Dermot Desmond did not become a billionaire by winging his way through the financial world, so basic logic dictates that this crafty Irish statistician must have something grand and imaginative up his sleeve for Celtic, the club he runs from afar even though he owns a little over a third of its shares. Because the alternative makes no sense at all.
It is too much of a stretch to believe that the summit of Desmond's critical thinking was to pick up the phone to Martin O'Neill and ask a fellow septuagenarian to hold the fort for him on an entirely indefinite basis. And yet, almost exactly one year after making that emergency call to his old pal, that is precisely how it is beginning to feel.
O'Neill's Legendary Status Remains Intact
O'Neill's legendary status will remain undiminished and rock solid regardless of what the immediate future may or may not hold for him and his current day side. He rode to Celtic's rescue last season when Desmond was taking a flame thrower to its best interests, by launching into a vicious, two footed, character assassination on a manager who had previously stock piled silverware into the Parkhead boardroom.
Brendan Rodgers has still to break his silence on the murky and mysterious circumstances around his sudden departure on October 27 last year. For some reason the cat has got his tongue, which is strange in itself given the healthy regard he has for his own reputation. There remains to this day something highly peculiar about his prolonged period of self enforced silence.
The Desmond evisceration was savage, nuclear stuff. Rodgers was portrayed as a self-serving, divisive liar, and all of it was done under the name of the club's official platforms. Yet Rodgers chose not to defend himself. That his warnings about Desmond's ambitions for Celtic have been proven to have been correct might offer him a degree of personal comfort and satisfaction, but it does not explain why he was prepared to suck it all up and say nothing in the face of such spiteful, malicious and potentially actionable provocation.
A Year On, The Issues Remain Unresolved
What's done is done where Rodgers is concerned. But the issues that his departure created one year ago remain very much in play and unresolved. Desmond's knee jerk solution was to turn to O'Neill and apply him to the sore like some sort of human elastoplast.
O'Neill has spoken many times about the content of that initial phone call, and only last week he reminded the world that Desmond told him his services would be required for somewhere between two weeks and two months. And yet here we all are, one year and one week later. O'Neill, now shuffling towards his 75th birthday, remains at the helm having successfully managed to pull Celtic out of the fire that Desmond started with a league and Scottish Cup double.
In retrospect, that should have been his perfect parting gift. In reality, it allowed Desmond the opportunity to twiddle his moustache and do nothing whatsoever about addressing the club's strategic ambitions for the longer term. And that's what continues to cause such confusion. Because if he really does have a plan for this club then he's doing his very best to keep it to himself, and his lack of leadership has brought his club's supporters back to the brink of a full scale revolt.
Pressure Mounts After Falkirk Defeat
Sunday's defeat at Falkirk has thrown another jerry can on this fire of frustration. But the full scale blaze might take hold inside Celtic's own stadium on Guy Fawkes night when Besiktas come calling in the latest leg of what has been, up unto this point, a catastrophic minefield of a Europa League campaign.
If the big spending Turks do to O'Neill's side what Ferencvaros, Benfica and Celta Vigo have done to it already, by taking all three points away, then Scotland's champions will be written off as the down and outs of UEFA's second tier competition. And if, on the same night, Ararat Armenia can take as much as a point from Portuguese second string outfit Torreense, then Celtic could end the week sitting 36th in a 36 team table.
Either way, the anger, resentment and embarrassment could boil over if O'Neill is unable to stop the rot and to find a way of overcoming a Besiktas side which has already helped itself to seven Europa League points from the first available nine. He's done way too much good for this club over the course of the last 20 odd years to be turned upon and derided by his own. And yet it's hard to envisage any other scenario if his Celtic side, a thoroughly disjointed, disconnected bunch, is once again unable to defy the odds by actually winning a game of European football.
So it must be asked once more, what exactly is Desmond thinking about now that his old ally is hanging there, with the flames licking at his feet? Even if he doesn't have some grand proposal for Celtic's future then surely, for compassionate reasons alone, he would wish to protect his old pal from the full scale furore which will surely accompany another negative result.
It does feel very much as if O'Neill has used up the last of the goodwill which rushed in the door along with his hurried appointment one year ago. He has won just three of his last ten games, drawing one against Dundee United while watching on helplessly as his side has been systematically picked and pulled apart in the other seven.
When Wilfried Nancy lost six of his eight games in charge heading into the turn of the year, Desmond felt inclined to pick up the mobile again and hit the speed dial button. O'Neill, of course, answered the call for a second time, and it was purely because of his sense of duty and his ability to galvanise that Celtic eventually managed to hobble over the season's finishing line with two trophies intact. But all of it was done in spite of Desmond's myopic short-termism rather than because of it.
So if the 76-year-old really is a man with a plan after all then surely the time has come for him to show his hand. If not, then he'll stand accused not just of failing a football club but also of the betrayal of a friend.
