Brian Wilson promises better engagement. Celtic fans want accountability first.

Another day, another Brian Wilson statement. He promises all sorts of changes and makes dramatic claims about the summer ahead. All I can say is this: season-ticket renewal time must be near when Celtic suddenly find the urge to talk to supporters and make big promises about change.

Not that they have done much talking to supporters, despite the club’s claim. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Wilson’s statement raises a number of points. He talks again about mistakes and lessons. He mentions a boardroom reshuffle. But that reshuffle was always coming. We lost the chairman and a non-executive director, so changes were inevitable.

I still get the impression this board has not grasped the significance of the moment.

Wilson speaks about unity returning and hopes it will last beyond the summer.

First, this is not unity. It is a temporary ceasefire, and he needs to recognise the difference and so do a lot of other people.

Fans will not forget what has happened over the course of this campaign. How long this lasts will depend on the summer. It will depend on certain people stepping aside and leaving their posts.

Listen, I cannot be clearer about this. The Celtic Fans Collective has made its position clear, and as the largest body of supporters speaking for supporters, that position reflects the settled will of much of the Celtic support.

A lot of these people have to go.

There is no place at this club beyond the here and now for Michael Nicholson. There just isn’t. He is out of his depth and out of touch. He has proved grossly unsuited to, and unfit to hold, the position he presently does.

His invisibility and the way even his own board appears to have sidelined him, makes that clear. His non-appearance at the last sit-down with the Collective, and the fact his name appears nowhere in recent official club communications, says plenty. Brian Wilson currently speaks for the club. The temporary chairman, doing the CEO’s job for him.

He is bust. He is done. As long as he remains at the club, the executive has no credibility because he has no credibility.

The idea that there are not hundreds of better people out there to do his job is ludicrous. It is obvious that Celtic, as an organisation and as a football club, are being sold short by having this pygmy in a senior executive role.

He would not get a job of this scale, on merit, anywhere else. This club will not move forward while he remains in post.

Chris McKay’s position is just as untenable, but for a very different reason. His open and brazen contempt for supporters was already obvious long before this crisis reached its current point. He was not an impressive figure before that became clear, but his attitude towards the fans, evidenced many times now, has been appalling.

In any other customer-facing business, treating paying customers with that degree of condescension would not be acceptable.

It ought not to be acceptable here.

He is another one. Over-promoted. Holding a major position he should not hold. Another figure who could easily be replaced and needs to be replaced.

Brian Wilson claims to have spoken to lots of fans over the last few weeks. But there has been no formal consultation with the Celtic Fans Collective in that time.

He may have sat down with some hand-picked individuals from other organisations. But many of those organisations are signatories to the open letter calling for no confidence in this Celtic board, including Brian Wilson himself.

Since it is not clear that this has been a wide-ranging consultation, I do not think we can take it particularly seriously.

Much of the rest of the statement leans on vague promises about future consultation, including plans to take the Fan Forum to supporters. The Fan Forum is a joke. It runs on invites only and achieves nothing. On at least one occasion, a senior executive sat in front of people who knew the facts and lied to them anyway.

I’ve heard versions of this “taking the message to the people” line before.

Brian Wilson played a role in the Labour government in 2003 when it floated the idea of Euro roadshows, supposedly to sell Britain’s entry into the Single Currency. The proposal followed Gordon Brown’s notorious “five tests” decision, which effectively shut the door on Tony Blair’s ambitions to join.

Of course, no Euro roadshow ever happened. Nobody ever intended one to happen.

They cobbled the idea together at the last minute to create the impression that the government kept the door open, even though Brown had already closed it, locked it, bolted it and nailed it shut.

I will be surprised if this travelling Fan Forum ever appears, whatever name they eventually give it. I will be surprised if it ever sees the light of day, because I do not believe anyone intends it to.

No current board member will put himself through that or face the anger of supporters. That idea is laughable. Like much of what the club does right now, it exists to get them through season-ticket renewals.

From the moment Brian Wilson took over as interim chairman and made his big statement about reaching out to fans, he has seemed determined to reach out only to certain fans. To talk only to certain organisations.

His tactics have been about division, about controlled engagement, and about playing down the significance of the one fan organisation which wants root-and-branch change at every level of the club.

These people talk a good game. But with only a handful of weeks left in the season, we have made no progress on appointing a manager. The club’s in-house interviewer did not even ask about it.

That decision sits at the heart of everything, and the club must make it before it asks fans to part with their money. Otherwise, what exactly are we buying?

More than that, supporters demand accountability. Everyone accepts this season has failed on almost every level. The team may still get us over the line. The manager may still win a double. But we all know that only masks the cracks.

Ignore that, and we will end up right back here. Or worse.

I already fear the worst for the summer, and any supporter who feels the same way will not be bought off by more weasel words from these people.

If this club took accountability seriously, people would already have left that board.

The rest would act as caretakers until replacements arrived. Then they would go as well.

That is what has to happen.

You do not get to do what these people have done this year and stay in post. It is unconscionable. It is despicable.

This club does not move forward while they remain where they are.

There will be no unity while the architects of this shambles are still sitting in the boardroom. They think this can be fixed with a better strategy for communicating their disregard for us.

We are past communication anyway.

Now we’re in the arena of consequences and that’s where this will remain until there are some meaningful ones.

This club does not need another listening exercise. It needs accountability. It needs people to take responsibility for their mistakes and fall on their swords. Resignations. That’s what restores trust and credibility to an organisation which has failed to this extent. This club needs change. Profound changing, not tidying up on the fringes.

And until the people at the top of Celtic understand that, every statement they release will sound exactly like what this one sounds like. Not leadership. Not a genuine agenda for reform. Just another season-ticket renewal pitch.

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