Celtic can still attract a big name manager. The club itself is not the problem.

Even as we wait for the final verdict on Martin O’Neill, and the decision on whether or not he will return to the dugout, talk is already swirling about who the next boss might be.

Let us be honest about it: the Celtic job is still attractive to managers like Kieran McKenna or Eddie Howe because Celtic is a massive football club. We are not talking about an ordinary club here. We are talking about Paradise. The green and white. European nights. A huge support. A history that stretches across generations. A club with an identity recognised far beyond Scotland.

Celtic is massive, but something is becoming increasingly important. Celtic itself is no longer necessarily an attractive destination for a high-calibre manager because of the people running it. And yes, I mean Michael Nicholson and Dermot Desmond.

This has been said before and it will keep being said because, as Celtic supporters, we cannot simply sit quietly and watch what is happening to this football club. The Celtic job might attract a great manager, but does the Celtic structure, the system, the atmosphere and the utter lack of respect attract a great manager? That is a completely different question, and that distinction matters enormously.

Let us imagine being a manager like McKenna or Howe. You have built a career, you have choices and you have expectations about how a football club should operate. You want the right football structure around you. You want recruitment that makes sense. You want proper planning. You want people responsible for football operations. You want to know that when you identify a problem, the people above you actually intend to solve it or give you the backing you need.

Then you look at Celtic. You see the size of the club. You see the supporters. You see Celtic Park. You see the European possibilities. You see the history. And then you look behind the curtain. That is where the attraction can begin to disappear.

Because a great manager does not simply sign up for Celtic Football Club. He signs up for the way Celtic Football Club is run. And this is where Nicholson and Desmond have created an enormous problem.

Let me be very clear. Celtic has not suddenly stopped being Celtic. The problem is that the pricks responsible for running it are creating conditions in which the football club becomes less attractive to the very calibre of manager we should be trying to attract. How can they not see it?

How can anyone look at Celtic today and not see the cracks? How can those cracks keep appearing while the people at the top continue doing the same things? How can one problem become another problem, and another, until eventually those cracks begin to crush the whole structure? That is what should frighten all of us.

Because Celtic has everything. We have the supporters, the stadium, the history, the commercial power, the European platform and the domestic dominance that should give us an enormous foundation from which to build. But foundations mean absolutely nothing if you refuse to maintain the building. And this is where the Celtic board fannies have failed us.

Let us focus on the consequences. A manager arrives. He needs a proper football structure. There isn’t one. He needs recruitment to be strategically aligned with his football philosophy. There are serious questions about how that is being done. He needs the club to have a coherent long-term plan. We keep talking about plans, but Celtic supporters are still asking fundamental questions about what they are and how they work.

He needs support. He needs competent people around him. He needs to know that the club is moving in the same direction. And then supporters look at Celtic and ask: where is the football structure? Where is the proper long-term football strategy? Where is the person ultimately responsible for building the football department? Where is the visible leadership? Where is the connection between the people making decisions and the supporters who fill Celtic Park?

These are not ridiculous questions. They are basic questions, and any high-calibre manager considering Celtic would surely be asking them too. That is why McKenna and Howe keep coming back into this conversation. Of course Celtic could still attract them, because Celtic is Celtic. But we should never confuse the attractiveness of Celtic Football Club with the attractiveness of working under the current Celtic structure and doing what these pricks ask you to do. They are not the same thing.

Nicholson and Desmond need to understand that. But the word “understand” here may as well be written on deep water, only to disappear into dense fog a few seconds later.

Managers talk. Football is a small world. People know what happens inside clubs and how clubs operate. They know whether managers are given the tools they need, whether boards are supportive and whether football departments are properly constructed. They also know when managers are effectively being asked to carry enormous responsibility inside systems that are not properly designed.

Celtic should be the club managers dream of coming to, not the club where a manager thinks, “Brilliant opportunity on the pitch, but what the hell am I walking into behind the scenes?” That is the difference.

So what can actually be done?

If Celtic genuinely want to attract a manager of McKenna’s or Howe’s calibre, then the club has to make Celtic attractive from top to bottom. Give the manager a proper football structure. Give him people whose responsibility is football. Give him a long-term recruitment strategy. Give him a pathway from the academy into the first team. Give him proper scouting. Give him leadership around him. Give supporters meaningful engagement. Give Celtic a structure that looks like the structure of a modern major football club.

And above all, stop behaving as if supporters are simply customers who will continue paying regardless of what happens. Because we are not. We are Celtic. This club belongs emotionally to generations of people who have carried it through good times and bad. People have given their money, their time, their hearts and sometimes their entire lives to Celtic.

That is why this is bigger than transfers, bigger than one manager, bigger than one bad result and bigger than one season. This is about identity. This is about community. This is about history. This is about the structure that carries Celtic from one generation to the next.

And that is why I want Nicholson and Desmond out. I will keep repeating it until something changes because we cannot keep watching the cracks getting bigger while the people at the top carry on as if everything is fine.

We should want Celtic to become attractive to the best managers again, not simply because of the name or the stadium or the history, but because of the football structure, the ambition, the professionalism and the vision. We should want a manager walking through the doors of Paradise thinking, “This is the club I want to work for,” not, “This is a massive club despite the people running it.”

There is a huge difference.

Celtic does not need to become bigger. Celtic already is massive. What Celtic needs is leadership worthy of that size. It needs people who understand that Paradise is not simply a stadium, that the Celtic badge is not simply a commercial asset and that Celtic supporters are not simply a source of revenue.

We are the people who keep the story alive.

And we cannot simply watch that story be weakened because two men at the top appear unwilling to understand the consequences of the decisions being made. The cracks are already there. Let us stop pretending they are not. Let us stop painting over them. Let us repair the fucking foundations, because Celtic is too big, too important and too deeply loved for anything less.

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