At some point, Celtic has to stop playing nice.

Last night, after I put up the piece about Police Scotland visiting Celtic’s training ground, a couple of people asked me if I’d heard Martin O’Neill’s further comments about the atmosphere at Ibrox and whether I agreed with him when he said that he didn’t believe there was cause for concern.

I don’t happen to agree with him on that. And I would be very surprised indeed if Martin O’Neill himself believed every word that came out of his mouth.

But Martin is doing what Martin has to do. He is showing a sense of responsibility that is sadly lacking elsewhere. He is trying to turn the temperature down a little before kick-off, and I understand why.

There is a difference between recognising what Martin is doing, appreciating the horrible position he is in, and agreeing with every word he says.

Let me put it this way. I cannot disagree with the choice he has made. Martin is doing the right thing by himself, by the players and by the staff. He is hoping that if he does and says the responsible thing here, other people may act responsibly too.

And you know what? There is no harm in hoping for that. I cannot fault him for behaving in a reasonable and responsible fashion.

If he says what he surely knows, which is that the atmosphere is going to be about as horrible as it has ever been at one of these games, and that the danger level is sufficiently high that Police Scotland felt the need to come to Celtic’s training ground, then people are going to say that he has inflamed the situation.

Even if he is simply answering a question honestly.

Martin is pretty much stuck in the ultimate no-win situation here, and I have a great deal of sympathy with that. I have sympathy with where he finds himself and where our club finds itself. But the reality is that we are here.

We are heading to Ibrox tomorrow with no fans. Their little scam has paid dividends. They were hoping to restrict us to a few hundred. In the end, there will not be a single Celtic supporter inside that ground except those wearing official club blazers.

That must feel like a win to them right now. We’ll see.

But this is where I think the distinction has to be made. Martin O’Neill has to protect his players. Celtic Football Club has to protect itself.

Those are not quite the same thing.

Martin has every reason to de-escalate because he has a team to take into that stadium tomorrow. He does not need to give anybody an excuse to turn his words into a headline about provocation. But that does not mean Celtic as an institution should permanently confuse de-escalation with silence.

Somebody at this club still has to say what Martin cannot.

Somebody has to state the facts. Somebody has to explain why we are in this situation in the first place. The Ibrox club has secured itself a modest advantage in keeping our fans out of the ground. That was surely their intent.

We have done the right thing by tearing up the agreement between the two clubs, because I don’t see how that agreement can simply be reinstated as though nothing has happened.

Whatever trust existed in that so-called relationship is gone. Their board has shown that it is not prepared to act civilly or rationally when it suits them not to.

We should remember that.

My concern is that our club spends a lot of its time trying to keep the lid on situations like this. Our club spends a lot of its time playing nice. And sometimes there is a danger in believing that playing nice is enough.

Listen, we are going to be blamed for these things no matter what we do.

Our fans come on the pitch and it is classified as the start of a riot. Their fans come on the pitch and suddenly the language becomes one of reaction and provocation. This is the world we live in. It would be crazy to pretend otherwise.

We do know it. We just act as if we don’t.

This club is always trying to turn down the temperature. That is what responsible organisations do. But eventually you have to ask whether we are doing ourselves more harm than good when we assume that everyone else is following the same rules.

Responsible behaviour only works as a stabilising force if responsibility is reciprocal. If you are playing a game absolutely straight and absolutely fair, while the other side is constantly looking for an underhanded advantage, what good does it do you to stay silent about that? How does it help you to stay above the fray if all that really means is allowing somebody else to define what happened?

There are too many people at our club who think the right approach is silence. Who think you do things calmly and rationally because the rest of the world is following the same basic rules. But it isn’t.

In case these people haven’t noticed, we live in the era of spin and bullshit. We live in the era of alternative facts. We live in an era where being willing to lie, distort and scrape the bottom of the lowest barrel can give you an advantage over people who are determined to behave honourably.

I am not suggesting that Celtic gets down into the gutter with these people.

I am not suggesting that at all.

But stop tying one hand behind your back.

Stop allowing people to hit you and then convincing yourself that there is some moral virtue in refusing to defend yourself. There is a difference between restraint and passivity.

There is a difference between responsibility and self-silencing. That is what I think Celtic has to understand.

You do not have to behave badly to establish boundaries. You do not have to inflame a situation to make clear that there will be consequences if those boundaries are crossed. That is what deterrence is. Regular readers will know how much it fascinates me.

It is not about starting a fight. It is about making sure the other side knows where the line is before the fight starts. That is why I understand Martin’s choice while still thinking the club itself has to do more.

Martin can say that he has no concerns. He is trying to get his players through tomorrow’s game. But somebody at Celtic should still be saying that if Police Scotland considers the situation unusual enough to visit our training ground, then that itself tells us something.

If there is genuinely nothing to worry about, why was an unusual police intervention considered necessary in the first place? That is a fair question.

And it is one the club should not be frightened to ask.

Because once again the danger is that the burden of responsibility starts to drift in the wrong direction. If Celtic score a last-minute winner tomorrow, what exactly are our players supposed to do? Walk quietly back to the halfway line? Shake hands? Try not to smile too much? If a Celtic player celebrates and that sparks trouble, is the player now responsible for the trouble? Or are we going to focus on the people in the stands who cannot handle seeing their team beaten? That is where the responsibility belongs.

And the more we talk about players moderating themselves to avoid provoking a crowd, the more careful we have to be that we are not slipping into a mindset where responsibility is being transferred away from the people actually causing the problem.

That is the part I dislike.

I understand why Martin did what he did. But there are a lot of words for what Celtic sometimes does in these situations, and one of them is appeasement. The more we convince ourselves that saying nothing is the responsible thing to do, the easier it becomes for other people to write the story for us.

And the more you feed that instinct, the harder it becomes to break.

We have done everything right here. That might not be enough. It might not stop lunatics in the stands from throwing things. It might not stop some madman who wants to get onto the pitch and attack one of our players. It might not stop somebody leaping out of the stand and going after one of our coaches. It certainly will not stop that match being played in a thoroughly hostile and menacing atmosphere.

And we do not know how our players will respond to that without our own supporters there.

Let me say it again. We have done everything right.

We have been reasonable. We have been responsible. We have thought through all the permutations of lighting the blue touch paper.

Except for one.

What if none of it matters? What if the people creating the problem have no interest in reciprocating any of that restraint? That is why I want Celtic to be clearer about consequences. Not aggressive. Not inflammatory. Clear.

State the facts. Lay them out. Make it impossible for the media and everybody else to pretend they do not exist. Make it clear in advance that responsibility for any misconduct lies with the people who commit it. Make it clear that there will be no false equivalence afterwards. That is not escalation. That is deterrence.

Responsible organisations lower the temperature. Strong organisations also establish boundaries. Those things are not contradictory.

And I really do sympathise with Martin and the guys in the coaching team and the dressing room.

This is not the path of least resistance. There is only the path of least harm.

I understand why Martin chose it.

I just wish the people above him would make sure that the path of least harm does not also become the path of least resistance.

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