Yesterday Martin O’Neill protected Celtic, not the Celtic board.

Yesterday, I covered part of Martin O’Neill’s press conference, particularly the section where he talked about wanting to change the way Celtic play and how he would have done it in January if he had thought he could do so without adverse consequences for the team.

He was right, of course.

A major change like that would almost certainly have had consequences, at least initially. Had he gone too far too quickly, we might not be champions today. It was far better to tweak the team in the way that he did, make the necessary adjustments, get the results and then save the bigger work for pre-season.

But that was not the only thing Martin discussed at that press conference. There was some signing stuff, which I will talk about later, but the one I want to cover just now is his “clarification” on the issue involving the coaching staff.

I believe Martin O’Neill is a man of the highest probity and the highest integrity. That is why I am going to be careful with how I phrase this. I do not believe the version of events he gave yesterday was the full truth of what happened behind the scenes.

That is not an insult.

In fact, in a strange way, it might be a compliment.

Because I think Martin was doing what managers of this football club have too often been asked to do. He was protecting the club. He was protecting relationships. He was preserving the appearance of unity after an internal fight which, by all accounts, had become serious. He was not trying to fool people for his own benefit. He was trying to keep the peace.

Later today, or perhaps early tomorrow morning, I am going to publish a piece I have had finished for a couple of days. It is about Martin O’Neill’s sense of duty and honour, and I think we saw a little of that yesterday. Some people will be infuriated by it. I am not.

Our manager has a difficult enough job on his hands without standing in the middle of a civil war and pouring petrol on the flames. He is trying to prevent that war from breaking out in the open. I understand that. I respect it.

One of the things that has infuriated me most about the conduct of this board of directors over the past twelve months is the way they repeatedly send the manager out to clean up messes they have made.

They were at it again yesterday when O’Neill spoke to the media. His clarification, the moment where he essentially took responsibility for the delay in appointing the coaching staff, was typical of how this board operates.

They screw up. The manager calls them out on it in private. That leaks to the press by one means or another. Then the manager is sent out to tell everyone there was nothing to see in the first place.

But we know there was something to see.

That is one of the few things about this summer that is not really in doubt. Every major news outlet reported the dispute. Journalists were speaking to sources who confirmed it. Someone spoke to Graham Spiers and suggested the matter had reached the point where O’Neill might even walk over it. There is no doubt in my mind that this was an accurate summation of the chain of events.

There were multiple journalists on the story. There were multiple sources for the initial reports. We even know that Shaun Maloney had a sit-down meeting with Dermot Desmond in London on this very issue. So, there is no serious question that the hold-up was at executive level.

Martin O’Neill sat down in front of the media yesterday and gave the club’s version of events.

I do not believe that was the full and accurate version of events.

But Martin is not doing this to mislead people in any malicious sense. He is doing it to protect relationships inside the club and to protect the professional reputations of those above him. He is acting as he has always acted, and as every manager of this club is expected to act. He is being used, once again, as the human shield.

We know there were conflicts behind the scenes with Brendan Rodgers, and Rodgers did the same thing Martin has just done. He came out and said everything was fine, that everyone was on the same page, even though everyone knew that was not the case.

The people running Celtic have been willing to risk burning the club down over the past 12 months. I genuinely believe that. But their managers have not.

As I will explore in more detail in the piece about Martin, they take advantage of his loyalty. They take advantage of his commitment to this club. I think they believed not only that he would not fight too hard to keep his coaches, and that he would not be prepared to go to the ultimate extreme, but also that he would not do anything to jeopardise the image of harmony they want to present.

It is the same image they tried to present at the Irish Supporters Association AGM, which, as I said yesterday morning, I could not have sat through without feeling sick.

It was a stage-managed farce.

It was a case of what you might call “selective listening.” Picking one audience because another might not greet you as warmly. That is not engagement. It’s evasion. It wears a mask to hide what it’s all about; classic divide and conquer.

When it comes to the internal goings on, these people are not all on the same page. There have been major disagreements inside Celtic over the course of the summer. Martin has had to fight tooth and nail to get what he wanted. The fact that he talked about Kelechi Iheanacho yesterday, and made it clear that he wants him, is further proof that his will has been resisted by people inside the club up until now.

Martin has used the leverage gained by standing up for himself and standing up for the team to push through things which people above him did not want to do.

And because it is obvious to some of us that Martin has had to fight to get his way, and because it now looks as if he has won that fight, he is in a stronger position than any Celtic manager has been in for a long time.

But he also knows diplomacy. He knows the importance of presenting the club as being in a better place internally than it really is. He knows when a bit of firefighting is necessary.

And let me repeat this: I have no problem with that.

I know a lot of people do. I know a lot of supporters wish Martin had come out yesterday and told it exactly as it is. But I would ask one simple question.

What good would that do now?

If Martin has got his way and secured what he wanted, if decisions are now being made according to his needs, then the fight is over. He has won. He has shown them his claws and they have backed down. There is no need to rub anyone’s face in it. There is no need to inflame the situation further inside Celtic Park.

Everyone inside that building knows who won.

And everyone knows who lost.

If the losers are capable of putting aside their pique and getting on with the work, this matter does not need to be dragged into the next phase.

A lot of people wanted Rodgers to go scorched earth, and aside from some very pointed comments near the end, Rodgers resisted that at all costs. He knew the alternative would have been to burn the village in order to save it, and that is not a strategy anyone should want to see enacted.

This board of directors may not care enough about the damage they inflict on the club, but other people inside Celtic do. The front-facing people do. They are not going to torch everything after they have got what they want.

What we know is that it appears to have taken the thermonuclear threat of resignation to finally break the lock-jam. Because we know that, and because it has been widely reported, we do not have to pretend to take seriously every word Martin said yesterday.

But because we know it, and because it has already been reported, we also do not have to hold it against him.

He is not doing it to keep information from us. That information is already in the public domain. He is doing it to keep the peace. He is doing it because he knows the veneer of unity is sometimes as important as actual unity itself. It presents an image to the outside world that this club is functioning at a better level than it really is.

He was brought in, in part, to stabilise an unstable situation. Maybe it has taken drastic action to do it, but we are in a more stable place because that action happened, and because it appears to have been successful.

Hearing him yesterday, I felt more relaxed than I have at any point this summer. I heard what I wanted to hear in terms of the tactical and stylistic changes he intends to make. I heard what I wanted to hear in terms of his promise about more signings. I heard what I wanted to hear about Iheanacho, because I could not believe we were seriously going to let his contract lapse after signing Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain up.

It was the next logical move. It made more sense than Oxlade-Chamberlain, and I was on record at the end of last season saying we should keep them both. With a full summer and a full pre-season behind them, both could be formidable squad players in the campaign to come. It was a no-brainer for me.

What this whole episode reveals, or rather confirms, is something many of us already knew.

We are very fortunate to have Martin O’Neill as manager.

There were other candidates we could have gone for. There were other moves we could have made. But perhaps what Celtic needed most right now was a stable, steady hand in the dugout. Someone who loves this club as we do, understands it, understands what it needs, and has enough authority to stand up for it when required.

I am happy to think that he fought and won, because there is no universe in which Martin O’Neill would have rolled over and meekly accepted the hand these people wanted to deal him. What it tells us is that the old lion still has claws.

He has spent the summer sharpening them on the bones of his internal foes, and next he turns his attention to the external ones.

The fact that he is motivated to fight is encouraging. The fact that he looks like a man with a new lease of life is invigorating. And for the first time since this long summer began, I actually feel a sense of optimism about where we might be headed.

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