At once both worlds apart and yet somehow all too familiar.
Eddie Howe 's departure from Bournemouth, by his own admission, hurt him badly. But a near-full season out of football has afforded the manager time to reflect and learn lessons that could well come in handy.
An icon at the Vitality Stadium, Howe walked away in August 2020 following the club's relegation from the Premier League, having led the Cherries from League One obscurity to the heady heights of England's top flight.
Back then, it was a parting that barely registered in Glasgow.
Fast forward almost nine months, however, and Howe has been named bookies' favourite to succeed Neil Lennon at Celtic.
Of course, just about anybody can find themselves priced up to keep paying punters on tenterhooks these days, but there's a genuine excitement about Howe among Celtic fans amidst fluctuating odds and social media whispers.
For plenty, he represents the chance to fully modernise the club's football operation and spearhead a summer of change that will firmly close the door on a bitter end to a still historic period.
Celtic's run of nine consecutive Premiership titles and a quadruple Treble should not be diminished but so fast does football move that the here and now is all that matters when the big decisions are made.
Lennon certainly felt that when the club's 10 In A Row dream unravelled, and so did Howe when his Bournemouth fairytale wound down to an emotional conclusion.
The 43-year-old later spoke candidly about why it all finally went wrong and the parallels with what transpired at Parkhead, while perhaps less dramatic, are notable.
Howe admitted that a diminishing belief, and the inability to recapture it, was a fatal blow to his team.
He told Sky Sports in November: "We just lost our zip a little bit. There are various reasons for that, it was a combination; a lot of injuries, all through the team, and when you lose your best players, as well-documented this season with the amount of injuries in the Premier League, your team gets harmed.
"I think that is then what got harmed for us was confidence levels. If you do not go out into every game thinking you are going to win, or believing you can win, that is when there is trouble for your team.
"That's where we were last year I think, the ability of the team was never in question, it was just we could not get our best team on the pitch."
It's a striking parallel, given how Celtic's iron clad winning mentality crumbled so alarmingly quickly.
The ruthless streak, the late winners that turned draws into victories, the inevitable sense that, somehow, Celtic would score, all of it petered away and the notion it could all come flooding back in an instant proved to a false one.
Like Howe's Bournemouth, the ability of the players was never in question given what they had achieved over previous years.
The reasons for their capitulation have been analysed to death, with much of the blame apportioned towards Lennon and his coaching team.
But matters now is the club's recovery and Howe, despite never setting foot inside Lennoxtown, is perhaps more familiar with this Celtic's squad's woes than first meets the eye.
The alarm bells sounded early on at Parkhead this season.
Many have pointed to the shock Champions League qualifying defeat to Ferencvaros and what followed as the moment it became clear all was not well.
Not only did Celtic crash out with a whimper, Lennon's post-match volley at some of his apparently wantaway players created the impression all was not well behind the scenes.
That none of these unnamed agitators then left the club before the transfer deadline was yet another eyebrow-raiser.
Howe described managing such issues as a "consistent battle", insisting the most difficult aspect of management was keeping a large squad of players all pulling in the same direction.
He said: "The consistent battle you face is to get your team, all 25 players in your squad, to be motivated. To play for the team, not to play for themselves, to keep them with the same idea that the team has to win at all costs.
"That's a difficult balancing act, every player within that team has their own dreams, aims, ambitions, motivations, and you have then got outside influences, the media, agents, it's difficult.
"But that exists every day, even on a Sunday when you might not be in with the players. Your mind every day is with the players - are they okay, is there anything I can do to help them? With your staff too, in that constant battle to improve.
"We had that, that thirst from everybody to improve, and it stood us in really good stead."
Such are the squad dynamics at Celtic, it's a crucial lesson for any potential boss to learn.
The club's transfer model has famously focused on signing and developing young talent, offering them a platform to win trophies and challenge for European football before sanctioning a big move when the time is right.
Virgil van Dijk and Moussa Dembele were two such examples, and Odsonne Edouard looks increasingly likely to be the next.
Howe's understanding of managing players' own ambitions with the ambitions of the team are a shrewd observation particularly relevant at Parkhead.
It's a difficult balance to maintain given, as he points out, the outside influences and rapidly changing circumstances are ever present.
Just who will be the next Celtic manager remains a mystery for now, but Howe's reflection on the end of his Bournemouth suggest he's learned key lessons that are equally applicable to whoever takes the reins at Parkhead.
