Celtic has wasted the week it could least afford to waste.

Last week, maybe in the latter part of it, I posted a piece full of weary resignation that we were going to have to keep Martin O’Neill for a while longer.

I am increasingly convinced that will be the case, because it has now been seven days since the game at Celtic Park.

Martin said he would take a couple of days to think things through.

One of two things is happening here. Either he has thought things through and decided to stay, or he has told the board that he intends to go and they have spent the time since then trying to find his replacement.

There are two reasons why I do not believe the second possibility is where we find ourselves. The first is simply this: our board of directors does not work that quickly or that well. The idea that they are currently searching for a new manager and want to make both announcements at the same time would represent joined-up thinking to a degree I do not believe they are capable of.

The second reason is even more obvious. There is no way that if O’Neill had quit and the club was actively searching for a new manager, that this would have remained secret for even 24 hours. If that was going on in the background, we would already know.

And that brings us to another important point.

The reason I am so convinced O’Neill is staying is that if he was going to go, he had to go almost immediately after the game. Twenty-four hours, 48 at the outside. The fact that we are now seven days on without a single word means this situation is not going to be resolved in the manner many of us believed was inevitable.

I think this is a mistake on so many levels, because O’Neill has already suggested that he has doubts about whether he is up to the job. I cannot even imagine how that has gone over in the dressing room or around the rest of the club.

We are now at the mercy of events, and nobody at Celtic Park appears willing to show the appropriate leadership and change our trajectory. They will dress it up as loyalty to Martin O’Neill. That is how it will be framed.

But again, this is about one thing and one thing only: self-preservation.

We are in a bad place and nobody inside the club seems to know how to get us out of it.

So where are we now? Where does this leave us?

It leaves us with uncertainty in the dressing room. It leaves us with players and the management team apparently at loggerheads over tactics and strategy. It leaves major doubts over whether Martin even wants to be at Celtic, and whether he is staying because of financial necessity.

There is, of course, a very easy answer to that. The club pays up the remaining term of his contract and lets him go.

But this is the path the club will absolutely not take.

There are no doubt people inside Celtic who believe hesitation and delay are the right move. They will look at Martin’s domestic record and say there is no evidence he has completely broken down, no evidence that he is incapable of turning this around, and indeed that his entire career history suggests that if anyone can do it, it will be him.

I have a certain amount of sympathy with that view.

But sometimes something just feels broken, and I think that is where we are.

If that is the case, then this is not going to be recovered by simply carrying on. It is not going to be fixed when the players return to training. This is a problem we are going to be dealing with for a long time to come, or at the very least until the situation becomes completely untenable and the board is left with no choice.

One look at the fixture list tells you there is no room for error. Every game now looks like a flashing red danger light. So, I think it is right that we are concerned. I do not believe this has a happy ending.

And what will be most infuriating if everything unravels is that it could have been avoided, and this was the moment to avoid it.

Three weeks is not all the time in the world.

It may not even have been long enough to conduct any kind of proper managerial search, although with Martin’s contract expiring at the end of the season, that search should already have been well underway.

But we have wasted it.

This was the opportunity. No football for the better part of a month. This was the moment when we could have fixed this and brought clarity to the situation.

Instead, we are already one week into that break.

And there is no chance whatsoever that the next two weeks are going to change things in any significant way. Three weeks was barely enough time. Two weeks certainly is not.

If Celtic announced Martin’s departure tomorrow morning, valuable time would already have come and gone. I would not be optimistic about any scenario in which we had to bring in a brand-new manager in the fortnight that remained, because that would simply present us with a whole different set of problems.

We needed every available minute of every available day.

A week has already gone.

And I think that means the decision, whether Celtic has announced it or not, has effectively already been made.

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