Mealy-mouthed words from Lawwell and Nicholson have no chance of placating Celtic's angry mob, says Gary Keown

That's it, then? That’s the Celtic board’s best attempt at trying to placate supporters bubbling with an anger verging on the volcanic?

Some mealy-mouthed words from CEO Michael Nicholson and chairman Peter Lawwell at the top of a financial report stating that a club knocked out of Champions League qualifying by the Kazakhstan Candle Factory’s works team — or whoever they were — have £77.3million in the bank and have just raised revenue to £143m a year.

They surely won’t need to be told that it isn’t going to wash. And confirmation of that will no doubt be provided in eardrum-bursting fashion ahead of Sunday's Premier Sports quarter-final against Partick Thistle at Firhill.

Maybe it’s all part of the exciting new digital strategy — designed to ‘enhance engagement and communication with our supporters’ — that Nicholson talks about in his notes attached to the accounts, but this new habit of releasing statements on Friday and Saturday nights feels decidedly more fishy than far-sighted.

It feels like a lame attempt at damage limitation. Although it’s clearly achieving the square root of diddly-squat on that front.

Their Saturday night missive from two weeks ago became a laughing stock among those whose heads didn’t explode in frustration from ploughing through all 1000-plus words of it.

Chief highlight was Celtic’s shambles of a transfer window being blamed, inexplicably, on UEFA’s Financial Sustainability Regulations and people on social media and in journalism who have the temerity to write things about transfers when the transfer market is open. As if anyone is interested in all that.

Risible stuff, really. And as transparent as the cellophane wrapped around oodles of unsold Europa League tickets and merchandise.

The main takeaway from that anonymous ramble was that nothing is changing. Oh, yes, and that there was no attempt to distance the leadership of the club from the story that appeared that morning, containing quotes from a senior figure accusing manager Brendan Rodgers of trying to engineer an exit and tear the place apart by asking why no one was signing the players he wanted.

Those statements issued by Nicholson and Lawwell alongside the financials at tea-time on Friday felt like an attempt to row back on the PR car crash of that fateful day a little.

Lawwell actually congratulated Rodgers on the trophies he won last season. Nicholson stated that the board take responsibility for the failure to negotiate Kairat Almaty.

Both were at pains to point out they share the frustration of supporters who can’t understand why yawning gaps were left in the squad before the most lucrative match of the campaign. How fans ‘underpin everything we do’. How ‘relentless’ their backing is.

They’re going to find out how relentless they are, all right, because the movement building among Ultras groups, podcasters and supporter associations is nowhere close to reaching its crescendo. It will continue moving in that direction, though, for as long as those at the top of the tree think they can get away with this.

Hundreds of groups have signed up to an open letter to those running the club. It contains seven big questions over the direction of travel — and none of them have, as yet, been adequately answered. There hasn’t been any kind of public address on the in-house club TV station or elsewhere.

The signatories want to know what accountability measures are in place with regard to repeated failures in transfer dealings. They want detail on the club’s long-term footballing strategy in the wake of a scattergun recruitment programme.

They want to know exactly why the window panned out the way it did, how the club will modernise for Europe, and some other, more niche, business on policing of punters and a fan survey that disappeared into thin air.

They’d probably like to know who was briefing against the manager — and why — as well.

As always, though, the directors are just hoping some decent results in the league can make the storm pass. Like it normally does. That they can muddle their way through until people forget Kairat Almaty and the fact Kyogo Furuhashi and Nicolas Kuhn were sold for £27m and not replaced before Carry On Kazakhstan.

Nicholson says the board accept their role in that humiliation, though. So, what does accountability look like?

The point of Rodgers coming back was to re-establish the club in Europe after a decade of being a national embarrassment, but they’ve just suffered arguably their worst-ever result in that arena.

Sure, the Europa League starts on Wednesday with a trip to Red Star Belgrade. There are games in the league phase that look winnable, including the fixture in Serbia, but there was talk of Rodgers aiming for European finals when he returned to Parkhead and that simply isn’t happening with the squad at his disposal.

Even £5m new boy Seb Tounekti’s encouraging display at Kilmarnock last weekend came against the confusing backdrop of Celtic having previously spent £4.5m on a left-winger in Michel-Ange Balikwisha, who now looks like being fielded in a right-sided role he is ill-suited to.

Rodgers has to field a bit of flak too, of course. Lawwell drew attention in his Friday jottings to the fact £42.6m was spent on signing players such as Arne Engels, Auston Trusty, Adam Idah and Paulo Bernardo during the last financial year.

And if Celtic don’t start playing with a little more cohesion — or bomb in the Europa League — Rodgers will get what’s coming to him, too, as he surely winds his way towards quitting in the summer.

However, the key thing is that the boss has the punters on his side. He’s said his bit about the disasters of the window and wants to focus on the football for now.

He’s handed over the mic. Now he isn’t talking about the chaos unfolding off the field, there is a vacuum that needs to be filled. There will be noise at Firhill. Plenty of it. The same goes for Belgrade in midweek.

However, Celtic are now just six days away from their first home game since the window closed — against Hibs next Saturday — and that will be a more accurate barometer of the sentiment that really exists within the stands.

Right now, it looks, feels and smells like civil war is in the air. And as long as those at the helm refuse to face up to valid questions, far less fall on their swords, the worse that’s going to get.

Celtic are full of the same old faces in the boardroom that were there during the implosion of the 2020-21 campaign and the squandering of 10-in-a-row. And it looks like they are in danger of overseeing the club collapse in on itself again.

That can’t go unchallenged. Blowing the league against a dreadful Rangers and Hearts and Hibs sides with a fraction of their budget seems unthinkable. 

However, should Celtic return to the position of whipping boys in UEFA competition amid such a stagnant feeling throughout the organisation, that would be evidence enough to prove that those in charge have failed.

Nicholson typed up a statement claiming the board are taking the blame, but there’s no real sign of that. They’ve made a ripsnorting mess of this and deserve everything coming their way.