This could be the season that gives Scottish football the Great Reset it so desperately needs

When it comes to club communications, Martin O’Neill’s assertion that this season should serve as a wake-up call to everyone at Celtic feels a long way from that infamous Saturday night statement from the board in September in which it was made clear that everything was toddling along pretty much as intended and nothing was changing.

O’Neill’s words this week, in truth, have said much. The suggestion that the emergence of Hearts and maybe even Motherwell – added to the presence of a renovated Rangers with American owners and evident money to spend – ‘might have surprised us’ can also be read as an admission that the champions just weren’t reading the runes. That they had become complacent in the wake of more than a decade of domestic domination.

O’Neill’s delicately delivered challenge to the club’s January signings, ahead of another hard-fought victory at Pittodrie, to have more of a say in things during the closing couple of months of the campaign resonated too.

Recruitment at the Parkhead outfit has been beyond abysmal over an extended period of time now and, although Julian Araujo has made an impression, it looks like the other loan arrivals at the start of the year along with an Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who hadn’t played for nine months are likely to prove the continuation of a theme.

It’s hardly O’Neill’s fault. He got chucked back in at the deep end after the departures of Wilfried Nonsense and Paul Tisdale with the January window creeping towards him with all the surety and solemnity of the Black Death. From all accounts, there were few identified targets worth pursuing. O’Neill and assistant Shaun Maloney ended up trying to cobble stuff together on the phone.

It was ridiculous, really. What you’d pay for a ticket to one of these town-hall Q&As O’Neill was doing before Celtic brought him back to try and bail them out (not once but twice) aged 73 if there existed the promise of an honest appraisal of what has been asked of him as club figurehead alongside invisible men such as CEO Michael Nicholson.

As stated here previously, Celtic deserve nothing from this term. Whether the current state of the place does serve as a wake-up call for a foosty, out-of-touch powerbase remains to be seen.

Across the city at Rangers, the wake-up call for their chairman Andrew Cavenagh and his US consortium came in October when the need for a police escort out of Falkirk after 17 games of slapstick made it crystal-clear Russell Martin could no longer remain as manager and would have to be followed out the door by CEO Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell.

Celtic boss O’Neill and Ibrox manager Rohl face the possibility of a trophyless season

Cavenagh, to his credit, took action. By then, though, the accusation that everyone in the management structure had also been guilty of underestimating the Scottish game was established and pretty much justified. Too many guys brought in from English football just weren’t cutting it.

Joe Rothwell has already gone. Max Aarons and Nasser Djiga won’t be around much longer. Penny for your thoughts on Manny Fernandez and Thelo Aasgaard. Questions also remain over Djeidi Gassama and even Youssef Chermiti.

The £10million-plus dished out in January on Tuur Rommens, Ryan Naderi and Tochi Chukwuani – plus whatever it took to secure Andreas Skov Olsen on loan – to bolster the squad inherited by new boss Danny Rohl was a statement of intent.

However, you’re looking at something in the region of £40m having been spent since last summer. For a team that’s still sitting third in the Premiership, can’t beat Livingston and bottle it when 2-0 up at home against Celtic.

Rohl has to take the blame for those players retreating into their shells during that second half last weekend. In Sunday’s Scottish Cup quarter-final against O’Neill’s men at Ibrox, the German is under real pressure to prove he is the right kind of coach to take Rangers forward.

Everyone there has work to do, though. Although overshadowed by events at Celtic, their season has been a total mess as well. For all that spending, the defence remains deeply suspect and should have been further strengthened. There has been no long-term replacement for Thelwell either, with Stig Inge Bjornebye brought in on a short-term advisory role in December.

Any strategy that might have existed was blown out of the water. Who knows if anything truly solid has been created since? Fortunes are certainly still being spent with punters still split over the long-term worth of this latest change of direction.

Hearts set the pace at the top of the league with a fraction of the budget of their Glasgow rivals

Meanwhile, Hearts, the ultimate example of a fan-run club, carry on pushing the envelope at the top of the table with a fraction of the Old Firm’s budgets, but a solid manager in Derek McInnes, a squad of players punching above their weight and a recruitment department boosted by Tony Bloom’s Jamestown Analytics already seen to be working months and windows in advance.

At Motherwell, another fan-led operation, a head coach in Jens Berthel Askou – brought in specifically to put bums on seats – has worked miracles in setting his stall out from the very beginning and refusing to budge.

The Fir Park side are the most attractive side in the country and it is just such a shame they went out of the Scottish Cup to an expensively-assembled yet awful Aberdeen, who now appear to have chairman Dave Cormack back bumping his gums centre stage after a spell out of the spotlight.

Falkirk are still in the tournament, though, and what an advert it would be for doing things right – rebuilding steadily from League One after years of rank bad management – if they could go on to win it under the excellent John McGlynn.

In truth, the Old Firm lifting nothing this season could be the best thing to happen to Scottish football. If Hearts or Motherwell won the title and the likes of Falkirk won the cup, what encouragement it would give to others in terms of what can be possible if you get organised, make a plan, stick to it and steer a steady course. Just do things properly.

Jens Berthel Askou’s Motherwell have been a revelation this season

The league, as a whole, is already attracting wider attention due to the emergence of new title challengers. That, if sustained, can lead to better TV deals, new sponsorship arrangements. It is almost certainly going to make Scotland a place more players will want to play in, particularly with Hearts sure to beef up their recruitment and spending as the Jamestown method becomes embedded.

It’s not just about the so-called smaller clubs, though. It’s about the Old Firm too.

O’Neill’s words, you see, speak to a wider point. Celtic and Rangers need to be made to know that they cannot allow themselves to sleepwalk into another season like this. They need to know they can’t get away with this again. Ending the season empty-handed feels like the kind of brutal slap in the face it will take to really make them understand.

They should be the flagbearers for the game here. Although Hearts may play a prominent role in future too, it is they who will be depended upon to lift the national coefficient from the position it has slumped to. They need to be politically strong at European level, too, and footballing achievement plays a part in that.

They’ve both been all over the place in recent years. The shellshock and fall-out of neither of them winning anything – particularly if clubs operating in exemplary ways benefit – might be what it takes to give Scottish football the Great Reset it requires.