Shaun Maloney’s press conference yesterday was one of the best we have had from anyone in the Celtic dugout for quite a while.

First of all, he did not criticise the supporters.

Secondly, as Paulina has already written today, he laid out why Celtic should be aiming to compete in Europe, which is exactly what you want to hear from somebody on this coaching staff.

He also dispensed with the idea that he is in any way running the team, which needed to be said. He seemed to distance himself from wanting the job in the future as well.

He talked about the playing style, about how the players have to do more and about what he and the rest of the coaching staff expect from them going forward.

Overall, I thought it was diplomatic, political, careful, considered and interesting. In short, it was the kind of press conference we have been waiting a long time for Martin O’Neill to give. And therein lies the problem.

Because when Maloney talked about who is running the show, that clarification came from him rather than from the man who is supposed to be running the show.

Now, Martin O’Neill had personal business, as Shaun put it, and whatever that personal business was is nobody else’s concern. We do not have a right to know and we should not be questioning it.

But still, when the assistant manager is covering for the manager at a press conference and uses that press conference to explain that the manager, not him, is in charge, that is inevitably going to raise eyebrows.

Especially when the same assistant manager then talks openly about tactics, style and expectations in a way we have barely heard from the manager himself.

Like I said, I was pleased with the whole thing.

I was pleased that Maloney distanced himself from the idea that he is really running the team, even going as far as to call it a conspiracy theory.

But as with so much at this club, there is a perception problem built right into it.

Only Celtic could clarify who is running the show at the same press conference where the guy answering the question creates more doubt about who is running the show.

That said, there will be a lot of Celtic supporters who simply will not care.

They will not care as long as the team gets results. They will not care how the management structure is organised if it is working. They will not care who is really driving the tactical decisions as long as they can see evidence that there is a plan.

And I am not even sure that I care all that much myself. As long as the dressing room knows who it answers to, I suppose that is what really matters.

How it looks outside Celtic is not as important as how it functions inside the club.

The way Maloney is talking, the players now know who they are taking their orders from. The way he is talking, there is some kind of established leadership inside Celtic Park and at Lennoxtown.

If that is the case, then at least one of the problems which has been so prevalent and so damaging over the past few weeks may now have been resolved.

I say may because you never quite know how these things are going to go.

When the team is tested, when we are up against it, when we are facing real adversity, whatever understandings and agreements exist behind the scenes might come under strain.

But the whole thing operates best when there is an established order and an established chain of command.

When the players know who they are taking instructions from and everyone understands where authority sits, that creates trust in a way that a chaotic system simply cannot.

So maybe we are in a much calmer place now. It certainly sounded like it from what Maloney had to say.

I also thought he handled the issue with the supporters much better. There was no direct criticism of fans for protesting, and that alone was refreshing.

The section on Europe was fascinating too, although, if Maloney genuinely wants to know where Celtic’s ambitions lie as a club, I would suggest he spends a little more time talking to the board. Perhaps then he would get answers to questions the rest of us still do not have.

More seriously, it is almost certainly the case that everyone inside the football department already has a pretty good idea of what the club’s actual level of European ambition is.

Which is to say, not great.

But in some ways that made it even more important that a member of the coaching staff publicly restated ambition in that area and made it clear that everyone at the club should be doing everything possible to get Celtic where it ought to be.

No laughing at the back.

The idea of Shaun Maloney becoming Celtic manager is enough to scare most people out of their skin. It will not happen. It cannot happen. And he seems to know that.

It would probably be better for everyone at the club if, once the next manager comes in, whoever that turns out to be, Maloney goes back to doing his previous job as pathways manager and the new man arrives with his own coaching team.

That is probably the cleanest outcome.

But right now, Maloney is definitely better at facing the media than Martin O’Neill is.

And in spite of all the questions which existed before, during and after that press conference, and in spite of everything being written in the media today, I genuinely feel as though the football department is in a better place than it was three weeks ago.

That is not simply because the results have improved. For the first time in a while, it actually sounds as though there is a plan.

There appears to be a clearer structure. There appears to be an understanding of how the team is supposed to play, what is expected from the players and where the authority within the coaching setup actually lies.

Since all of us have spent weeks criticising the apparent absence of exactly those things, hearing somebody finally articulate them was music to my ears.

Yes, it is slightly strange that the person articulating all of this is not the manager himself.

Yes, that creates its own questions.

But the important thing is that somebody appears to know what the plan is.

After the chaos of the last few weeks, that alone feels like progress.

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