It won’t be Neil Lennon.

Every time you schedule an article for later publication, there is always the risk that events will overtake it.

Normally, if I were writing about Celtic’s managerial situation, I would simply hope that nothing material changed between finishing the piece and it going live. In this case, I am hoping for considerably more than that.

Because this article is about Neil Lennon.

And if, by the time you are reading it, Neil Lennon has somehow become Celtic manager again — even on an interim basis — then not only will this article have been rendered redundant, but so too will any lingering belief that Celtic are going to get through this season without disappearing completely into the abyss.

Last week, we published an article on this site called Celtic Needs Neil Lennon.

Paulina wrote it, and when she told me the headline beforehand, I asked if she was absolutely sure.

She was. Because there was a literal truth in it.

It was not, as some people immediately assumed, a suggestion we make him boss. It was not an attempt at clickbait. Nor was it a misleading headline. She wasn’t talking about Neil Lennon the individual. She was talking about Neil Lennon the archetype.

And that’s been a good journalistic practice for eons.

If Celtic had a Neil Lennon-type figure in the middle of the pitch — aggressive, demanding, combative, unwilling to tolerate passengers — it would transform this squad. We should have signed that kind of player in the transfer window.

But the reaction to that headline was instructive.

A lot of people saw the words Celtic Needs Neil Lennon, assumed the article was advocating his return as manager and reacted with absolute horror.

And that tells us something important. There is no constituency for this.

There is no groundswell within the Celtic support demanding Neil Lennon come back for a third spell. There will obviously be people who retain enormous affection for him, and rightly so, but that is very different from wanting him back in the dugout.

The idea would be overwhelmingly regarded as a retrograde step. For many supporters it would go further than that; it would be seen as a direct insult.

That is why, when I saw headlines suggesting that Lennon was the bookmakers’ favourite, I found them very easy to dismiss.

Those lists are not serious political analysis of what Celtic is actually likely to do. They exist because people like betting on these things, and because throwing familiar names onto the board attracts attention.

The fact that Lennon is even on those lists, never mind near the top of them, tells you how little thought has gone into the political reality of the situation.

If I had to put a number on the chances of it happening, I would say less than five per cent.

Not because it is literally unthinkable. Nothing is unthinkable with Celtic anymore. That is why I am leaving any percentage on the board at all.

But because the idea makes almost no sense once you examine it for longer than a few seconds.

Lennon already has a managerial job. It may not be at the level he would ideally want, but it is a job in the profession, and he also has media work which allows him to talk about Celtic without carrying any of the responsibilities that come with sitting in the dugout.

Why would he want those responsibilities back?

More importantly, Celtic knows Neil Lennon. The club knows every one of his habits, strengths, weaknesses, quirks and issues.

The fact that it ever hired him for a second spell still strikes me as one of the clearest examples of the laziness, complacency and lack of imagination that has existed at the top of this club for far too long.

Which, admittedly, is why we are even having this conversation.

But inside Celtic Park there should be no illusions about what they would be getting, and I simply do not believe it is something they would want.

Then there is the O’Neill factor. Neil Lennon replacing Martin O’Neill would be politically toxic in a way even this board would struggle to survive.

O’Neill was different.

The club got away with going back to him because there remains enormous affection for the man, because of what he achieved here, and because his age made the whole thing feel like the very definition of a short-term emergency appointment.

Nobody reasonably believed Martin O’Neill was being brought back to build Celtic for the next five years. Lennon would be completely different.

If he were to leave his current managerial job to come back here, he would almost certainly require more than a vague promise of a few months in charge. Why would he sacrifice a job elsewhere simply to become another temporary fire extinguisher?

And the board could not use him in the way it has used O’Neill. O’Neill has been an enormous human shield for the people above him.

His popularity, his personality and his history with Celtic have all helped deflect some of the anger that ought to be landing much higher up the building.

Lennon would provide none of that protection. In fact, he would do the opposite. His appointment would concentrate the anger.

It would be seen for exactly what it was: breathtakingly cynical, unimaginative, parochial and contemptuous of the support.

It would be viewed as another backward step from a board that appears increasingly incapable of imagining anything else.

There would be no sense that Celtic had undertaken a serious managerial search and concluded that Neil Lennon was the outstanding candidate. Nobody would believe that. Nor would anyone believe that it was “temporary”.

It would look like the club had simply reached for the nearest familiar face because it had run out of ideas. Again.

And at this point, that would be unforgivable.

The football case is weak. The political case is disastrous. The optics would be horrendous. This would not be a “wait and see” appointment.

There would be no honeymoon period. There would be no broad willingness to give the manager time. The reaction would begin immediately, and much of it would not even be directed at Lennon himself, although a lot of it obviously would.

It would be directed at the people who made the appointment. Because everyone would understand what it represented.

It would be the clearest possible admission that the executive level of this football club had become completely exhausted. Out of ideas. Out of imagination. Out of answers.

There is also the question of what Lennon himself would gain from it.

He would be walking back into an environment where expectations are enormous, patience is almost non-existent and the structure above the manager has repeatedly failed to provide the level of support required.

Why would he do that unless the terms were extraordinary? And it couldn’t be. How could the board sell giving Lennon the backing it never gave Rodgers or O’Neill?

None of it fits. That is why I remain relaxed about these headlines. Or, at least, as relaxed as anyone can be when dealing with Celtic in its current state.

Because there is no world in which this makes sense.

No footballing case. No strategic case. No political case. No emotional case. And certainly no case that could be sold convincingly to the support.

So, everyone can calm down. Chill out. Relax.

Neil Lennon is not coming back for a third spell.

Or so I hope. Because if you are reading this and Celtic has already announced him by the time it goes live, then I suppose the joke is on me.

But by that point, whether a blogger stuck his neck out and got it wrong will be the least of anyone’s concerns. Because Celtic will be in a very dark place indeed.

And getting out of it would require considerably more than another change of manager.

By the end if would have scorched the earth.

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