Hugh Keevins: Order Order!

So, let me get this right.

Ronny Deila needs to beat Ajax at Celtic Park in the Europa League on Thursday night or the game's a bogey for another season.

But he can't play Nir Bitton or Stefan Johansen because they're both suspended. Kris Commons has been out with a hamstring injury and missed Saturday's draw with Kilmarnock due to illness, making him an unlikely particpant against the Dutch as well.

Into the bargain, the failure to score against Kilmarnock irritated the fans and what was always going to be a crucial game just got even more serious for Deila.

But at that precise point when the manager needs to keep a clear head and think about what he's going to do to reverse a run of disappointing results and performances in Europe what has Ronny now got going on in the background?

Civil war. Class war. Call it what you like. But he's got it whether he wants it or not. The chairman of the club, Ian Bankier, defended a fellow board member, Lord Ian Livingston, at the club's Annual General Meeting on Friday by saying some of the online abuse the Conservative peer had received in the wake of a vote on tax credit cuts was "Criminally racist."

The consequence of saying as much was to inspire a fans' statement calling for Bankier to be banished from the board. That won't happen, but what will go is a fractious exchange of views between supporters and the club's hierarchy in the days leading up to a vital game of football.

Football. The core business. The reason why Celtic exist. But, for the time being, an irrelevance.

It is a marvellous thing that a football club has a social conscience, which Celtic undoubtedly possesses. It is a romantic, but also factual, story that Celtic came into being to feed the Catholic poor of the East End of Glasgow in the nineteenth century.

It is deeply commendable that those charitable origins were acknowledged at the weekend when a collection for foodbanks went on at Celtic Park.

It is a source of regret among thousands of ordinary, non-militant supporters that Celtic do not see fit to pay match day employees the living wage while their players are paid life changing money.

But when Brother Walfrid founded Celtic it was made clear that the club was about inclusion and would use players of any faith or none at all. When, in 1965, Jock Stein became the first non-Catholic to manage the club it was another nod in the direction of inclusion and not exclusion.

Does the ethos of the club not suggest, therefore, that men of all political inclination should help make up the board of directors?

When Fergus McCann re-built Celtic and then left after his work was done, he handed over control in the boardroom to Brian Quinn, the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.

John Reid, a Home Secretary in a Labour administration, later became Celtic chairman and expertly stood his ground whenever his voting record in the House of Commons was brought up at the AGM or elsewhere.

These men, like Bankier and Livingston, were recruited for the expertise they brought to the boardroom, whether you happen to like their political inclination or not. Ronnie Simpson, Celtic goalkeeper when the Lisbon Lions won the European Cup final against Inter Milan in 1967, stood for political office in Edinburgh as a Tory when he retired from the game.

Should his name be expunged from the record when the fiftieth anniversary of Lisbon is celebrated in eighteen months time?

That is not to say fans can't voice their opinions, but if the chairman maintains that online comments made against Livingston were offensive could any observer of social media honestly say such a thing was impossible?

How you go about proving all of those who posted their comments were Celtic fans is another matter, but to suggest the entire support is racist is a nonsense. And to imply that is what Bankier meant when he raised the subject is equally ludicrous.

If the dreaded media had created such a stir this close to a big match for Celtic they would have been accused of deliberately undermining the team for reasons of bias. But now Celtic fan has turned against Celtic director and the fall-out will distract the Celtic team.

Scottish football. You couldn't make it up.

We're the little boy that Santa Claus forgot where the national team is concerned as we watch England, Wales and both parts of Ireland go to the Euros in France next year.

We're the also rans in Europe after years of under achievement by all clubs.

And now everybody's got a think tank/blueprint/strategy document to investigate why the club game isn't producing the wealth of young talent it once did.

But we now interrupt this bout of navel contemplation for a political row at the club Bankier says is not a conduit for political campaigns.

Since this is the beginning of the panto season, the only reply to that must be, "Oh yes it is."

The best of luck on Thursday, Ronny. The country could do with Celtic somehow pulling back from the brink of disaster and continuing in Europe beyond Christmas.

But I get the distinct feeling your eye will fall on the banners carrying messages that have nothing to do with football when you emerge from the tunnel for the game. And a house that's divided can not stand.