Doors are closing all over Europe as bosses find work at other clubs or line up their next career moves.
Reports today suggest that Jesse Marsch, who was known to be on our list of Possibles, has made a decision on where his next big job is going to be.
Marsch was always on the outer edge of what I thought we could pull off here, but he would have been an exciting option, the sort who would have unified the support behind him.
It was always likely that he’d have offers better than Celtic’s.
Today he’s given an interview in Germany where he’s expressed a preference for moving up in the Red Bull family rather than going to a club outside of it.
He has earned his spurs in Salzburg, but in Germany, at Leipzig, Julian Nagelsmann has done enough to make him a viable candidate for the job at Bayern Munich, and there is interest from England, including Spurs.
Nagelsmann will not be at Leipzig much longer, and seems destined to head to a top European football operation.
The job he leaves behind will be much sought after, and Marsch will be a prime candidate for it, and this will be perfectly in keeping with how Red Bull does things.
I always thought if we were going to move for a manager of this calibre that we’d need to do it quickly; the longer we go on the more chance there is that a manager like this – a manager like Howe – might prefer to wait and see what becomes available.
Marsch clearly sees Leipzig as the kind of step up in his career which could propel him to a top club in a couple of years, so the thinking is easy to understand from his point of view.
It doesn’t mean anything good for us though.
A top candidate, Marsch has probably effectively ruled himself out of the running.
This increases the pressure on us to get Howe, of course.
Because it’s increasingly looking like Howe or someone like Keane, which means that it’s increasingly looking like Eddie Howe or bust.
Our club’s lack of imagination is scary.