Celtic has made the right call on the Green Brigade. But this isn’t settled.

Last night we got the welcome news that the Green Brigade can return to Celtic Park starting this weekend; Celtic has finally done the right thing.

It has taken far too long. That is the first thing we need to say, because while supporters will feel relief at this news, and they should feel relief, nobody should fall under any illusion that this somehow wipes the slate clean.

It does not. It cannot. Bringing the Green Brigade back now is absolutely the correct call, but it also amounts to an admission, whether the club says so out loud or not, that the club made a mistake when it kept them out for this long.

And it was a mistake. It was a very grave mistake. Attempting to mislead supporters over this matter was an even bigger one. But they are only the latest in a long line of mistakes this board of directors has made this season.

At the most important point of the season, with everything on the line, with four massive home games left in the league and a title race hanging in the balance, it is only right that this club should want every possible advantage.

It should have wanted Celtic Park full of noise, full of energy, full of intimidation for the opposition weeks ago. It should have wanted the stadium at full force from the moment we brought back O’Neill and we had a chance at unity.

Instead, it chose a different road, and in doing so it weakened itself for reasons that no-one understood and offered up excuses that looked convincing but which convinced fewer and fewer supporters with every passing week.

So yes, the Green Brigade are back this weekend, and that is all to the good. Better late than never. Better common sense prevailing now than not prevailing at all. But let’s not kid ourselves about what this means.

This does not end the argument. In some respects, it sharpens it.

Because if the Green Brigade can come back now, why couldn’t the club bring them back sooner? If this can be resolved now, why couldn’t the club resolve it weeks ago? If the club had the power to bring this matter to an end, and clearly it did if this is what has happened, then why did the club ask the support to believe otherwise?

Why did the club lead everyone through that fog of half-explanations, blame-shifting and buck-passing? Why did the club use external bodies as cover for what now looks, more than ever, like an internal decision?

Those questions do not go away because the gate finally opens. They become more important. And people will not put them aside just because the club has now done the right thing.

Because the club has spent months telling people this was not straightforward, claiming its hands were tied, insisting processes had to run their course, and arguing it could only do so much.

If, all of a sudden, the problem proves solvable on the eve of the most important spell of home games this season, then supporters are entitled to ask why the club did not tell the truth from the start. They are entitled to ask what changed.

More than that, they are entitled to ask who made this decision, who blocked it before, and who finally decided that enough was enough. They are entitled to ask whether this was always about politics rather than principle.

That is why people cannot simply wave this away as a happy ending. It is not a happy ending. It is a necessary correction. Those are two different things.

The Green Brigade coming back helps Celtic. That much is beyond dispute.

The atmosphere will improve. The edge in the ground will improve. The sense of the support pulling in one direction will improve. At a moment when this club needs every ounce of force it can muster, that matters.

It matters enormously. It may even matter enough to influence what happens between now and the end of the season.

And if that proves to be the case, if the club has left one of its most powerful assets sitting outside the stadium for months only to welcome them back now because the stakes are suddenly undeniable, then that only adds to the case against the people who made this mess in the first place.

Because this should never have got this far. It should never have become a running sore and another symbol of the board’s disconnect from its own support. It should never have become one more example of a club making life harder for itself, then expecting gratitude when it finally stops doing so. That is not leadership. That is not wisdom.

This is not how worthy custodians run Celtic.

Still, the immediate priority was to get them back in. To get the mood in the stadium right. To get Celtic Park sounding the way it should sound at a moment like this. This will let the players walk out to a ground that feels united and dangerous and ready for these four massive games. It will let the opposition feel the difference from the first whistle.

Celtic Park will become what it should be at this stage of the campaign: a weapon.

But when this season ends, this club has to start answering the questions this period throws up, and it seems to me that this sequence of events has made at least one person’s position completely untenable.

Hargreaves came in to run security; his conduct has needlessly provoked disharmony and prolonged this situation in ways that are unacceptable.

He cannot remain in his post.

The Green Brigade are back this weekend, and Celtic will have done the right thing.

But it also confirms something many supporters already believed. This was always solvable. This was always, in the end, a choice.

The people who made that choice should not imagine that’s it. They get no special prize for doing what they should have done much sooner.

Their late correction does not buy them forgiveness.

It buys them a little relief. It does not buy them absolution.

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