A Steve Clarke led Celtic? Even the thought is Nightmare Fuel.

Last night, as everyone will be aware, Steve Clarke’s Scotland played their first friendly in preparation for the World Cup. It was awful. Another uninspiring, tactically incoherent performance, and Japan dominated for almost all of the game.

I’ll come back to them in a moment, but one thing stands out immediately; they have an identity. They know what they’re doing and they play a very good style of football.

Last week, as regular readers will know, I wrote about Michael Gannon and his article on Steve Clarke. It was essentially fiction. He speculated wildly that Clarke was sending signals to Celtic, advertising his availability, and he tried to build a case for putting him near the top of our shortlist. It is one of the most profoundly stupid things I’ve read in a long time.

Celtic fans are not enjoying the football they are watching right now. Clarke’s version would be infinitely, spectacularly, soul-destroyingly worse.

What makes Gannon’s piece even more ridiculous is his claim, offered without a shred of evidence, that Clarke secretly dreams of playing expansive, attacking football. Nothing in his managerial career supports that idea. It is a claim so absurd that it feels like it came from a fever dream. There is no factual basis for it whatsoever.

Reaching the World Cup finals is an achievement for Scotland, and the draw has not been especially difficult. It’s a group we could get out of. But I have no faith in Clarke’s ability to do it. That’s why I said that although he deserves credit for qualifying, that alone is not enough to justify keeping him in the job.

I would not have him leading us into the summer finals in the USA. I don’t believe he is good enough, and I don’t think we are maximising our opportunity with him in charge. Nothing I saw last night changed my mind.

That makes Gannon’s suggestion that Clarke should be in the running for the Celtic job completely impossible to reconcile with reality. The idea that there is an attacking coach buried inside him, just waiting to emerge, is almost laughable. His teams lack logic, structure and attacking intent. This is not just about forcing square pegs into round holes. It’s about a persistent inability to build a balanced team.

He has an obsession with cramming as many central midfielders into the side as possible. The team rarely plays with natural width, and too often the players look unsure of their roles. Scotland has capable wide players who could contribute, but Clarke ignores them in favour of his midfield-heavy system. He showed the same tendency when trying to accommodate multiple left-backs in the same side.

Yes, Scotland is blessed in central midfield. Several players operate at the highest level. We also have elite left-backs in Andrew Robertson and Kieran Tierney, with Aaron Hickey not far behind. But you do not build a system around squeezing all of them into the same team. That is not how you create balance.

Proper squad building sometimes means leaving good players out. You sacrifice individuals to improve the team. That might not please everyone, but it creates structure and clarity. Clarke refuses to do that. The flaw is obvious to anyone watching, and at this stage he looks incapable of changing it.

I can’t even imagine what he would do as Celtic manager.

I struggle to picture the squad he would assemble.

But I fear he would try to cram Callum McGregor, Paulo Bernardo, Arne Engels and Reo Hatate into the same starting eleven. That’s what he does. He refuses to leave good players out, even when the team suffers for it. The result would be a side as lifeless and predictable as this Scotland team.

Gannon argues that Clarke is restricted by the quality of players available to him.

That simply isn’t true.

Scotland lacks elite wingers and top-level strikers, but the decision to play without width is still a choice. He prefers to overload central areas because he believes that’s where his strength lies. In doing so, he sacrifices flexibility and balance.

If Clarke wanted to play more expansive football, he could.

Ryan Christie has played wide. Ben Doak can operate on either flank. Wing-backs could be converted into wingers as the need arises. Options exist. He simply chooses not to use them. He clings to his system instead of adapting to the players at his disposal.

Management is about making the best use of your resources. It requires flexibility and the willingness to change. I see no evidence that Clarke can do either.

Appointing someone like that would be a breaking point for many Celtic supporters. They would not tolerate it. Some would simply stop turning up, and I wouldn’t blame them. Watching a Celtic team coached in that manner would be unbearable. It is bad enough watching Scotland play that way.

Clarke has too many allies in the media. He is too comfortable with too many of the people who cover the game. If that were not the case, more of them would be saying what I have said for months.

If Scotland wants to progress in a major tournament, we have the wrong man in charge. To give Scotland the best chance of getting out of a group stage for the first time, it is Clarke, more than any player, who should be left here at home.

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