The real signs of crisis at Celtic are in the stands.

As we get nearer to the end of the international break, the hope is simply that all of Celtic’s players return safely and well. We know there are major issues at this club which need to be solved, but now that the break is moving into its final phase, you just want it over with.

This is the longest international break I can remember, and it is also the worst. It is bad because of the length of it, but it was always going to feel even longer on the back of three defeats. Everybody knows that I lament international breaks at the best of times, but when you have lost such high-profile fixtures, you are nowhere near the best of times.

This whole break has felt interminably horrible. The uncertainty around the manager has only made it worse, and as we draw towards the end of it, perhaps the most worrying thing is that there is no real enthusiasm for what comes next. That, to me, is the true enemy of Celtic now: apathy.

That is how bad things have become, and only a fool would ignore the general feeling amongst the support right now. Because if fans cannot get themselves up for these games, it is only a matter of time before some of them stop attending.

I have been doing this job for more than a dozen years, and I cannot remember it ever feeling quite like this. Numbers are awful, fans are disengaged and there is a general feeling of gloom.

This club has lost a lot of people emotionally, and I never thought I would see that. I never thought I would see circumstances in which supporters were not looking forward to Celtic games.

Even after this three-week break, there still does not seem to be much enthusiasm for Motherwell at the weekend. Maybe that changes as the week goes on, and I hope it does, but I can also see circumstances where the disengagement continues right into matchday and even beyond it.

A football club should feel like a collective endeavour. It should feel like a partnership. It does not feel like one right now.

Perhaps we did not expect Martin O’Neill to resign when he did not do it in the first week. But stone silence for a whole fortnight after three shocking performances? Nobody expected that.

I have said before that the contempt which appears to radiate out of the boardroom is more harmful than almost anything else this club does. It is more harmful than getting transfer windows wrong and more harmful than getting managerial appointments wrong.

It creates an atmosphere of them and us. It makes it feel as though supporters and the people running the club are working against one another rather than pulling in the same direction, and that mood now permeates through the entire institution.

The arrogance, the lack of open and honest communication and the sense that supporters are simply here to fund the machine create the feeling that we are not part of this at all. Whether that is intentional or not almost becomes irrelevant.

Perception matters. And when perception creates disengagement, it becomes dangerous.

The real crisis is not happening on the pitch. The real crisis is not happening at Lennoxtown. It is happening in the stands.

This team needs 60,000 fans at the next home game to be engaged, to be up for it and to give full-throated support. But the atmosphere against the Ibrox club was eerie, strange and flat.

It did not feel like a Glasgow derby atmosphere.

And fans leaving in large numbers when the score was still only 1-0? That should worry the people running Celtic more than almost anything else.

I have never seen Celtic Park empty so quickly during one of these fixtures while there was still something to play for. That is a measure of how the support is feeling.

The breakdown between the manager and the coaching staff, the coaching staff and the players, or the Board and the players, whatever it may be, those things are serious. They matter and they cannot be ignored.

But the emotional detachment supporters feel towards the club itself right now is something I have never seen before, and I never expected to see it. That is dreadful for Celtic and for the club’s chances of recovering quickly from the state we are in.

That emotional connection should drive every interaction we have with this football club. And I am going to be honest with you: if this was not my job, I would probably have spent the last two weeks doing exactly what so many readers have done and ignored everything to do with Celtic.

That is where the real problem lies. That is where the real crisis is.

I do not expect the next seven days to transform the fortunes of the team dramatically. I also do not expect to hear much more talk about whether Martin O’Neill is going to stay.

My expectation is that he is going nowhere. Whether he has simply decided to continue, whether he has been persuaded to stay, or whether there are other factors in the background, he looks set to remain.

And that means sometime over the next six or seven days he owes us answers. He has to start the process of re-energising not only the team, but the supporters.

That may be an even bigger job. He has to give fans something to believe in again, make people want to come back and make Celtic Park feel alive again.

And God help him, he better have a plan for it.

Because defeats can be recovered from. Bad form can be recovered from. Even a bad season can be recovered from.

What is much harder to recover from is when supporters stop caring enough to be angry. That is the point Celtic are getting dangerously close to now, and that should frighten everyone inside that boardroom.

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