The Celtic board have made Martin O’Neill’s decision for him – they intend to use the 74 year old as a human shield for the rest of this season, but is that what Martin actually wants?

After Sunday, Martin O’Neill told us he would take this week to have a good long think about his future at Celtic.

As it turns out, he didn’t need the week.

Or rather, the board decided he didn’t need it.

Because tucked in alongside the club’s annual results came a statement backing the manager.

Full support.

Business as usual.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Does any of that read like a football club in crisis to you?

And that statement tells us two things, neither of which should let you sleep easy tonight.

The first is that Martin O’Neill has already agreed to stay on, because a statement like that does not get released otherwise

Just think about it for a second.

No board on this earth puts out a line backing their manager while that manager is sitting on holiday deciding whether he still wants the job.

You simply do not do it.

Because if he walks on Thursday morning, you look like a complete clown.

Then again, we already know we have a bunch of clowns running this club, so that’s nothing new.

So the conversation has already happened.

The decision has already been taken.

And that week of quiet reflection Martin spoke about on Sunday evening was finished before most of us had even read about it.

Which brings me to the second thing.

They have no intention of even attempting to look for a new manager, because keeping Martin is the path of least resistance

Not one call has been made.

Not one name has been sounded out.

New managers cost money, and this lot do not part with money.

A new manager asks awkward questions.

A new manager wants bodies in January, and he wants to know why he didn’t get them in August.

But Martin O’Neill costs them absolutely nothing extra.

He has already been shafted once and said very little about it in public.

Why on earth would they go looking for someone who might not be so accommodating?

Ryan McDonald in the Daily Record described Martin as the latest human shield at this football club, and he is absolutely right about that.

The only thing I would add is that they’ve now bolted the shield to the door.

Here is the part that genuinely bothers me, because I do not believe for one second that this is what Martin O’Neill wants

Here is what the man himself said about his own position last Friday. This was reported by the Daily Record:

In many ways, I shouldn’t really be here.

Read that line again.

That is not a man who is itching to see this thing through.

That is a 74 year old who knows exactly what has been done to him and exactly where it is heading.

This morning, I wrote that I believe Martin is doing this against his will, or that he will at the very least be staying against it.

Nothing that has happened since has changed my mind on that.

If anything, the statement has hardened it.

Because a man who wanted to be here would have said so himself on Sunday, and there would have been no need for a corporate line dressed up in an annual report.

We all know how this club operates.

Whatever this is, it is not a plan, and after Sunday it is obvious that there isn’t a system here either

That is what makes the next few weeks so frightening.

We do not have a discernible way of playing.

We have a formation that changes to suit whoever happens to be fit, and none of the variations of it are working.

Square pegs, round holes, week after week.

How many more weeks of that are we expected to sit through?

The midfield has been gutted and nobody has been brought in to replace what left.

The full backs are either injured or unfit.

And the support has gone from angry to apathetic, which is the single worst place a fanbase can be.

So how exactly does the board imagine that Martin is suddenly going to find the solution over an international break?

That is a question only they can answer.

Twenty days with half the squad away on international duty is not a rebuild.

It isn’t even a pre-season.

Clearly they know something the rest of us do not.

Or do they?

The truth is they aren’t backing Martin O’Neill at all, they are backing themselves

Of course they are.

Backing Martin means they never have to admit that the summer was a disaster.

It means Dermot Desmond, Silent Mike and the rest of the Axis of Feeble get to stand behind a Celtic legend while this season quietly dies around them.

Gineitis, Mahmic and Sigur would have cost the guts of £13 million between them.

Every one of them was at the top of Martin’s list.

We spent £3.4 million on deadline day while the Ibrox side spent £18 million on players who can actually play.

And we are sitting on seventy odd million in the bank.

That is the club these annual results are actually describing.

A business with a healthy bank balance, with a football team falling apart underneath it.

And by the way, don’t believe for a minute the £66.7 million bank balance tells the whole story.

There is no Arne Engels, Daizen Maeda or Reo Hatate in that mix, and the extra revenue their sales produced.

So here we are.

A 74 year old legend propped up in the dugout because sacking him would cost money and replacing him would require ambition.

Catastrophic results are coming, and everybody except the men who wrote that statement can see them coming.

So what happens when we drop points at Motherwell and get taken apart in Lisbon?

We are in a COMPLETE and utter mess.

And if we carry on down this road, we will be lucky – genuinely lucky – to finish third…

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