Michael Carrick is not gone yet, but after Sunday’s 3-0 home defeat to Bournemouth, United are holding crisis talks and his position genuinely is hanging by a thread.

That actually makes the Celtic question more interesting.

For the past few weeks, we have talked increasingly about Kieran McKenna and the possibility that he might become the next Celtic manager.

Until now, much of that discussion has existed in a slightly strange vacuum.

McKenna is available. Celtic will need a manager. There are people inside Celtic who reportedly admire him. Aiden McGeady has even said that he has heard McKenna is being lined up for next season.

But there has always been an enormous question sitting behind all of it.

Why would Kieran McKenna choose Celtic?

This weekend made that question considerably more interesting.

Michael Carrick’s situation at Manchester United is perilous. He may survive it. He may even survive another week or two. But nobody looking at what is happening there can seriously believe he’s got a long term future.

That potentially opens one of the biggest jobs in football.

And McKenna has history there. He coached at Manchester United. He knows the club. His name has been mentioned whenever that job has become unstable before. If they wanted him, you would imagine he would listen.

But here is the interesting part. There is absolutely no guarantee that Manchester United will want him. The reporting around that job currently has those other candidates ahead of him.

Eddie Howe appears to have influential admirers there. Julian Nagelsmann is highly regarded. Unai Emery has been discussed. McKenna may be somewhere on the list without being anywhere near the top of it.

And that matters to Celtic.

Because the Premier League managerial market is not simply a place where somebody like McKenna gets to pick whichever club he wants. He comes with complications. For one thing, Ipswich are still due compensation if somebody appoints him before next summer.

The figure currently being reported is £8 million. That alone has already discouraged English clubs. There is also his salary. The numbers which have circulated around what he earned at Ipswich are enormous by Celtic standards.

Then there is the simple fact that Premier League clubs have choices.

Maybe Manchester United go elsewhere. Maybe Crystal Palace, who have also been linked with him, decide on somebody different. Maybe Tottenham or another big club changes manager before the season is finished.

There could be jobs. But there is absolutely no guarantee that McKenna will get offered the particular kind of job he wants.

And suddenly Celtic becomes more interesting.

McKenna grew up supporting this club.

That does not mean he is going to accept any offer Celtic put in front of him because somebody plays the Fields of Athenry in the background and shows him a photograph of Lisbon. We don’t have the cachet for that any longer.

But emotional connections matter when all the other pieces are right.

And McKenna himself has recently described what he wants from his next position. He wants to develop players. He wants attacking football. He wants to win. He wants a connection with the club and the community. He wants to build something memorable.

Tell me Celtic could not sell that. If we wanted to. If we had the balls for it. If we were willing to turn the club over to him.

You could sit Kieran McKenna down and show him Celtic Park on a European night. Show him 60,000 supporters. Show him the training facilities which are being developed. Show him the young talent already in the squad.

Show him Mika Baur. Show him Camilo Durán. Show him Haissem Hassan. Show him Callum Osmand. Tell him that he can build the next Celtic team.

Tell him he can modernise the football operation. Tell him the ambition is Champions League football every season. Tell him he can build something here which people will remember.

There is a sales pitch. A very powerful one.

But here comes the part where everything starts to fall apart.

Would Celtic actually mean any of it? Because you cannot promise that and not do it. People already don’t want to work for these people, but that kind of dishonesty would be the worst possible outcome here.

Because if you want Kieran McKenna, you cannot bring him here and ask him to operate inside the same structures which have frustrated every ambitious manager we have had, and so every one of those promises would need to be kept.

You cannot pay millions to get him through the door and then start haggling over £2 million midfielders. You cannot tell him he is building a Champions League team and then sell one of his best players every summer without replacing him properly. You cannot tell him recruitment is collaborative and then hand him players he does not particularly want because somebody elsewhere in the building thinks there is resale value in them.

You cannot ask a manager with other options and serious ambitions to accept the usual Celtic restrictions and simply be grateful for the opportunity. If you are going for McKenna, you have to go for him properly.

That means giving him authority. It means backing him. It means allowing him significant influence over how the football department operates. It means recruitment built around a coherent football idea. It means proper sports science, analysis, coaching infrastructure and long-term squad planning. It means looking at Celtic as something more ambitious than a machine for winning the Scottish league cheaply and selling footballers profitably.

In other words, appointing McKenna might require Celtic to become the club we keep demanding that it becomes. That is why I cannot decide whether this idea is completely mad or completely logical. All I know is it keeps being brought up.

And I’ll say it again; I don’t think we even know how to pull this off. I don’t believe we will give up the authority necessary.

Financially, it looks daunting. The compensation alone would represent an extraordinary departure from the way Celtic normally think about managerial appointments, even if we left it really late to negotiate within the time frame; obviously, we could wait until he can talk to anyone but is that a risk we want to take?

His wages would almost certainly require another gigantic change.

And if a Premier League club came in offering him vastly more money and a substantial transfer budget, Celtic would find it difficult to compete.

But Celtic can offer things some of those clubs cannot. He would have the opportunity to win immediately. He would have European football. He would have a support which would embrace him completely if he got this team playing the right way. He would inherit a club where even modest European progress would massively enhance his reputation.

And perhaps most importantly, he would have the chance to construct something.

McKenna has already done that once. Ipswich were in League One when he took over. He transformed them. He did not simply coach a team. He built something. If Celtic were serious, the pitch should be that he can do the same thing here on a vastly larger stage.

Not rescue us. Transform us. The question is whether the people running Celtic have the courage for that. Because this would not be a normal managerial appointment.

You would not be hiring another coach to operate inside the existing machine. The existing machine is part of the problem. If McKenna came here, the attraction for him would surely have to include the opportunity to influence what that machine becomes.

And that is where my doubts rage.

Can you imagine this Celtic board sitting across the table from Kieran McKenna and saying: we know what you built at Ipswich, we know why you succeeded, and we are prepared to give you the tools to do something similar here? Can you imagine them matching a serious salary? Can you imagine them agreeing to reshape recruitment around his requirements?

Can you imagine them handing real power to an ambitious modern coach and accepting that the football department has to change?

I can imagine McKenna being interested in Celtic. I have a much harder time imagining Celtic being brave enough to make Celtic interesting to McKenna.

But that is the opportunity if Manchester United choose somebody else, because this is the biggest job that is going to be available south of the border and which he ought to have a realistic chance of getting.

The other Premier League vacancies people expect may not emerge. Clubs which admire McKenna may decide that £8 million in compensation is too much, and might not want to wait until the season ends and the clause expires.

So, if we get to the summer and Kieran McKenna is still available, Celtic might have a genuine shot at appointing one of the most interesting young British coaches of his generation. But having a shot and taking it are two very different things.

If Celtic want him, they cannot simply offer him the manager’s office.

They have to offer him a project. They have to offer him authority. They have to offer him ambition. They have to convince him that this club wants to become something more than it is today. That is the deal.

And perhaps that is why the question is bigger than whether Kieran McKenna would come to Celtic. The real question is whether Celtic would be prepared to change enough to make him want to.

You know where I am on this. I think the sooner we are talking about realistic targets the better. But if United pass this story will run and run and I doubt we’ve heard the last of it.

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