government insisted nothing had altered.

That is when people begin to doubt you.

Changes themselves are rarely the problem. The way they are framed is what matters.

If Celtic’s board were to say tomorrow that the club needs to evolve, that some of the structures around the club have grown stale, and that fresh thinking is required, that argument could be made convincingly. It could be presented as strategic evolution rather than capitulation.

The problem is that this should have happened long ago.

Attempting to sell that message now runs into a much bigger obstacle.

Nobody trusts the people delivering it.

Political history provides a useful illustration of how credibility collapses.

Theresa May’s government was perceived as weak and evasive. Boris Johnson’s government took matters further. It treated voters and parliament with open contempt while insisting that obvious falsehoods were true. Liz Truss then produced a form of decision making so reckless that the markets themselves removed her from office.

Each administration failed for a different reason. Weakness. Dishonesty. Reckless incompetence. Incredibly, Celtic’s board has managed to display all three.

At various points this season the club has looked weak and evasive. At others it has appeared arrogant and dismissive of the very supporters whose loyalty sustains it. At still other moments its decision making has seemed so erratic that it is difficult to understand what the thinking behind it could possibly have been.

One of those flaws might still leave room for a recovery in credibility.

All three together leave absolutely none.

That is the real problem facing the board today. Their credibility has not simply been damaged. It has been exhausted. When people no longer believe you, even the most sensible proposals begin to sound hollow.

Consider the recent silence over events at Ibrox. The club issued a cautious statement that skirted around the central issue without confronting it directly. That hesitation was interpreted by many supporters as dissembling and weak.

Then there is the Green Brigade saga, which has been handled in a way that has left large sections of the support feeling that they have been treated with contempt and even lied to.

Most damaging of all, however, has been the sequence of decisions surrounding the managerial situation. The hiring of Paul Tisdale and Wilfried Nancy stands out as the moment where the board’s judgement became impossible to defend.

Whatever internal process produced those appointments should have triggered serious questions inside the boardroom. The issue was not merely the appointments themselves. It was the timing.

The club had options at that point. O’Neill had dragged us back into the title race and put us in the League Cup Final. Instead of consolidating that position, the board handed a new manager the task of taking the job when it was still unfinished whilst implementing a new tactical structure with players who had never worked under him.

No properly run club would design a transition that way. It looked reckless.

Once supporters reach the conclusion that a board’s decision making is reckless, rebuilding confidence becomes extraordinarily difficult. That is why the reported managerial shortlist has generated so little enthusiasm.

The next managerial appointment should be a moment capable of uniting the support. Martin O’Neill’s return has shown that such moments are possible. Yet the names mentioned in the leak are far more likely to divide opinion than to bring people together.

That is the final piece of the credibility problem. Even the supposed solutions feel uninspiring.

Meanwhile whispers continue about possible boardroom changes. Those changes should not wait until the end of the season. If the same individuals remain in place while season ticket renewal letters arrive asking supporters for patience and faith, it will only deepen the sense of frustration.

Accountability does not work that way. When Theresa May lost the confidence of her parliamentary party she was replaced. When Boris Johnson’s conduct became impossible to defend he was forced out. When Liz Truss demonstrated that her judgement could destabilise the economy she lasted mere weeks.

Even in large corporations the same principle applies. Steve Jobs was once forced out of Apple by the board. Years later he returned and removed the leadership that had replaced him. Leadership changes happen because organisations recognise that credibility matters.

Right now Celtic’s leadership faces exactly that problem.

Supporters are not rejecting the idea of change. On the contrary, most understand that change is necessary. What they reject is the idea that the same people responsible for the current situation can convincingly deliver it.

Once you accept responsibility for a crisis of credibility, the conclusion becomes unavoidable.

You step aside. That’s the only way to restore that which has been lost.