We all knew that there were some issues inside Celtic.

Some of us suspected that Callum McGregor was among those players not particularly happy with some of what was going on in training and around the coaching setup. And last night he made some pretty wild statements which hinted not only at his own displeasure, but at a wider dissatisfaction within the club.

There are people who are going to try to pretend that this is not proof of anything. They’re going to claim that there is nothing in it except one player venting frustration after a bad result.

But, of course, those are the same people who keep telling us that this is a well-run club.

The simple fact is that when your captain is publicly contradicting elements of the coaching, the tactics and the setup of the team, there is nothing healthy about that. At the very least, it tells you that something is wrong.

What makes this an especially worrying moment is that a lot of us have known that Callum was the one to watch for a few weeks now.

His reluctance, or perhaps the club’s reluctance, to put him in front of the media has been obvious. His tendency to shy away from post-match interviews has also been pretty apparent.

When Callum is unhappy, it’s not difficult to spot it.

And I don’t know whether he felt that it was better to stay away from the microphones, or whether someone else at Celtic Park did. But because it was Callum, and because we’ve all had an inkling that maybe he hasn’t been terribly impressed by certain things, we all sat up and took notice of this interview immediately.

And the fact that it appears to have confirmed some of our worst suspicions is disappointing, but not terribly surprising.

Not only did he offer a critique of wingers playing as forwards and forwards playing as wingers, but he suggested that our game has become a bit like basketball.

In short, he is objecting to long punts up the pitch which are not really targeted anywhere.

That is an explicit criticism of the playing style and the tactical approach, which means that it is also an explicit criticism of the coaches and the people running things from the touchline.

He has said that we need to find one system and stick to it, which is another suggestion that there are, if not competing interests, then certainly competing ideologies at the club, and some disagreement over how best to approach games.

Every single one of us has commented on the fact that we have players here we do not seem to know how to use.

McGregor has just echoed those concerns through a bullhorn.

Graham Young of the Evening Times is not one of my favourite journalists, but his article on this was spot on.

Celtic have, in the past, been able to hide behind the idea that players have been misquoted, or that their comments have been taken out of context.

There is no such issue here.

McGregor’s comments are straightforward. They are clear. And they are unarguable.

If this guy was simply talking as he sees it about certain things that he reckons have gone wrong, in isolation, that would be one thing.

But the breadth of what he said strongly suggests that this is about more than one player sounding off after a bad result.

This is not simply frustration at a single momentary lapse in concentration or a single break in the team’s shape.

McGregor has real worries about what we are trying to do.

And he has spoken them out loud.

As Young points out, it is not the first time McGregor has been outspoken about the club.

During the summer, when he said he would stay at Celtic as long as the club continued to show ambition, O’Neill gently slapped him down over the comment.

I don’t know why O’Neill should have had any objection to a player wanting the club to show ambition in the first place.

O’Neill later suggested that perhaps the remarks had been taken out of context, or that there had been some kind of misunderstanding around them.

But McGregor said those words on the club’s own official channel.

He said them in front of Celtic’s own in-house interviewer.

Nobody was fishing for controversy.

Nobody was taking somebody’s words and twisting them into something else.

And the same basic problem exists now.

These are McGregor’s words.

They are his assessment of what Celtic are doing on the football pitch.

This is about as clear-cut as you are going to get.

A few weeks ago, when we were talking about O’Neill’s decision to stay at the club after his spell of reflection in the aftermath of the two games against the Ibrox club, there was a suggestion in some quarters that the team must be baffled by all the goings-on.

But, as I pointed out at the time, and as others subsequently said, the real problem is not that the players were left in total ignorance about what was going on.

The real problem is that the players are probably very well informed.

They will know far more than we do about the chaos inside Celtic Park at the moment. They will know where the disagreements are. They will know where plans have been frustrated, where tensions exist and where relationships are strained.

They will know which decisions came from where.

McGregor, as captain, will know more than most.

And if these are the comments being made in public, you can only imagine what the conversations are like in private.

There is a profound disconnect at Celtic.

And that disconnect runs far deeper than the one between the supporters and the board.

It now appears to infect every part of the machine.

What makes this really feel like a significant moment isn’t even that the captain has spoken out.

It isn’t even that he has criticised the approach in a way that leaves it plain that the concerns inside the club run deep.

It’s that he has identified exactly what supporters have been talking about on forums, podcasts and blogs for many, many months now.

Square pegs in round holes. A playing style that seems to vacillate between controlled possession and lumping the ball up the pitch like it’s public-park football. A tactical incoherence which makes it look as though we are trying to meld two different styles. Players being asked to do things they are not used to doing, and may not even be capable of doing.

And more than that, in talking so openly about Kasper Høgh and Camilo Duran, McGregor has made it clear that he shares the concern that we do not know how to get the best out of either player.

That is a damning indictment of the coaching staff at Celtic Park.

It is a damning indictment of the way this team is being managed right now.

McGregor, let us not forget, has worked under two elite-level managers in the past ten years: Brendan Rodgers and Ange Postecoglou.

Two guys with modern outlooks and modern thinking.

He knows what that looks like.

And he knows what the difference is between that and this.

So yes, this one feels significant.

This one feels real.

And O’Neill will have to answer questions about it when he sits in front of the media today.

But the one thing he will not be able to say is that McGregor’s comments have been taken out of context or twisted, because that simply is not what happened here.

McGregor got in front of a camera and a microphone and expressed his concerns, as captain of Celtic, about what we are doing right now.

There is no way to spin that.

And nor should anyone try.

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