Celtic’s baffling season saw Martin O’Neill return for a second time this term after Wilfried Nancy’s nightmare tenure
It’s head scratching stuff you know. A set of circumstances so utterly preposterous that in years from now it may become a casebook study.
But somehow, somewhere along the line Celtic have managed to drift into some sort of weird time loop continuum. Let’s call it the Desmond Zone. Like the Twilight Zone but with a twiddly moustache. Need a new manager? No problem, bring back the old one.
‘Yeah but Dad, what do we do when he starts moaning all over again about a chronic lack of ambition in the transfer market, like he did the last time?’ ‘No sweat Rossco, we’ll just sack him, assassinate his character and bring back an even older one’.
And this practice of rinsing and repeating is reflected all over a club which is now in serious danger of complete and absolute stagnation. Of course, Martin O’Neill is doing his level best to provide a sense of direction on the pitch at least.
Having been rushed back into the dugout in the wake of the Wilfried Nancy fever dream, the 73-year-old has a full five months to go before signing off for a third and presumably final time. On Saturday the old fox picked up where he left off back in December by banging round pegs into round holes and overseeing an entirely stress free 4-0 win over Dundee United.
After a short period of all out chaos and confusion, in an instant O’Neill has re-established a much needed sense of calmness and cohesion. His very presence alone in the dugout will ensure that the champions put up a fight for their league crown rather than surrender it in the manner the accident prone Frenchman had been busy going about his calamitous business.
But even if Celtic’s very own Cinderella Man does manage to complete what would be one of the greatest ever fairytales in the club’s history by securing the title between now and May, it won’t alter the fact that the principal shareholder has fallen asleep behind the wheel.
And the more Celtic swirl around in this circle of self sabotage, the louder and more justifiable the calls for change are likely to become, regardless of O’Neill’s shot at glory on the sidelines.
One or two of these decisions, to resort to clutching on to an old safety blanket, would probably be perfectly acceptable in more normal circumstances.
But it’s becoming such a broad pattern of behaviour that it’s indicative of a leadership which has run clean out of ideas and fresh thinkers.
When Desmond needed to find himself a new chairman, he placed old ally Peter Lawwell back in the boardroom even though the fans had run the guy out of town once before.
Lawwell had to leave his post as chief executive out of the back door and with a blanket over his head after Celtic internally combusted during their bid to win 10 successive titles.
Now his chairmanship has reached a similarly unedifying ending which is extraordinary in itself given the enormous scale of his contribution to the club over the years.
On the pitch, when Celtic needed a new left back, they brought back Kieran Tierney for free, having previously flogged him off to Arsenal for £25m. That’s one example of the model actually working but it’s an outlier nonetheless.
They pulled the same stunt with Jota who made a fortune in Saudi Arabia and is now in no apparent rush to get his boots back on and start earning his wages again in Glasgow’s east end. Indeed, there are concerns behind the scenes that the winger’s heart is not in it the way it once was.
So last week, when they failed to land Kyogo Furuhashi on loan and make him the replacement for Kyogo Furuhashi, 12 months after sanctioning his £10m sale to Rennes without bothering to source an alternative striker?
Well that felt like a final straw and definitive proof that Celtic’s board and the club’s entire leadership structure is now thrashing around with its hair on fire and incapable of imaginative, original or even rational thought.
In retrospect, it’s probably little wonder that the Japanese international decided against accepting the offer of a short term loan deal from the fringes of Birmingham City. His old club has become a recurring bin fire since the glory days he experienced under Ange Potecoglou.
The club’s supporters have been in full scale revolt pretty much since the start of the season and most certainly since Desmond’s diabolical, Dick Dastardly style evisceration of Rodgers for daring to ask the board to do its job and invest in his playing squad.
These fans are often derided for their overblown sense of entitlement which has a tendency to consume them and fill them with rage on the rare occasion that some other club gets to lift a trophy or two. That maybe so.
But this feels like a whole lot more than just a one off blip. They are justified to voice concerns about the overall malaise clogging up the inside of their own club.
Because while Celtic are caving in on themselves from the top down, across the city Rangers have been busy fixing their own foundations over the last 12 months.
A board which was not fit for purpose and incapable of moving the Ibrox club forward has been dismantled and moved on.
Yes, new owner Andrew Cavenagh might have made some early mistakes with the details of building success on the pitch but the fundamentals required to make that happen are now in place.
At some point – and perhaps sooner than could have been expected – the pair of them appear destined to meet in the middle which is extraordinary given the scale of the financial and footballing gulfs which separated them not all that long ago.
If despot Desmond remains determined to stay in control of Celtic’s affairs and unwilling to even consider letting someone else have a shot at it then, at the very least, this absent landlord will have to acknowledge that a radical change of culture is required.
He’ll need to accept that all manner of strategic mistakes have been made and then he’ll have to put in place a brand new, contemporary, dynamic structure that will rid Celtic of its shortsightedness.
If not then the champions will fumble around in the dark for a while and perhaps even get to celebrate one of the most iconic title lifts of the lot in a few months’ time.
But even if O’Neill manages to pull it off – two decades after his last – unless Desmond makes a dramatic pivot, then the club will remain locked into this loop, permanently pining for the past while fearing what the future may have in store.