Celtic cannot expect to sell season tickets without telling us what we’re buying.

Before Celtic ask supporters to renew season tickets, they need to answer one very simple question: what exactly are we being asked to buy into?

The question feels somewhat redundant in light of today’s news that McCowan and Scales have signed extended deals.

Still, that is the question at the heart of everything right now.

It is the question they cannot dodge, because in a matter of days, or perhaps a week or so at most, those renewal forms will start landing. The club will ask supporters to commit serious money on the promise that next season will be better than this one.

The problem is that there is no visible sign that this is true.

People might be getting the idea that I’m a little dispirited right now.

They would be correct.

I am dispirited, as many of us are, but I’m a little more dispirited than the average person in the Celtic support because I’ve been playing Cassandra for so long, and I’m now seeing things that I hoped I would never see coming to pass.

We’re going into a summer where a perfect storm is building all around us.

If we don’t win the title this year, then our options are already narrow.

Yes, we can win the cup and go into the Europa League instead of the Conference League, but that’s not a path that makes me feel much better. We would have to be ready for Europa League qualifiers, and I don’t think we are. Worse than that, I don’t know that we will be.

We’re in a position right now where we don’t know who the manager is going to be.

We don’t know what the squad is going to look like, although we know Forrest, McCowan and Scales will be core members of it.

We don’t know how much money there is going to be for the team to spend, because we have no idea how calamitous the position might be off the pitch. Maybe we have some saleable assets, but that is just asset stripping the team further unless we know they are going to be properly replaced.

It is not going to take much to move me from being dispirited to being despondent about our chances and our prospects.

We have dropped the ball in a very big way. Dave King was completely wrong to talk about a house of cards, but we have conspired to hurt ourselves so severely that we might end up proving him right. Even though he is wrong, let me outline what I think the challenges are going to be going forward.

The first is the manager, and we need to put him in place before we do a single thing in the transfer market.

I already know that this is a lesson we are not learning. I already know that talks are going on between our club and various players without the say-so of a manager. James Forrest just signed a one-year deal to do what? Scales and McCowan are like calculated insults to the fan-base.

Unless the next manager thinks these are first-team regulars, that is a waste of resources we could be deploying somewhere else. With a shrinking FSR ceiling because of the denial of Champions League income, that is not money we can afford to waste.

That’s why I suspect that the next manager isn’t going to have a choice in whether to use these guys or not.

I don’t know why we’re talking to players, agents or clubs before we know who is going to be coaching them.

The person who is going to be coaching them might take one look and say no, thank you.

Then we start the whole cycle all over again. We’ll have people asking why the manager doesn’t give these guys a chance. Well, if they were his players, he would be expected to. If they are not his players, why should he treat them differently from any other?

The name of the manager himself is another nightmare scenario.

I genuinely do believe that we have harmed our chances of making the right appointment in the way we treated Rodgers. It is unconscionable to treat a manager who brought the club nothing but success, and whose warnings have been vindicated in the performances of the team and the lack of goals, in such a shocking manner.

What that tells everyone out there is that this club has no sense of loyalty.

It has no sense of proportion. It sacked a manager after eight games, hounded a successful boss out the door and then stabbed him in the back. That is not a great way to sell your club to the next big name.

So the quality is going to suffer as a result of that. It drags the whole project down before it has even got its feet under the table. That is what they have inflicted us with. That is what they have done to us, and it is disgusting that nobody on the board has paid with their job for that outright scandal, if for no other reason than to send a message to football that this club will hold people accountable for mistakes.

I’m not in the least bit impressed by the alleged quality of the players we’re looking at either. For a start, I don’t know why we’re travelling around looking at goalkeepers. Do we intend to make Sinisalo a backup all over again? If you’re signing a goalkeeper to come in and be the backup, then he has to know that when you sign him. He has to know that it may be months before he ever plays a game.

It is the one area of the pitch where having two strong options is not particularly helpful. You need one top-class option and a really good development prospect who nevertheless has to get games once in a while.

Is that really the area of the pitch we need to be most focused on?

I don’t like some of the names being suggested for other positions.

I don’t like the quality of players we’re being linked with. Motherwell players.

From what I can see, at least half the Motherwell team at the moment.

A Hibs midfielder who has been all around the Norwegian league, or wherever the hell it is that he’s from. Are these the players who are going to qualify as the next big thing at our club and take us into European football as serious players again?

The fact that so many among our fan base seem happy with that is preposterous to me.

Those who are calling for the hiring of the Motherwell manager are even more bizarre. Let me repeat what I have said before. There is nothing in his career before now that remotely qualifies him to be the next Celtic boss. Nothing that he is doing right now remotely qualifies him to be the next Celtic boss.

Attractive football? Fine. Your team is fourth in the league, so it is not that great. If he had got to the semi-finals or final of a cup competition, then you could argue that gives him a little more cachet. But Neil Lennon has got to a Scottish Cup final, and I don’t think there is a single person in our support who would endorse that idea.

I worry about the timing. If we do not appoint a manager in the next five weeks, we will drift deep into the summer. Given the scale of the rebuild, which cannot even begin until the manager arrives, we are setting ourselves up for too much work in too little time.

We will enter the market with gaps across the squad and a well-known cash surplus in the bank. That puts us in a weak position. Every club we deal with will push for a higher fee. That is the reality.

So there are a lot of reasons to be downbeat, but the biggest reason of all is the stony silence from Celtic. In a matter of days, perhaps a week or so at the most, they are going to ask fans to spend money based on a promise that next season will be better than this one.

That is the season ticket question. That is the issue they cannot spin their way around. They are asking people to renew faith in a project that has no visible shape.

Everywhere we look, the solutions being suggested are mediocre and small-time. They scream of restrictive imagination and lowercase ambition. I don’t know what vision they are trying to conjure up here, but it is not a promising one. It is not one I want to invest in.

None of these stories may be true. The club may not be chasing three or four players from SPFL sides sitting fourth or lower. It may have no interest in appointing the Motherwell manager. It may even have a bigger plan. Something that shakes the Scottish game.

But silence creates its own problem. The club has failed to build any kind of communication strategy. It does not trust supporters. It does not engage with them, even in the smallest way. So that silence fills with gossip and disinformation.

I have written time and again about the danger of negative perception, and this club still blunders into the minefield. It refuses to learn. Perception hardens into fact for many people, and that is why so many have lost patience with those in charge.

When you learn nothing, you deserve everything that follows.

If a plan exists, they need to share it now. Should these people have a strategy, they need to reveal it.

If they have secured a top managerial candidate, they need to name him.

Because right now, the club asks us to pay for nothing at all. It is not even a pig in a poke. When you buy a pig in a poke, you at least expect a pig. Even if the phrase exists because you did not always get one.

Right now, I have no idea what they are selling. That is the worst possible thing to ask people to spend their money on.

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