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If Strachan Was The Answer For Celtic, Somebody Would Have Asked The Wrong Question.

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This morning, Keith Jackson made one of the stupidest “suggestions” I’ve heard so far this year; he thought that Gordon Strachan might be the “call Peter Lawwell doesn’t want to make.” Well guess what? It’s the call most fans don’t want him to make either.

Jackson is a Grade One idiot, and this article is simply him putting forth an idea that has sprung to life in his own mind.

It doesn’t say this is the thinking inside Celtic Park and it doesn’t even hint that it might be. It’s simply the best Keith Jackson can come up with.

Honestly, it amazes me that the people in our media have so little imagination. The scary thing is, I can easily imagine Celtic doing something this stupid, because there’s also a profound lack of imagination and joined up thinking at the club itself.

There are rumours galore swirling about today. I think that’s all they are. I said on this site a few months ago that I believed our board would act in time to stop the rot; we’ve actually gone past the point where I thought they’d have no option.

Sparta Prague was a horror show and epic humiliation in front of Europe.

When they didn’t act then I started to fear that they might not act at all.

I mean, it was the obvious endpoint, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just a terrible result, everything about it screamed that Lennon had run out of ideas, that he was a beaten man in the dugout, that the club itself had stagnated to the point where we can’t even claim now to being a Europa League team.

That they let him carry on after that for one minute more was a shocking abrogation of responsibility.

Saturday’s stumble was not even surprising. Worse is almost certainly still to come. It may be that we lose heavily in midweek and that makes it impossible to even ignore the rot, because the truth is that if it’s not readily apparent by now then it is being ignored.

There’s a feeling now that because the run of games we have to come looks uncomplicated that we can bullshit our way through December in the hope that everything is going to be alright. Yet that ignores a horrible truth; the denouement will be waiting for us on 2 January when we get to Ibrox.

Few Celtic fans have the slightest confidence in Lennon leading us into that game; I personally have none. If both sides win their remaining matches, we will go there 14 points behind, albiet we’ll have three games in hand. If we lose – as seems nearly certain under the current “leadership” – the title race would be over and it would be way too late to do anything.

At that point, leaving Lennon in charge whilst we conduct the kind of search for a new boss and a new CEO, which we should have done in the first place, would be a better course of action than bringing in some two-bob stopgap for the sake only of damage limitation.

None of the names I’ve seen today inspire me in the least.

The rumours about Keane as manager and Martin O’Neill as director of football are interesting only in that this would certainly put Peter Lawwell out of business, which is why I think some want to believe them. I personally don’t because there is no way the CEO gives up that much power.

Besides, Keane and O’Neill? Does our ambition and our vision and understanding of football only extend as far as the West Coast of Ireland? This is part of the problem, this garbage that only someone who “understands” the club is capable of managing it, long or short term. It’s what got us into this colossal mess in the first place.

Had we gone out there and tried to replace Brendan Rodgers with quality, regardless of nationality and regardless of affiliation, we’d have struck a proper blow at Ibrox before this season even kicked off. We wouldn’t in this state.

There are candidates out there, plenty of them, who are more than capable of coming and organising this group of players better than the current manager does. The rest is nonsense. This is the best squad in the country. Someone with tactical nous and the ability to get them playing again is all this is going to take, and he doesn’t need Celtic in his bloodstream.

Gordon Strachan would be a particularly bad choice though. He hasn’t been involved in club football for ten years and his career since Celtic was hardly inspiring. Let’s be honest, his last season with our club was horrific. We dropped points in 14 games in that campaign. He is profoundly “old school”, and the absolute last kind of appointment we need.

This club has to show some imagination. If we think short-term here the people running our club should be run out of town on a rail.

If we go with some easy option to try and glue this team together, thinking only to the end of this campaign, the shareholders ought to revolt.

If there isn’t already a list sitting in a drawer somewhere, for a moment such as this, a thorough examination of the road not taken last time, then we really do have a big problem with the leadership at Celtic Park, because that would be a shambolic way to run things.

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