An empty Celtic Park stands testament to fan anger as the team returns home.

Another pre-season game, and once again there is not a great deal to say about the football itself, because there rarely is at this stage of the summer. There is, however, plenty to say about the empty seats.

That was worth talking about.

Celtic supporters did exactly what they needed to do today. They voted with their feet, and that cannot have been easy for many of them.

Fans should be looking forward to a new campaign.

They should be approaching it with optimism and renewed vigour. We have just won a double, an unlikely and spectacular double, and on the final day of last season Celtic Park throbbed with an intensity it had not experienced in a long time. It was easy to believe that day that we had turned a corner and things were finally going to improve.

It would also have been wrong to believe it.

We have fallen back into the same old pattern again.

It turns out that no real lessons were learned. The board intends to continue running this club in the same slapdash fashion it has employed for the last couple of years, and to hell with what Martin O’Neill wants.

O’Neill was not put forward for media duties prior to the game, although he spoke to the in-house channel after it, trotting out the pathetic party line on Iheanacho. If he wants to step in front of the live ammo for these people, that’s his own lookout, but you get the distinct impression that the people running Celtic would prefer to keep him away from the actual media’s cameras and microphones for a little while.

I watched the match almost as much to see the attendance as to judge how the team was shaping up, because we already know how the team is shaping up.

It is not. This club is not functioning properly right now. It has the outward appearance of an institution doing things. It releases a new kit every other day. It has a constant social-media presence. Doubtless there are deals being worked on, although I suspect more of them involve sales than purchases.

But Celtic is not functioning in the way a fully professional football institution should.

The negativity surrounding the club right now is entirely justified. The media is pounding us, and the attendance is being interpreted as evidence of deep-seated problems between the supporters and the board.

That interpretation is correct.

Less focus has been placed on the deep-seated problems inside the club itself, but those are every bit as important. O’Neill knows he has been screwed whatever nonsense he spoke at the end of the game blaming Iheanacho and his agent.

He knows these people have made a mug of him. It does not matter that, to some extent, he invited it by trusting them. He will be angry, and I suspect no small part of that anger will be directed at himself for believing them in the first place.

The poverty of what he currently has to work with was laid bare on the team sheet. We are already short of several squad players, and we know there will be no Arne Engels. There will be no Reo Hatate. There may not be a Benjamin Nygren, and there will almost certainly be no Daizen Maeda.

That is four players who carried us through large parts of the previous campaign. At least three are likely to go, and with Nygren we will be watching through our fingers to see what happens. Can you imagine this team without that core group?

You saw a glimpse of it today. You saw what that side might look like once it is sent onto the pitch without them.

It is not as though Celtic has no money sitting in the bank.

To hear our CEO speak, and to listen to some of the phoney-baloney justifications for not spending, you would think the club was in the poor house. In the meantime, some clowns online have become obsessed with financial sustainability regulations that Celtic is nowhere near breaching and will not come close to breaching.

The reality is that we are once again sitting on a transfer-trading surplus after selling players such as Luis Palma and Maik Nawrocki. Yet you saw today what Martin has to work with going into the final two weeks of preparation.

We play a fortnight on Monday, the first league match, and then come Champions League qualifiers for which we are not remotely ready. Any new signings arriving now will be rushed into the team before they have had a proper chance to settle, understand the system or even get to know their teammates.

It is a farce. It is always a farce with Celtic, but this summer has been extraordinary for the sheer depth of it.

These are the games in which you want to watch new signings. These are the matches they need in order to become acclimatised and get up to speed with the demands of the team, the tactics and the system.

To be fair, our new boy looks very good. Two goals in two games is not to be sneezed at, and if we can surround him with the right players, he could prove to be an excellent signing.

The important word there is “if”. It depends on an awful lot, and I have no confidence whatsoever in the people running this club to deliver it.

I am glad the supporters who attended did not have to watch a defeat, but I am even more pleased for those who stayed away. They sent a clear message to this board of directors.

When you cannot persuade people to turn out for a match like this, something has gone seriously wrong. When supporters do not want to watch their team on what should be a big occasion, when a side that won the title only weeks ago returns home for the first time and the stadium is half-empty, there is a major problem at the heart of the club.

And we know exactly where that problem lies.

The one real bright spark of the afternoon, and the best part of the entire experience for me, was watching Amy Gallacher at half-time. Her extended interview was excellent. She came across as humble, decent and thoughtful.

She comes from an extraordinary footballing family, and carrying that legacy might have become a burden. Instead, it appears to be a great source of strength.

Hearing her talk about losing the league on the final day, with Celtic players walking off the pitch believing they had won the title only to discover they had not, was painful. It brought back all the memories of that day.

But then came the following season, when Celtic won the title at Celtic Park with Gallacher scoring the decisive late goal. I remember it well because Paulina and I were both there. Those final stages were incredibly tense and completely, unmistakably Celtic.

To hear Gallacher describe that experience and explain what went through her mind when she struck the ball was fantastic. That is Celtic.

That is what this club is supposed to be about.

Well done to whoever put that programme together, because they understood it. It showed that there are still people employed by Celtic who are professional, talented and know exactly what they are doing.

They simply do not occupy the executive offices or the senior positions. Those people are an embarrassment, and today’s empty ground belongs to them. Nobody else.

If they do not have some answers, and good ones, before 60,000 people are due to return to that stadium in just over two weeks, they may eventually find themselves wishing it was as empty as it was today.

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