With Celtic’s season now done and dusted after crashing out of the cup, the Bhoys can focus solely on their hunt for a new manager.
Neil Lennon has been out of the job for an extended period of time now but the Hoops are finding life difficult in finding a replacement.
What’s the word?
Interim manager John Kennedy dealt his chances of landing the Celtic job an almighty blow on Sunday when they tasted defeat at Ibrox in the Scottish Cup fourth round.
With that in mind, Eddie Howe is still very much the favourite to land the gig after holding advanced talks with majority shareholder Dermot Desmond.
The arrival of Dominic McKay should help to accelerate things behind-the-scenes but the ball it would seem is very much in Howe’s court.
That’s because according to Hoops pundit Frank McAvennie, the 43-year-old has actually been offered the role.
In an exciting update, McAvennie said the following when speaking to This is Futbol: “Everyone knows he wasn’t coming in until the summer. If you’ve offered somebody the job, which I believe they have, and he said ‘I need time to think about it’ – a couple of days, even a couple of weeks to speak to his family and friends and find out about the club, give him a couple of weeks, but a couple of months you can’t give him.”
Big dilemma
This has been a rather stressful few weeks for Desmond and the rest of the Celtic board.
After passing on Roy Keane the main man has very much been Howe.
Unfortunately, the former Bournemouth boss has been mucking them around pretty significantly in recent weeks.
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The Englishman held talks and looked to be on the verge of taking over before a number of obstacles stopped Celtic from getting a deal over the line swiftly.
One of the primary issues has been relating to Celtic’s director of football. They want to hire Fergal Harkin but Howe is only keen on seeing his companion from the Cherries, Richard Hughes, join him at Paradise.
Wanting his own backroom staff is a fair enough request but it’s not fair on the Hoops for him to keep them waiting until the summer.
After all, he could then join a different club instead. Crystal Palace and Brighton are reportedly keeping tabs on his situation so they could quite easily swoop in from under Celtic’s nose.
At some point, Desmond is going to have to pull the plug and focus on other targets. The Bhoys are too big a club to let someone like Howe boss them around.
If anything, it sums up their torrid season. They have been tormented by their biggest rivals and now they’re being led astray by Howe too.
The club have a big dilemma on their hands at the moment.