Celtic needs a high profile resignation to set the right example for the squad.

This is the tightest title race Celtic have been involved in for a long time, and it should not be this close. With five games to go, we are sitting in third place. I know we have been over this a million times, but some things need to be said over and over again because they cannot be left alone. They cannot be forgotten.

We have talked about the pressure all three clubs are under. The American investors at Ibrox and Hearts will not be gentle with their managers if this thing flips and one of those sides finishes third. For us to win this title, one of them has to finish third. One of those clubs will see its whole season spiral into a doom cycle. At the moment, it could very well be us.

If we did not presently have an interim manager, the person in the hot-seat would almost certainly be on the brink of being fired. Rohl will not be fired, not yet, not even in a third place scenario, but he’ll have one foot in the grave. McInnes? That will depend on how much Tony Bloom believes in his own vision. It’s not impossible.

I wrote a few weeks ago about warnings and near misses.

Near misses are the system’s way of telling you that things are not working as they should. It no longer matters whether we finish third or not. This is the near miss of all time for this club. This is the near miss we cannot ignore because the people who got us here, and the mistakes they made, have put the medium-term future of Celtic itself at risk.

I say that without any exaggeration at all.

A third-place finish for this club would be cataclysmic. We would not only surrender the title, our status and five in a row, but we would also hand whichever team finishes first a huge financial prize. If it is Ibrox, we will help bootstrap their club. The team that finishes second will secure group-stage football. We will drop into the third-tier competition, and that carries enormous financial consequences.

Think about those consequences, because they will affect everything Celtic do.

They will shape the money we can spend on the team. They will shape the money we keep in the bank. The rebuild is enormous. If we do not equip ourselves properly for that rebuild financially, we risk not only this season, but the next one, and possibly even the one after that. There will be no Champions League route through second place from the season after next. That is gone, and it might not come back.

The team that finishes second goes straight into the Europa Conference League. That is the size of the disaster we are now flirting with.

This is not just a third-tier tournament for one year. It could become a multi-year disaster, and we made it in our own boardroom. We are the pre-eminent club in this country. We are the richest club in this country.

Yet the summer transfer window was an insult to a manager who had already secured two doubles in a row. The January window was an insult to one of the greatest managers this club has ever had. Worse, it was a gamble at a time when a gamble was the last thing we could afford.

We are well past the point of near misses. We are well past the point of warnings. The people in charge of Celtic have exposed us to these consequences, and those consequences remain very real with five games left. It no longer matters whether this turns into another near miss or not. These people are done.

The fact we now require five wins in a row after the split is unbelievable. It is unforgivable. Those responsible for it have no mandate left and no credibility left to lose.

The outcome of this league race does not change that.

These people left us in this position with this squad and this poverty of options. In January, they chose not to strengthen the squad in a way that would have given us the best possible chance. That is corporate negligence on a vast scale. Better men than these would already have offered their resignations.

To stay in office is an act of arrogance and selfishness that takes the breath away.

Everyone knows it. There is not a single person in Scottish football who is not aghast at the state of this Celtic squad and this club. Everyone knows they have failed. Everyone knows that, whatever the outcome of this title race, these people exposed us to this risk.

They did not help the manager. They did not strengthen the team. We had tens of millions of pounds in the bank and still chose not to act.

It is embarrassing that these people have not yet fallen on their swords. Every day they spend in those jobs requires either monumental arrogance, which their performances do not justify, or a Trumpian level of delusion in which they still believe they are doing a good job. Look at the state of our squad.

Look at the state Celtic are in. All this has happened on their watch.

How they still have the gall to show up for work every day is beyond belief.

Nobody holds out much hope that we are going to get leadership from the charlatan across the Irish Sea. But he cannot compel people to stay against their will, so they cannot hide behind him and none of us should let them.

They hang on because they want to. They hang on because they are leeches, drawing sustenance from this club even as they drag it down.

He has his own role in this, of course.

If he were not such an insecure control freak, and so convinced of his own brilliance that he cannot see how detached from reality he has become, we might have a board built on merit instead of a subservient band of yes-men and cowards.

Celtic is going to ask supporters to spend their money soon, quite possibly in the coming week. If these people expect tens of thousands to renew, they owe those same fans some sign that they understand the scale of their mistakes and that those mistakes place them beyond the point of no return.

At least one of them should do the honourable thing and restore the one thing this club needs more than anything else: accountability.

A resignation would tell everyone at Celtic that, from this moment on, everyone will be held to a minimum standard. Think what an example that would set. Think what a message that would send to the players and the manager with five games left.

No excuses. No alibi for failure. This club will not accept second place, far less third.

You want to know why this matters so much? There it is.

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