Celtic’s wait for Eddie Howe could drag on even further as May 29 given as a key date

The final weeks of the season are upon us, and there’s still not a lot of certainty about the next campaign.

We can be fairly certain that John Kennedy will not be in charge next season unless there really is nobody that wants the role, while it’s possibly safe to assume that Eddie Howe is still the main target.

He’s not in employment just now so there’s nothing that should stop an announcement being made, but it could be other things behind the scenes that are holding this up.

Celtic also need to appoint a new Director of Football and logic dictates that they should be separate from the manager hire, but a report from The Sun has suggested that Howe wants his own man in that role.

His preferred candidate is Richard Hughes who is in a similar role at Bournemouth, but potential promotion to the Premier League could cause a problem there.

It’s very possible that he might decide to stay put if they go up, while the compensation package could become more expensive too so that has to be factored in.

They won’t go up automatically so this could drag out through the play-offs, and the final will be played on May 29 so that could now be a key date for Celtic in their hunt to get Howe appointed.

It’s pointed out that Celtic’s pre-season starts in mid June so that is not enough time to properly plan for the new campaign, especially when the squad is a mess and the club is playing catch-up for the first time in a long time.

Ideally something needs to be done to hurry this process up, but that may not be possible if Hughes is the reason for the hold-up.