• Newcastle player has left door open to allegiance switch

• Scotland manager may seek to stay on after World Cup

Steve Clarke plans to check on the extent to which Harvey Barnes will commit to playing for Scotland before friendly matches in March. The manager wants to know Barnes is ­sufficiently keen on swapping international allegiance – he has a single cap for England – before con­sidering the Newcastle player for a potential World Cup berth.

Scotland’s World Cup return after a 28-year wait has put Barnes’s inter­national future back on the agenda. The feeling within the Scottish ­Football Association has thus far been that Barnes believes he can play for England again, but the player left the door open on a switch during an interview last month.

• Rodgers left Celtic for second time in October

• Martin O’Neill says patience needed with Wilfried Nancy

Brendan Rodgers is in talks over a managerial return at Saudi Arabian side Al-Qadsiah.

Rodgers resigned from Celtic in October, a move that proved the trigger for a stinging attack from the club’s main shareholder Dermot Desmond. The 52-year-old is yet to address Desmond’s sentiment but is known to have been attractive to Saudi clubs for some time. He turned down a move to the kingdom after leaving Leicester in 2023.

Blame and plenty of it is now flying around at Celtic. This defeat, a third for Wilfried Nancy in his three games as the manager, plunged the club firmly into a state of crisis. What a festive fiasco.

There is a scenario in which Nancy changes Celtic’s fortunes. The trouble for the Frenchman is, that feels highly unlikely. On one of the finest days in St Mirren’s 148-year history they deservedly claimed the League Cup for only the second time. Yet it was impossible to ignore the desperate nature of Celtic’s performance. They have swapped Brendan Rodgers and Martin O’Neill – elite managers who fully comprehend this environment – for a project under Nancy that is already covered in red flags. Another key attribute shared by Rodgers and O’Neill is experience. Nancy is in a situation he has never encountered before in football.

Two matches is not an adequate window in which to judge a manager. Nonetheless, these are worrying times for Wilfried Nancy and Celtic. Seriously worrying, in truth.

Back-to-back losses since the Frenchman’s arrival would be bad enough without the rampant manner in which Roma ensured six points from six in visits to Glasgow during this season’s Europa League. What a canter this proved from minute one.