As hard as it is to believe, ours was not the worst European result suffered by a side on this island in midweek.

I am not going to play down the significance of what happened to Celtic. That is three European defeats in a row now, and there is no disguising how poor that is.

But Manchester United’s 4-1 defeat against Como was a genuinely shocking moment for their club and a profoundly embarrassing one for the Premier League. It has also put Michael Carrick under enormous pressure, and his position is considerably more precarious than Martin O’Neill’s is at Celtic.

Carrick is working at a club where there is almost no stability, where the pressure is immense and where supporters have spent years watching something they once regarded as almost permanent disappear in front of them.

And I understand the impatience.

Manchester United supporters were accustomed to following the biggest club in England. They were used to watching their team compete for and win the biggest prizes.

They have now been through a prolonged period where that is not even close to being the case.

That is why Carrick, the sort of appointment which would probably have been regarded as astonishingly underwhelming by their supporters several years ago, could soon become the latest figure dispatched by a football club which, in a strange way, increasingly resembles Celtic.

A giant institution with enormous advantages, a huge support and a powerful history which has somehow lost sight of what it is supposed to be doing.

The difference, of course, is that Celtic are still winning domestically and Manchester United are not.

United remain one of the richest clubs in world football. Their commercial power is extraordinary. In theory there is no reason why they should not be capable of putting together a football operation which can compete with Manchester City and the best clubs in Europe.

But it has been a long time since they looked anything like that kind of side.

So if Carrick goes, another managerial search begins.

And remarkably, that search might have implications for Celtic because two of the names around the wider conversation have significant Celtic connections, while another name being linked with our own job has already sat in the Old Trafford dugout and, in some respects, represents exactly the kind of mistake both clubs should be trying to avoid.

David Moyes is being linked with Celtic again.

He will not be linked seriously with Manchester United because he has already had that job.

Moyes was Alex Ferguson’s nominated successor, and at the time you could at least understand the thinking behind it. He represented stability and continuity.

The problem was that Manchester United did not need stability and continuity.

It needed transformation.

Going for Moyes looked like the safe option, and in reality it proved to be enormously risky for precisely that reason.

That is why, despite the rumours, I do not believe there is much attraction in the idea of him coming to Celtic either.

Moyes has had opportunities before, when his stock was considerably higher, and the Celtic job always seemed to exist somewhere in the distance as something which might interest him one day.

As if all we had to do was wait long enough and eventually he would come winging his way to Celtic Park towards the tail end of his career.

Well, we have waited.

And now?

No thanks.

His being David Moyes is precisely what would put a lot of Celtic supporters off.

We know what his football looks like. He has been in management for long enough that nobody needs to guess what he would bring.

It would be like watching a slightly sexier version of Steve Clarke tactics.

That holds absolutely no appeal to me.

Except perhaps as a PR stunt.

His obvious qualifications, viewed through the eyes of this board, are that he has a Celtic connection and has managed extensively in the English Premier League.

But this is not Brendan Rodgers after Liverpool.

Rodgers was still an ambitious, relatively young manager who had operated at the elite end of the game, and getting him to Celtic was a spectacular coup.

Moyes would feel like something completely different.

He would feel like yesterday’s man.

And no club which is genuinely serious about building for the future should be making appointments primarily because a name is familiar enough to calm everybody down for a few weeks.

The other two names in this wider discussion are much more interesting.

Eddie Howe, of course, came extraordinarily close to becoming Celtic manager before whatever issues arose around the composition of his coaching team caused the deal to collapse.

We ended up with Ange Postecoglou instead, so perhaps things worked out exactly as they were supposed to.

Now Howe is being seriously discussed in connection with Manchester United.

Jason Wilcox reportedly likes him enormously and believes his management style, Premier League experience and football philosophy make him a strong fit for Old Trafford.

And I can understand that.

Howe should perhaps have achieved more with the resources available to him at Newcastle, although I am not convinced everything which happened there can simply be laid at his door.

Newcastle may have extraordinarily wealthy owners, but they never quite became the next Manchester City.

United is the sort of job where you could imagine Howe doing something significant if the football structure around him finally started functioning properly.

And then there is Kieran McKenna.

His name has been connected with Celtic for some time, and there have even been suggestions that he is the man some people at the club would like to see eventually replace O’Neill.

But Manchester United has an obvious emotional and professional pull for him.

He worked there. He knows the club. It represents the sort of elite opportunity which any ambitious coach with that connection would have to take extremely seriously.

And this may be the moment which tells us a great deal about his future.

I will be perfectly frank.

If Manchester United seriously consider McKenna now and then decide to go elsewhere, I wonder whether that job ever comes around for him again.

He might have to do something exceptional somewhere else to force himself back into the conversation.

Because if the circumstances do not suit him now, when he is available and United are potentially looking for a new direction, when will they?

There is still an £8 million compensation arrangement protecting Ipswich if another club appoints him before next summer, but that amount would be little more than background noise for Manchester United.

His wages are another issue.

McKenna was extremely well rewarded at Ipswich, and that has always created an interesting dilemma around what comes next.

Once a manager reaches that salary level, the pool of clubs capable of paying him begins to shrink.

And the clubs which can afford those sorts of wages can also afford to survey the whole of European football and ask who else is available.

That is not disrespectful to McKenna.

It is simply the brutal economics of football management.

If an elite club can afford to hire you, it can probably afford somebody with a much longer elite-level CV as well.

Add significant compensation to the equation and perhaps that helps explain why several clubs which changed managers over the summer did not simply move immediately for him.

Which brings us back to Celtic.

If United move for McKenna and he takes the job, then those of us who have entertained the idea of him eventually ending up at Celtic Park, and I include myself and Paulina in that group, can probably forget about it.

At least for the foreseeable future.

But if United go elsewhere, the picture changes.

If McKenna remains out of frontline management until the end of the season, then every club interested in him gets a chance to make its case.

And Celtic should be one of those clubs.

Do I think we would get him?

I have serious doubts.

I do not know that this board has the balls to make an appointment like that.

More importantly, I do not know that it would give McKenna the guarantees over structure, recruitment and football decision-making which I suspect he would demand before taking the job seriously.

But there are Celtic supporters who believe he is attainable.

There has been enough speculation around his name that the possibility cannot simply be dismissed.

And if Celtic actually landed him, it would feel significant.

It would feel much more like Brendan Rodgers Mark One than another exercise in managerial nostalgia.

It would feel like an appointment with ambition behind it.

It would say that Celtic had looked at where football is going rather than where it has already been.

Of course, there would be another perfectly realistic fear.

How long before McKenna got sick of dealing with the way Celtic operates?

But hell, one problem at a time.

Dare to dream.

Because the next few weeks at Manchester United may tell us much more about Celtic’s future than anybody at our club would probably care to admit.

If Carrick survives and steadies things, perhaps nothing happens.

If United make a change and go for Howe, McKenna remains available.

If they go for McKenna, one of the most interesting possible Celtic appointments disappears from the board.

And somewhere further down Celtic’s list, I am certain there will be names like David Moyes.

Probably Steve Clarke too.

Plan C. Plan D. Plan F, G and H.

The list of horrors could become very long indeed.

Which is why Celtic supporters who want a glimpse of what next summer could look like should keep a close eye on what happens at Old Trafford.

Eddie Howe, David Moyes and Kieran McKenna represent three very different ideas about what a football club can do next.

One looks like a credible United appointment.

One looks like precisely the sort of Celtic appointment which would tell us that absolutely nothing has changed.

And one looks like the kind of appointment which might convince supporters, however briefly, that somebody inside Celtic Park had finally rediscovered a little ambition.

The next move belongs to Manchester United.

But its consequences might eventually reach all the way to Glasgow.

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