John McGlynn for Celtic? Maybe that’s the level we’re living with now.

Last week on the podcast, my colleague Eric Knott made a rather unusual suggestion about who should be in the discussion about the next Celtic manager. He said John McGlynn.

Now, I disagree with that. But if people are seriously talking about Askou at Motherwell, then the conversation has already gone in that direction. Once you are in that territory, I do not know why Derek McInnes would not be in it as well.

Today, Neil Lennon made the same suggestion. He said John McGlynn should be in the conversation. That fascinates me.

The only conclusion I can draw is that everyone has now recognised the same grim reality. We are not going to appoint a top-class name. We may end up with whatever is on our own doorstep.

I understand why Lennon thinks McGlynn might be in the frame. He is about to face him at Hampden. If Lennon gets the better of McGlynn after putting him in the Celtic conversation, then perhaps some people start muttering that Lennon himself should be back in the conversation too. That sounds absurd, of course.

But with this board, you can never rule anything out.

McGlynn only belongs in the conversation if the conversation is rooted in SPFL-level mediocrity. Since people have spent so long talking about the Motherwell manager as a possible Celtic boss, that is clearly where the conversation now lives. In that context, McGlynn is as good a shout as anyone.

There is something grimly revealing in that.

It tells us that Lennon has arrived where many of us already have. He recognises that this club no longer operates with any ambition beyond looking respectable in Scotland. He was the first proof of that himself. Hiring him the first time was one thing. Hiring him the second time, as Brendan Rodgers’ replacement, was the ironclad evidence that Celtic no longer took itself seriously.

So yes, I can see why, having been hired for the job twice, he thinks McGlynn sits at an acceptable level, and since I know there are people on the Celtic board who have pushed the idea of hiring Askou, I would not be remotely surprised if McGlynn were another name on their lips.

That is the real problem here.

The way they have conducted themselves all season has narrowed the field of credible candidates until it is very small indeed. You have to remove anyone with ambition. You have to remove anyone who expects serious spending. Then you have to remove anyone who wants autonomy. You also have to remove anyone who does not fancy working under an amateur like Nicholson, or waiting on every signing until the Irishman on the other end of the phone gives the nod.

Then there is what the treatment of Rodgers did to this club.

It is cancerous because it proves that not even success will save you if these people wake up one morning and decide they no longer like your face. If they can treat a manager who won two doubles in a row like that, then there is no limit to what else they might do.

If even loyalty is no shield, and even your record does not guarantee you support, then this is not a job any serious person is going to want. That is why some of the names floated over the last twelve months have been genuinely alarming.

There was a constituency that wanted Steven Robinson. At the time, I dismissed that as almost too stupid for words. Maybe it was not.

Maybe this is where we are.

It may well be that we are now in the realms of a John McGlynn, Steven Robinson or Askou-type appointment because this club cannot attract, or does not believe it can attract, better. If that is true, then this is a serious conversation whether we like it or not.

But if we are having this conversation, Derek McInnes should be part of it. Or maybe we simply do not think we have any chance of attracting Derek McInnes. Maybe that is where this board has left us.

I do know that the mad experiment I have said for over a year that they cannot wait to run really does not require a manager of substance in the dugout.

Enough of the ground has been laid for that idea that I genuinely don’t believe they think the manager matters that much. Some of them think they can pull in anyone, sit him in the chair, throw him a collection of players and expect results.

Perhaps they get what they want.

Maybe that is genuinely the level of their thinking. That is why, the Celtic Fans Collective are right to ask fans not to renew season tickets right away. Leaving it until the last possible minute, lets us see what we’re getting.

I cannot say that is anything other than a good idea.

Because without some certainty about what we are being asked to buy, and without some hint of what these people’s vision for Celtic actually is, we may all renew and then discover we are about to watch a John McGlynn team next season, built around signings from Hibs, Motherwell, Kilmarnock, Dundee and the rest of the SPFL.

I cannot dismiss that, as much as I wish I could.

I am a realist about where this board has left us and about the state we are in.

It is because I am a realist about the damage done to our credibility and our reputation over the last year and the restrictions that will be placed on any new manager that I truly understand how unlikely it is that anyone credible will want the job.

So, I have to consider that maybe this isn’t just a few people producing something out of left field. There is the world as we would like it to be, and there is the world as it actually is. In the world as it actually is, this may well be the conversation we need to have.

This may be what we will need to accept. At this point, I’m prepared for anything.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.