There’s a question which should haunt every Celtic fan, but I don’t think too many of them give it all that much thought.

And it’s this: what if, as some of us have alleged, all of our success in recent years is not down to the intrinsic strength of the club itself, but to the brilliance of a handful of managers?

What if we’re in a better place than we ought to be because we’ve been exceptionally lucky in the men holding the line and running things at the club?

This is not an abstract question. This is the question that lies at the heart of much of the case against the board. When accused of not giving the directors any credit, I personally often fall back on the notion that we are where we are because of exceptional men in the dugout: men who have raised teams out of nothing, men who have been incredibly skilled at getting our footballers to win football matches.

And if we drop below a certain standard of manager, this team will drop to its own difficult level. We may be watching it right now. The culture of this club is rotten. I genuinely believe that it is a consequences-free zone if you inhabit the boardroom. And I believe that sets the wrong example all the way up and all the way down the line.

Nobody wants to take responsibility or accountability, and if we have a manager in the dressing room who is content just to be here and draw the big salary, but who doesn’t have the skill set to hold this club together, who knows where we might find ourselves?

The other day, I talked about why I understand some of the arguments that our club is well run. And the one I pointed to was the rainy-day fund, which a lot of people condemn the club for having built, but which I don’t.

I understand the rainy-day fund. I understand the necessity behind it. I understand that a club like ours needs to be prepared for all manner of eventualities. And it just makes sense to hold some money in reserve just in case.

It takes a special kind of arrogance not to acknowledge that your opposition may have a point. It takes a special kind of arrogance to dismiss any view that you don’t happen to like and don’t happen to agree with as being wholly without merit.

And if I could urge the guys on the other side of this debate to do one thing, to take one fragment of this argument seriously, this is the one I want them to consider.

If we have been kept afloat by some exceptional managerial talent, what happens when that talent is no longer in the room? And to understand what that might look like, you only have to look south of the border at the state of Manchester United.

It seems pretty clear that a Manchester United squad that was in its dying embers was kept intact largely through the work and the talents of Alex Ferguson.

And because there were systemic problems underneath him at the club, it was important that the club kept on winning, because the moment he was gone and it ceased to win, all the chickens came home to roost. All the problems became obvious, and now the consequences are becoming obvious too.

Don’t get me wrong. Manchester United, even without Ferguson, is still an extraordinarily powerful club. They are still capable of attracting top managers and top players.

They still spend a fortune. They still take themselves seriously as a major football institution. But the problems at that club run deep, and the fact that they’re once again considering sacking the manager for failure, while those in the boardroom above him continue to lead cushioned existences without worrying about consequences, has begun to alarm Manchester United fans in a big, big way.

Manchester United fans have never liked their current board of directors, but the hatred for them is now off the charts. And the club’s fans have ceased to hold the parade of failed managers responsible for their mess.

They don’t believe any more that it’s the fault of Michael Carrick, or Amorim, or whomever else might be sitting in that dugout at any particular moment. The problems are deeper than that, and those fans know it.

I smiled the other day at the irony that they’re finally attempting to put together a Not Another Penny campaign. I wish them well, especially as our own strategy continues to make people at Celtic Park decidedly uncomfortable.

Our situation is slightly different from the Manchester United one in that we have the financial resources that make it entirely possible that even with a third-rate manager, we could stay in front of the other clubs in this league.

But I doubt it. We’ll crash before long.

There are some who say, “Let it happen. It’s for the best.”

Maybe it will take us losing a title, or two. Maybe it will take that before we wake up, before some sections of our fan base smell the coffee and realise what’s actually going on at Celtic, and how big our problems are.

But my answer to that has always been the same: we could be in a lot worse trouble. If we don’t win the title this season, the Conference League play-off rounds become part of the equation, where the possibility of going out of Europe altogether becomes real.

So this isn’t some abstract situation.

There is a real and serious threat that if we don’t win the league, we may end up making tens of millions in losses just because the cost base is so high.

And then you start cutting the cost base, and where do you find yourself? You find yourself with a third-rate manager.

You find yourself buying the cheapest players you can find. You find yourself in a position where the opposition gets stronger even as you get weaker.

So, it is not some abstract theory that maybe it will take a title or two to cross the city before people wake up. By the time they do wake up, the house has burned around them. That’s the scenario we have to avoid at all costs.

Manchester United is a warning shot. A club that gets itself into a doom cycle. And at Celtic, it is not difficult to see where that doom cycle starts: the loss of this title and with it the Champions League and even Europa League revenue next season.

Having to play three Conference League qualifiers just to get league-phase football at all. All of them fraught with peril. All of them dangerous. None of them worth the enormous stress and risk that is going to go with them.

Because even if we make it to the league phase, it’s six games instead of eight, which means only three at home. That’s two fewer chances to make some extra money in terms of points and cash for victories and draws, and one fewer home game automatically.

And because it’s less money, and substantially less money, there is no way that, on our running costs, we can sustain the present level of spending without that rainy day fund becoming less and less and less and less.

And I am convinced, and I have been convinced for a while, that the only thing standing between us and that fate is having the right man in the dugout.

Do we have the right man in the dugout at the moment? Do we have in the dugout a man who can prevent that? I don’t know any longer. I have my doubts. They were big enough before today; they are screaming at me tonight.

I worry about O’Neill. But I’m worried about a lot more than O’Neill. We’ve got much bigger problems than that.

Because I don’t know who out there, who’s credible, will want this job.

I don’t know how much we’re prepared to push the boat out to get the right person, and I don’t know that the search will even start until this season ends. Because realistically, any manager you want is going to want to know what they’re stepping into.

And there is a big difference between selling a manager on a possible Champions League place and the Russian roulette of a European campaign with a depleted squad.

Mark my words, Manchester United is the warning we cannot afford to ignore. That’s a club that was held together by one man, and when that man was no longer there, all the walls came tumbling down, and they did so fast.

We have been warned.