There is a theory which some parts of our support subscribe to, and it has always struck me as a slightly bizarre one.

According to this theory, no manager is going to be backed to any significant degree in January unless it is already plain and obvious that he will still be in charge the following summer.

In other words, the argument is that the board will not commit serious money to a manager who might only be there for another few months.

On the surface, I can see why people think that sounds logical.

But the more you examine it, the less sense it makes.

The same argument was deployed a couple of summers ago when it came to Brendan Rodgers.

Because Rodgers did not appear to be fully committed to Celtic for the long term, some people argued that the board was right to withhold funds from him, to prevent him from spending heavily and to deny him the opportunity to put his stamp further on a team which, for all anyone knew, he might not even be around to manage the following year.

I heard a variation of the same argument last January, when everyone assumed Martin O’Neill was only going to be temporary.

He turned out to stay for another year.

The argument still has no merit.

Major institutions lose key staff all the time. Multinational companies have senior personnel leave for rival firms. A US presidential term lasts four years. A British prime minister has to face the electorate within a fixed parliamentary cycle.

Countries do not grind to a halt because the person in the chair might not be there six months later.

Institutions continue. Planning continues. Investment continues.

Besides, we all know how football actually works.

Managers do not operate on fixed terms in any meaningful sense. A guy can be there one day and gone the next. Wilfried Nancy lasted eight games.

So this whole idea that investment should somehow be put on hold because there is uncertainty over the manager could paralyse almost every football club in the world, all day, every day.

There is almost always managerial uncertainty.

To some people, the argument sounds as though it has merit.

To the rest of us, it looks suspiciously like a convenient excuse for this board to do what it has always preferred to do: the bare minimum.

And if this board is genuinely concerned about managerial uncertainty, then I would suggest that it looks in the mirror to find out who is responsible for creating it.

If it is worried that Celtic might buy a group of players in January who turn out to be of little use to the next manager, that is a problem created inside our own house.

Nobody is forcing this situation on us.

Like so many other things, they nod in the direction of the problem while refusing to acknowledge its cause.

January is important. It is always important.

But this year it feels especially significant in light of our European travails.

It is absolutely inconceivable that Celtic can go into the summer facing major uncertainty over the direction of the team and major questions about the strength of the squad.

O’Neill can leave behind a better team than the one he inherited, or he can leave behind the wreckage of one: low on confidence, filled with loanees and patch-up solutions.

Either way, that becomes part of his legacy.

So January has to be about strengthening, if for no other reason than there is still a title race to win.

But it is about more than that.

Next season Celtic will once again begin very early, with European qualification arriving before the campaign has properly settled into itself and when the squad will barely have completed its preparation.

If we do not have a team capable and ready to go, we could find ourselves in an even deeper hole than the one we are in right now.

So there cannot be dithering and there cannot be delay.

January is the month to start fixing the summer’s problems, regardless of who is going to be the manager.

At a competent, well-run football club, these problems would already be getting tackled.

The next manager would already be identified months ahead of time. He and O’Neill would already have sat down and talked at length about the changes which need to be made.

The incoming manager would already have identified some targets of his own, and the club would be working to push those deals as close to completion as possible.

But that is not how it works here, of course.

The managerial search probably will not even begin until O’Neill has confirmed his own situation.

And these people will take the position that you cannot properly sell the club or the job to candidates until they know exactly what they are walking into.

Which means that even if O’Neill announces with a month to go that he is leaving, I would not expect them to move decisively until he has actually gone and the season has been wrapped up.

That is precisely why the work on the team cannot wait until the summer.

It cannot wait until decisions are made over who the next manager is going to be.

It has to start now, while somebody experienced and capable is in the building and able to do the job.

People are entitled to question O’Neill’s judgment. But as long as he is being paid to do the job, he should do it.

And frankly, Celtic cannot afford anything else.

So those suggesting that January will be a flat month in the transfer market should be very careful about doing the board’s work for them.

Because this board does not get to do this again.

It does not get to decide that it is going to deprive a manager of the players he needs because it has questions and concerns about where its own future might lie.

The excuse that the money is better left in the hands of the next manager is exactly that.

An excuse.

And it is nonsense.

A serious football operation should be signing players for the football club, not merely for the individual manager occupying the dugout at that particular moment.

There will always be some players who fit one coach better than another. That is unavoidable.

But the major needs in this Celtic squad are hardly mysterious.

They are not going to disappear because somebody different is standing on the touchline in July.

The weaknesses are there now.

We can all see them.

And if the club waits until summer to begin addressing them because it wants absolute certainty over the identity of the next manager, then it will once again be reacting to problems months after it should have started solving them.

We are bleeding right now.

If we limp through until January, that is when the bleeding has to stop and preparation for the next campaign has to begin.

Anything else would be a gross dereliction of duty.

And surely, folks, we have already seen enough of that from these people.

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