News that Roy Keane won’t become the next Celtic manager is unlikely to devastate the hoops support.
Claims that Keane’s appointment would have sparked a stampede on season tickets seemed far fetched with most fans taking a realistic view of the manager’s job and capable of differentiating between Keane the player and manager.
Whoever takes over from Neil Lennon will be given the wholehearted support of 99% of supporters- even the so-called dream ticket of John Barnes and Kenny Dalglish was largely backed by supporters despite reservations.
Very few fans would have had Keane at the top of their management wishlist although there would have been obvious attractions to see how he handled the Celtic job.
However with the Tony Mowbray, John Barnes and Dr Jo Venglos appointments still reasonably fresh in mind reducing the risk factor has to be a priority.
Stevie Clarke seems to be the latest bookies favourite but appointing someone with 18 months front line management experience that has been out of Scotland for close on 30 years seems like a heavy gamble.
Clarke doesn’t appear to have the obvious Celtic factor but that didn’t prevent Wim Jansen or Gordon Strachan from delivering success to the club.
Malky Mackay, Davie Moyes and Jackie McNamara are other obvious options with an understanding of the club and the current climate that Celtic operate in.
More risky would be to follow the recent player recruitment blue print and find a coach outwith the usual channels looking for the chance to impress.
It seems that Celtic are well represented in Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium and further afield in pockets of Africa and Central America.
Could there be an Emilio Izaguirre, Mikel Lustig or Virgil van Dijk type figure lurking around that would make an impact as manager and bring in their knowledge of the game from foreign parts.
Whoever is appointed is bound to be asked about Keane, while Celtic state that he wasn’t offered the job it is reasonable to assume that it was his if he had wanted it.
In just over three weeks time we will know which club we will be playing at Murrayfield in the first Champions League qualifier- hopefully Neil Lennon’s successor will be in place and plotting a return to that arena.