Yesterday’s 2-0 defeat by Hibernian at Easter Road will have stung Gordon Strachan, but it is a minor wound he can cope with. In the wider scheme of things, the Celtic manager has a far greater headache looming.

The current vacancy at Sunderland will come and go but the question remains: when should Strachan leave Celtic? As he weighs up the dilemma that comes to all successful Old Firm managers after three or four years at the helm, one thing is for sure. It will be Strachan who decides when he leaves, not anyone else.

Three successive Scottish Premier League titles and two advances to the last 16 of the Champions League – each feat beyond the powers of the revered Martin O’Neill – have made Strachan armour-plated at Celtic. Right now, even in spite of yesterday’s setback, he looks as if he could be in the process of making that four championships on the trot. It is the kind of progress that entitles any manager to be fully in charge of his own destiny.

Yet something will gnaw away at Strachan, just as it did at O’Neill before him. As great an experience as it is managing Celtic – or Rangers – the wider world always beckons for talented or successful men, especially the Barclays Premier League. In O’Neill’s case, you only need to look at the magic carpet he has ridden with Aston Villa – big games, big crowds, with the eyes of Britain watching – to know what is cruelly missing when you are mired in Scottish football. There is no comparison.

Come the end of this season, the dilemma will be tantalising for Strachan: to stay or to go? O’Neill, surely, did the absolute maximum for any sought-after coach in being at Celtic for five years. In all honesty, could he have gone back to Easter Road, Tannadice or Rugby Park with their 9,000 crowds for any longer without feeling his enthusiasm starting to wane? It was the ill-health of his wife that eventually caused O’Neill to leave Celtic in 2005 but, in truth, that family drama partly resolved a dilemma that had growing with every passing season.

When the ill-fated Paul Le Guen was unveiled as the new Rangers manager before a feverish Scottish media in June, 2006, the Frenchman stated: “My aim is to be here at Ibrox for at least three years.” Never mind now what happened to Le Guen, it was those very words – “at least three years” – that captured the truth of any Old Firm manager. Le Guen had already looked at the British scene and, in stating that “at least three years” was his due term at Rangers, he may as well have added, “but a maximum of four or five...” In the current climate of Scottish football, that has to be the sum of the experience.

Yes, the Champions League scene is thrilling for any Old Firm manager, but that cannot prove sufficient to keep a wanted coach in Glasgow for the long-term. The local fayre is too lumpen for that. In Strachan’s case, moreover, the current phase of his career makes him ripe for another tour in England.

At 51, the Celtic manager has years ahead of him, but also a wealth of experience behind him. It is no wonder that Strachan was heavily quoted for the Sunderland job, nor that he rather dismissively distanced himself from the Wearside club.

The truth is, with the CV he has built up, and the British and European experience he now has, Strachan’s next job should be well above that of Sunderland. He has done the guerilla warfare and survival bit before in England with Coventry City and Southampton. When he goes back south he will feel entitled to go to a club nearer the top rather than the bottom of the Premier League.

On top of all this are the words that Strachan cited to me in an interview 18 months ago. “I used to think that three or four years was about the maximum for any manager at a club,” he said. “Unless you can do a Fergie or an Arsène Wenger and do the dynasty thing, you just think, ‘Can I take this any further?’ ” These are words that are becoming more relevant to his stewardship of Celtic.

Come next summer, leaving Celtic Park will at least be a strong consideration for Strachan. If he wins a fourth successive title this season, what would there be left to do in Scotland except wait upon inevitable domestic decline and a Rangers comeback?

Of course, if Strachan does choose to leave Celtic, he will need a job to go to, but these will inevitably come up. He is a man whose fate will soon be pulling him elsewhere.

And another thing...

Mystery of Boyd

Now that Kris Boyd has just banged in yet another hat-trick for Rangers, taking his tally for the season to 16, and has previously scored 39 goals in one campaign (season 2005-06), the question has to be asked: what is it with football managers that they don’t see what appears to be blindingly obvious to the rest of us?

Hand on heart, would any rational person, in charge of Rangers and wishing his team to be successful by scoring goals, have axed Boyd? I only ask, because that is what both Paul Le Guen and Walter Smith chose to do at Ibrox. And when you look at Boyd now, both managers look a bit mad in their decision-making.

Smith’s strategy last season was perfectly clear: Boyd, he decreed, wasn’t much use to him, as rampant a goalscorer as he was. This season the Rangers manager has changed his philosophy, and Boyd is back with a vengeance, but it does still make the striker’s previous fate seem perverse.

Or perhaps there is a deep, mystical element to football management which none of us is aware of.

Perhaps only a cretin could actually believe that a striker who can’t stop scoring goals is of any use to a football team. I just ask, because it all still remains an utter mystery to me. I must ask Walter about this the next time we catch up...

McGhee overheated?

While I’m a big fan of Mark McGhee, I’ve been tickled by his recent, repeated outpourings about the football media in Scotland being “too negative about the brand”. The Motherwell manager was at it again on Saturday.

I did a recent television show with the engaging McGhee, after which he upbraided me for my “negativity” about the Scottish game.

It was the weekend following that show that McGhee wrote in his Sunday newspaper column that there was “a bit of the Gerald Ratners” about some of us who write and report on football in Scotland.

I took that as a fairly deathly compliment.

My take on this debate remains unwavering. A bloke like me, in a fantastic job with a front-row pew at the football, still has to be honest about what he sees. We are not paid to be cheer-leaders, we are here to “tell it as it is”, as Alex “Candid” Cameron used to say.

And I’ll say this to Mark McGhee – get your own boiler fixed before you start sounding off about what is right and wrong in the Scottish media.