The Village Idiot hoped for civil war at Celtic. He is gutted it didn’t happen.

Some people never fail to amaze you. The Village Idiot is one of those people. Every time we think we have seen him reach rock bottom, every time we have seen him plumb the depths, every time we think he could not possibly be more dumb, more biased or more wilfully ridiculous, he proves us wrong.

There is always lower for him to go. There is always another trapdoor beneath his feet.

How predictable of him to jump into the Robbie Keane debate at this stage. A debate which is now tiresome, boring and largely settled.

We know Martin O’Neill is staying. We know Keane did not get the job. We know the club may still try to bluff us a little over the idea that Keane remains some future possibility, but that bluff has no teeth.

We know it has no teeth because everyone knows what happened.

The fans opposed it. The pressure grew. The club retreated.

That is the story.

Now all that remains is the noise in the aftermath.

You get people like Sylvan Adams firing off their unwelcome and offensive commentary. Then, finally, you reach the very bottom of the barrel, where Kris Boyd is always waiting with a torch under his chin and a vacant look on his face.

Hopefully that is exactly what this is: the bottom of the barrel.

Because it is actually good that this situation is not going to drag on forever. For all the criticisms I might level at Celtic, and there are plenty, the club did the right thing here. The fans did the right thing too. The appointment of Robbie Keane would have been a disaster. It would have divided the support from day one. It would have turned the summer into a civil war before the first pre-season ball had even been kicked.

That did not happen. We go forward from here.

But, of course, there will always be a handful of clowns who want to pretend this is somehow a disaster. Boyd knows fine well that it is not a disaster for Celtic. It is only a disaster for him and people like him.

Because the appointment of Keane would have torn Celtic apart, and that is what these people were hoping for from the moment his name surfaced.

That is what they wanted to happen.

This is the ultimate expression of bitterness. Not because Boyd cares about Robbie Keane. He does not. Not because he cares about the Celtic board being embarrassed. He does not. Not because he has suddenly discovered a deep concern for boardroom independence and managerial process at Celtic Park.

Come on. This is about Celtic remaining intact.

This is about them now having to face a Martin O’Neill team next season, and that is not a prospect any of them will enjoy.

Everyone knows O’Neill is a winner.

Even in the years when he did not win the title during his first spell, his teams often scored points totals which would have won the league in plenty of other seasons. Last season, after coming back into a club that looked beaten and deadened, he put together a run that dragged us over the line and delivered the double.

He had the highest points percentage. He had the highest win ratio. He should have been Manager of the Year. Instead, they gave it to Derek McInnes because Scottish football had already written its Hearts fairy tale and could not quite bring itself to admit that O’Neill had ripped the final chapter out of the book and set it on fire.

That is what Boyd is mourning.

Not Keane. Not fairness. Not principle.

He is mourning the future he thought Celtic were about to walk into. A future of all-out war inside the club. An unpopular manager arriving under a black cloud. Supporters fighting each other. The board hiding behind statements. A toxic atmosphere poisoning every press conference, every matchday and every transfer decision.

They would have loved that.

Every rival in Scottish football would have loved that.

Which makes it all the stupider that Celtic were even considering it in the first place, because appointing Keane would have handed our rivals everything they could possibly have wanted.

Can you imagine the high they must have felt a week ago, when it looked as if this might actually happen? Can you imagine how buzzing they must have been at the prospect of Celtic disintegrating over the course of a summer?

Top players potentially walking out. An unpopular manager coming in. God knows what sort of transfer budget. God knows what sort of signings. Maybe even a couple of deeply controversial names thrown in for good measure, just to turn the whole thing nuclear.

They believed that might come to pass.

Maybe it would have.

Then, in the space of a few days, it was snatched away from them. Not only did Celtic appoint someone else, we appointed their worst nightmare.

The man who brought the club back from the dead last season. The man who held it together when it was falling apart. The man who now holds it together again. The man the chairman and the board owe their current survival to. The man even Dermot Desmond respects enough to know he cannot easily mess around.

A man who combines winning with an understanding of what needs done next.

That is why Boyd is raging.

He can dress it up however he wants. He can talk about Celtic folding to fan pressure. He can pretend this is some great embarrassment for the board. He can try to frame it as weakness, as capitulation, as supporters running the club.

But what does that concern him?

He has been hypercritical of Celtic’s board plenty of times. Now, all of a sudden, he thinks they are victims? Poor little directors, unfairly pushed around by supporters who had the nerve to oppose a disastrous appointment? Please.

He does not care about them. He does not care about any of this.

His problem is simple: Keane would have been perfect for people like Boyd because Keane would have meant chaos at Celtic. A fractured club. A divided support. A manager under immediate pressure. A board even more hated than it already is.

That was the dream. That was the future he glimpsed.

Then Celtic fans helped stop it.

The board may not want to admit that. Boyd certainly believes that’s what happened though. But yeah, fan pressure mattered. Moral clarity mattered. The refusal to let this be normalised mattered. And whether the club backed down out of principle, fear or self-preservation, it backed down all the same.

Boyd cannot stand that. He cannot stand that Celtic supporters helped avert the disaster he was looking forward to. He cannot stand that the club has come out of this stronger and not as weak as he and others had hoped. He cannot stand that O’Neill, of all people, is the man left standing in the dugout.

That is what this is about. Fear. Bitterness. Disappointment.

He saw what he hoped was the future, and then watched it get snatched away.

I can understand why that hurts him.

I also find it rather amusing.

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