Celtic’s board are gutless. The Irish Q&A was a stage managed farce.

Now that the minutes of the Irish Association AGM are online, supporters can see what was said, what was asked and how the whole thing went. I read some characterisations today of our gutless board being “grilled” at that meeting, and honestly, I laughed.

Because “grilled” is doing a lot of work there. It bears no resemblance to what actually appears to have taken place.

Celtic supporters asked a handful of questions. That was it.

Do not get me wrong, I liked the questions. They were proper questions. They were exactly the sort of questions other supporters want asked. I have no problem with the fans in the room getting those questions across.

But this was not an interrogation. This was not forensic scrutiny. This was not a boardroom reckoning. It was one question, one answer, and then everyone moved on.

There were no follow-up questions. Nobody was pressed to elaborate. Nobody was asked to justify the evasions. Nobody demanded evidence. Nothing in the published minutes gives us any real sense of the mood in the room when those answers were given.

I said when I first heard about this that it had all the appearances of a stage-managed exercise. Nothing in those minutes leads me to believe otherwise.

That is not a criticism of the fans who were there. They asked good questions. Every one of those questions was something supporters would want asked, and something supporters deserved a proper answer to.

The problem is not the questions.

The problem is the answers. The answers were disingenuous nonsense.

I have already written about one of them: the one where Brian Wilson tried to justify the club’s silence while Celtic supporters were being smeared in the media after the Hearts game. That answer was bad enough on its own. But the rest of what was said was no less ridiculous.

Take the supposed three-to-five-year strategy document.

If this board has signed off on such a document, I want to know what is in it. Supporters have a right to know. Shareholders especially have a right to know. Yet when a motion was put at the AGM asking for that document to be made available, the club rejected it outright.

So, if these people have a plan, I do not know what it is. You do not know what it is. The shareholders do not know what it is. And apparently, we are not believed to be entitled to know what it is.

That is not good enough.

To be frank, a club without a director of football, and with no intention of hiring one in the immediate term, does not look like a club operating to a serious modern football strategy. A club currently without a permanent chairman does not look like a club with clear leadership. A club whose manager is 74 years old, and whose transfer business appears to move as if urgency is an optional extra, does not look like a club executing a bold long-term vision.

It looks like a club making it up as it goes along.

These people have given us no meaningful indication that they are capable of formulating a serious long-term strategy, never mind delivering one. So, in the absence of seeing this alleged document, I do not believe it exists in any form worth taking seriously.

Paulina is going to write tomorrow about the so-called difficulty in dealing with agents and signing players, and needless to say, I find that claim equally laughable and absurd.

It is an insult to the collective intelligence of the support that they still think they can fob us off with this stuff.

Celtic are reactive. Celtic are cautious. Celtic are limited in their thinking and limited in their ambition. There are players this club could get, but does not even try to get, because people on the board have convinced themselves they will not come to Scotland.

Offer players enough money. Offer them a serious football vision. Show them where you are trying to take the club. Tell them they can play in front of 60,000 supporters, compete for honours, play in Europe and become part of something bigger than another mid-table wage packet. People will come here.

Not every player, of course. Nobody is suggesting that. But more than this board seems willing to believe.

The changes to European football should have made Celtic more ambitious, not less. If we reach the league phase of either of the top two European competitions, we are guaranteed a major run of European fixtures before we even talk about qualifiers or knockout rounds. That is a selling point. It should matter.

Come to Celtic. Play European football. Play under pressure. Play in front of one of the biggest supports in the game. Play in a stadium that turns continental nights into something special. That is an offer. That is a pitch. That is a reason for players to listen.

Do we even use it properly? I have my doubts.

Instead, we seem stuck in a restricted marketplace, forever trying to find potential rather than going out and buying players we know can make the grade. Potential is fine. Development is fine. Trading is fine. But it cannot be the whole strategy of a club with Celtic’s resources, history and responsibilities.

The board members at this meeting appear to have hung around long enough to take a handful of questions, offered very little of substance, and then left. That was not a grilling. That was not accountability. That was not meaningful engagement.

They sat there and said almost nothing.

Not a single question received a proper answer. The question about standing up for the fans was met with the claim that silence was the best option. The question about why Celtic find it so uniquely difficult to sign players was blamed on agents and players supposedly not wanting to come to Scotland. The claim that a strategy document exists cannot be taken seriously while the people who own shares in the club are not allowed to see it.

These are not answers. They are evasions.

Proper interrogation would have had follow-up questions. Proper interrogation would have been conducted by people prepared beforehand and armed with facts, figures and direct contradictions. Proper interrogation would have been recorded or filmed. Proper interrogation would not have allowed vague answers to float away unchallenged.

There is a reason these people do not sit in front of the media. There is a reason they do not subject themselves to journalistic interviews. Even our mainstream media, for all its limitations, would put them under pressure if they were properly prepared. Fan media would be another matter entirely.

A proper fan media press conference with these people would be a bloodbath.

And they know it.

That is why the format matters. The format protects them. It gives them the appearance of engagement without the danger of scrutiny. It allows them to say they met supporters, answered questions and listened, while ensuring that nothing too uncomfortable happens in real time. That is not openness. That is stage management.

What did I call it recently? Selective listening.

Based even on a plain-text reading of the minutes, the whole thing looks pathetic. Not because of the supporters who asked the questions we would all have asked in that room, but because of the answers they were given and the format which allowed those answers to escape without serious challenge.

The board were not grilled. They were shielded.

They were given space to recycle the same excuses, the same evasions and the same insulting assumptions about what supporters will accept. They take us for fools. They treat us like fools. Then they wonder why trust has collapsed.

But there comes a point when supporters have to say enough is enough.

Enough of secret strategy documents nobody is allowed to read. Enough of blaming agents. Enough of pretending Scotland is some impossible wasteland where no serious footballer can be persuaded to come. Enough of hiding behind silence and calling it dignity. Enough of presenting stage-managed exchanges as accountability.

If Celtic’s directors want credit for having a plan, show us the plan. If they want credit for engagement, submit themselves to proper questioning. If they want trust, earn it.

Because right now, all these minutes show is what many of us already suspected: this board does not want scrutiny. It wants controlled exposure. It wants carefully managed rooms. It wants questions without consequences and answers without pressure. Selective listening protects them. Selective engagement is a shield to hide behind.

And supporters are getting very tired of all of it.

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