FATAL FEBRUARY

Celtic face a four-week title reckoning unless they break the mould and start getting things right

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CELTIC'S progress in Europe at the expense of Utrecht on Thursday night only underlined the fact that the club is run by people who don't know what they're doing.

If Martin O'Neill had been kept in place after succeeding Brendan Rodgers when he left under a cloud in October, Celtic would now be top of the Premiership, have the League Cup in their possession and be going for the Treble.

But a person, or persons unknown, took the decision to recruit a manager, Wilfried Nancy, with no qualifications for the job and that boardroom brainstorm has cost the club this season on a domestic level.

Nancy lost a cup final and the only European match of his time in charge, while also shedding 12 league points. To appoint him was an act of industrial misconduct.

O'Neill's job at Celtic Park is to rectify the shortcomings and wrongdoings perpetrated by those who run the club's affairs.

Martin apportions no blame, publicly denies any division between him and the hierarchy and talks at ever-increasing length to compensate for a nonverbal chief executive and his moribund board of directors.

The club's principal and seldom seen shareholder, Dermott Desmond, might well live in a hermetically-sealed bubble, immune to the outside world, for all we know.

Celtic have until tomorrow night to invade the transfer market and attempt to turn around a season which has, so far, been an unqualified disaster.

Good luck with that one.

No names, or places, have been altered to protect the innocent. All of the following has happened to Celtic since the season started.