Let’s stop this Roy Keane to Celtic talk – it would be nothing but a retrograde step, and 100% a Desmond appointment

Apparently, we are now being linked with a manager who has not picked a football team since 2011.

That is where we are at as a football club.

Roy Keane sat in the stand at Celtic Park on Sunday, watched us get beaten 1-0 by the Ibrox side, and within forty-eight hours he was the next Celtic manager.

The Daily Record has spent this morning reading the runes on it, laying out all the little signals that a path to Celtic Park might be clearing for him.

Dermot Desmond admires him.

Martin O’Neill admires him.

He has already had a word with Martin during his trip to Glasgow’s East End, by his own admission on Stick To Football.

So let me get in front of this one now.

Roy Keane should not be anywhere near our football club.

Not as our manager, not as a coach, not in any capacity whatsoever.

Nobody at Celtic other than Dermot Desmond could look at this and see a credible appointment

And that alone tells you how it would come about.

Let’s deal with the CV first, because the CV is not a small detail here – it is the whole argument.

Roy Keane has not managed at club level since he left Ipswich Town in 2011.

That is FIFTEEN years out of a dug-out.

Two years at Ipswich, a couple at Sunderland before that, and that’s your lot.

The last actual coaching involvement he had was as Martin O’Neill’s number two with the Republic of Ireland.

Which finished in 2018.

Since then he has been a television pundit and a podcast regular, and a very good one at that.

But being brilliant on a Sky panel on a Sunday afternoon is not a qualification for managing a club struggling domestically and in a Europa League campaign.

We have just watched what happens when this club appoints a man on reputation and history rather than on recent evidence.

Are we honestly going to do it twice in the same season?

His own honest assessment was that his CV doesn’t warrant Real Madrid calling, and he was right

That was his line on the Late Late Show, and he meant it.

He also said he does not want to go too low, and that he has a feeling in his bones that something will come up.

Does that sound like a man building towards Celtic, or a man waiting on the phone to ring?

And here is the thing.

I have absolutely no problem with Roy Keane the man.

I like him.

He says what he actually thinks, which in Scottish football is rarer than a competent Celtic director.

He also served his apprenticeship at our club as a player. He wrote about that in a way no press officer would ever have let out of the building:

After the game, the disappointment. When I got on the bus, John Hartson, a really good guy, was already sitting there and he was eating a packet of crisps – with a fizzy drink. I said to myself, ‘Welcome to Hell’.

Knocked out of the cup by Clyde, fans baying for Gordon Strachan’s head on the steps, Tommy Burns telling them they weren’t Celtic fans.

He knows exactly what this place is.

But knowing what a club is and being equipped to run it in 2026 are two very different things.

Make no mistake, this would be a Desmond appointment from beginning to end

Because this is not a new idea.

Desmond pushed to bring Keane to Celtic Park as a player back in 2005.

Desmond then met him in London in 2014, before Ronny Deila got the job.

And how did that one go?

Keane turned it down, and he told us why in The Second Half.

I had been down this road before when I signed for Celtic as a player. I felt they wanted me but they weren’t showing how much they wanted me. It wasn’t rocking my boat.

Right job, wrong time, was his verdict.

Twelve years on, the principal shareholder is apparently going back to the same well.

That is not a football department identifying the best available candidate.

That is one man in his twilight years going back to a name he has always fancied, for the third time of asking.

Michael Nicholson backed Martin O’Neill this week, so officially there is no vacancy at all.

We all know what that particular vote of confidence is worth.

Both of them are control freaks, and there is only one ending to that story

I will grant you that he would be box office.

The first time some tame Scottish football writer asked him a daft question about a refereeing decision, we would all be delighted.

And the first time the board tried to sell him a winger they had already priced, we would love that too.

For about a fortnight.

Then reality would arrive.

Roy Keane does not do being told.

Dermot Desmond does not do being challenged.

How long do you honestly think that lasts?

Keane would want players, a say, and a structure.

Desmond would want a net profit on the transfer business and a manager who puts his name to statements he did not write.

One of them would walk inside eighteen months, and it would not be the one who has been there since 1994.

Back to square one again, another manager burned, another season torched, the same man deciding who comes next.

We’ve had enough retrograde steps for one lifetime.

We went back to Neil Lennon.

We went back to Brendan Rodgers.

And finally, we went back to Martin O’Neill.

Sound familiar?

Celtic doesn’t do new chapters, we just keep rereading the old ones and wondering why the ending never changes.

Does any of that sound like progress to you?

Roy Keane is not the answer to anything at Celtic, and the only man who thinks he is, is the one man who should not be deciding.

So let’s kill this one off now.

Or better still, get rid of the man who would make it…

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