Celtic face two possible nightmare scenarios – Martin O’Neill stays on, but if he doesn’t, the board replaces him with bookies favourite, Neil Lennon. Both scenarios end in disaster…

Apparently, Neil Lennon is now the bookies favourite to be the next manager of Celtic.

Let that one sit with you for a minute.

The Scottish Sun carried the Betfair market yesterday, and there he was, sitting at the top of it at Evens.

Shaun Maloney next at 3/1, Scott Brown at 6/1, Robbie Keane at 8/1.

Is this really where we are at?

I read it twice to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me.

Because if that is where the thinking is headed inside that boardroom, then we are in far more trouble than I thought.

And we were already in an awful lot of trouble.

In reality, there are two nightmare scenarios facing us over this international break.

Both of them end in disaster.

Scenario number one is that Martin O’Neill stays on and ends up destroying this season and his own reputation at Celtic

Let me be clear about something first.

I have absolutely no desire to see Martin O’Neill’s name dragged through the mud at this football club.

He gave us a League and a Cup last season when nobody outside of Celtic Park gave us a prayer.

He left us with memories that will last a lifetime.

But that is precisely why he needs to go, and go now.

Here is what he said after Sunday, as reported by the Scottish Sun:

I genuinely will reflect and see. It’s a matter of whether I can help the team because the manager is supposed to be able to do that.

That’s what I have to ask myself. I will have a look at that this week.

That is a man who already knows the answer.

He has lost the dressing room, and anybody who sat through those three games can see that for themselves.

He is fast losing the fanbase too, with his after match comments over the last eight days or so.

Surely he must look at what happened to Neil Lennon in season 2020/21 and see exactly where this road ends?

Lennon walked into that season as a double treble winner.

He walked out of it as a punchline.

Ten in a row went up in smoke on his watch, and his standing at this club has never recovered from it.

It never will, either.

Martin O’Neill is standing at the top of that very same slope right now

We go to Lisbon to play Benfica when the break is over.

Just think about that for a second.

This squad, in this state, with this manager, in the Estádio da Luz.

How do you think that one is going to go?

We will be utterly humiliated, and I do not say that lightly.

That cannot be allowed to happen to him, and it cannot be allowed to happen to us.

Staying on would be detrimental to any recovery this team might still be capable of.

There are three weeks until Motherwell on 11 October.

Even for a board who enjoy leaving everything to the very last minute, that is a generous window to get the right man in.

Scenario number two is that he walks, and the board hands the job to Neil Lennon

And this is the one that genuinely frightens me.

Because a board that has spent the guts of two years doing the cheapest possible thing is not suddenly going to start doing the right one.

Lennon is cheap.

Lennon is available.

Neil Lennon will not go to war with them over a transfer budget, and they know it.

Do you need any more of an explanation than that?

He ticks every single box that matters to Dermot Desmond and Silent Mike.

He ticks not one box that matters to the support.

Neil Lennon should never be allowed near the Celtic dugout again after the way his last stint here finished.

That is not personal, and I take nothing away from what the man did for us as a player.

But you cannot un-ring that bell.

You cannot ask a support who lived through the end of 2020/21 to sit down and watch the sequel.

If that appointment is made, most of the fanbase will lose the plot entirely – and they would be perfectly entitled to.

We would be swapping a legend on his way out for a man this support has already rejected

We have been here before, of course.

Remember Robbie Keane?

He was all but lined up for this job until the support made it abundantly clear what they thought of that idea.

So we know fine well the board can read a room when they are forced to.

The question is whether anybody inside Celtic Park is bothering to read it now.

Because there is a third scenario, and nobody is talking about it.

The right manager, backed properly, with a squad rebuilt in January.

But that one requires ambition, and ambition costs money.

Which is why it isn’t on the Betfair list.

So here we sit, waiting to find out which of the two nightmares we are getting.

O’Neill soldiering on towards a humiliation in Lisbon that he does not deserve.

Or Lennon walking back through that door to a reception that will make Sunday afternoon look warm.

Neither of them fixes one single thing that is actually wrong at this football club.

Because the problem was never the man in the dugout.

The problem is sitting upstairs in that boardroom, and it is going NOWHERE…

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