Chick Young's view

Chick Young's World of Football

By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

It is not impossible that Gordon Strachan can cross the canyon stretching from the darkness at the end of this season, to the bright dawn of a new term.

Strachan has led Celtic to the SPL title on his first two attempts

There is a bridge. But the problem is that it seems to made of balsa wood.

He is a troubled man at a tormented club and it may worsen before it improves.

If Celtic, for example, lose the remaining fixtures against Rangers then the restlessness of the natives may become uncontrollable.

Much of the nonsense, it seems to me, is illogical given that this would be his first season of three as manager of the club without winning a title.

Incidentally, he has also reached the previously unexplored territory of the Champions League last 16 in consecutive seasons.

But of course, they don't mess about on Death Row at the Old Firm.

For the life of me I cannot remember the good Lord decreeing the Divine Right assumed by both Glasgow clubs that says all the glory of the game shall be theirs.

MY SPORT: DEBATE Should he stay or should he go?

Were there indeed eleven commandments?

You cannot both be title winners, my friends. It does not compute.

And should the manager always be strapped to his second prize and shelled into the stratosphere like a circus act fired from a cannon?

For all that it, does seem that the man in charge is currently as popular with huge wafts of the Celtic support as Heather Mills at a Beatles fan club meeting.

The love affair between swathes of the Celtic support and the manager has not been of Brief Encounter proportions. Certainly not in intensity, probably not even in duration.

In fact Celtic might reflect that the points, rather than the affection of Carnforth station - where the legendary tear jerker was shot - might have been of better use.

Only once in his tenure can I recall the fans chanting Strachan's name. It was, I think, at Tannadice.

Strachan has not been hailed in the same way as Martin O'Neill

This is in stark contrast to his predecessor whose very name constituted the entire lyrics to a hymn of praise.

You wonder if Martin O'Neill feels compassion for the man who inherited his job.

Strachan doesn't, in my opinion, deserve either the sack or the treatment which is being shovelled upon him, and I suspect that is shared by those who may have somewhat more influence.

For if Dermot Desmond, John Reid and Peter Lawwell want him to survive the summer then there the matter ends. In fact, if Dermot Desmond wants him in situ then the case is closed.

Of course he could pack his bags and walk, but I doubt that.

Although to be fair you couldn't read Gordon Strachan's mind with the help of an x-ray machine, a clairvoyant and Superman.

Once being manager of Celtic or Rangers was accepting life in a goldfish bowl, but now they have thrown in a couple of sharks just to make it more interesting.

There is an intensity to life which was never there for Bill Struth nor Jimmy McGrory in a gentler age.

There is - because of media demands - no hiding place in this mircrophoned, camera-lensed, world wide webbed planet.

The title is already lost, but if Celtic forsake another six points to Walter Smith at a ground formerly known as a fortress in the next few weeks, then indeed there may be work done on that balsa wood bridge.

They will replace it with cling-film.

Listen to Chick Young's World Of Football on BBC Radio Scotland 810MW on Wednesday 2 April at 2000 GMT.