O’Neill is back and aiming to steady the ship at Celtic
Martin O’Neill is unexpectedly back at Celtic and is holding things together as the Glasgow club implodes around him.
Brendan Rodgers’ departure as Celtic manager and the manner of it was so shocking that Martin O’Neill’s return to the club after two decades away was treated as a mere footnote. The morning of his interim appointment, the Irishman had been on national radio tipping Hearts for the Scottish title. Nobody expected him to be Celtic manager again, least of all him.
At first, O’Neill’s return appeared lazy, maybe even reckless. Now 73, the former Aston Villa and Leicester City manager hadn’t worked in football for six years. His last stint at Nottingham Forest lasted just five months. Before that, O’Neill’s previous tenure at a club was at Sunderland over a decade ago. He is, in many ways, yesterday’s man.
And yet yesterday’s man is doing an admirable job of pointing Celtic in the direction of a brighter future. O’Neill has won the first two matches of his second stint in charge, guiding the Hoops to the Scottish League Cup final with a 3-1 win over Rangers in the Old Firm Derby on Sunday.
Celtic needed extra time to see off their fiercest rivals who played much of the match down a man after Thelo Aasgaard’s red card, but there was enough in the performance to suggest O’Neill has made a meaningful difference. The obituaries of Celtic’s 2025/26 campaign may have been written too hastily.
It’s not just O’Neill who has made an impact, though. His two assistants Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham have been hired to lead training on a day-to-day basis and their influence is already obvious in the way Celtic are now approaching matches. The intensity is back in their game.
Maloney’s influence was especially noticeable against Rangers on Sunday. Indeed, the former playmaker was down on the touchline for much of the match, offering guidance and encouragement. When the game went to extra time, it was Maloney rather than O’Neill who led the team talk.
As a figurehead, O’Neill has the shoulders and personality to face the notoriously harsh Scottish media and handle the pressure that comes with being Celtic manager. He’s done it all before, after all. In Maloney and Fotheringham, though, he has two accomplished coaches behind him to prepare the team on the pitch. The balance in the dugout is good.
Celtic still have problems. Their squad is lighter than it has been in a long time after a disastrous summer transfer window that saw the Scottish champions get weaker, not stronger. This is particularly true of the attack where Celtic are lacking genuine top-end talent.
Johnny Kenny has shown the sort of level few saw in him before O’Neill’s arrival, scoring three goals in the two games Celtic have played under the legendary Irishman. Callum Osmand is another previously under-utilised forward who O’Neill has turned to. The teenage Welshman scored his first Celtic goal against Rangers.
In terms of proven attacking quality, though, Celtic are thin on the ground. Kyogo Furuhashi, Nicolas Kuhn, Matt O’Riley and Adam Idah were all sold by the club over the last year or so and the Scottish champions have been slow to reinvest that money, spending just £10m in the summer window on new additions.
Hearts are setting the pace at the top of the Scottish Premiership table. The Tony Bloom-owned outfit have adopted a data-driven recruitment model and have unearthed a number of stars capable of deciding a match, as a couple of them did in Hearts’ win over Celtic in Rodgers’ last game.
This time last year, Aberdeen were enjoying a similarly fast start, but quickly faded. This time, Hearts’ challenge feels more substantial. Derek McInnes’ rotated his team for Saturday’s game against Dundee and still oversaw a comfortable 4-0 victory. The Jam Tarts will surely strengthen again in January.
Whether O’Neill will still be in charge of Celtic by then is unknown. “Well, secretly, you would love to,” the 73-year-old said when asked if he would like to lead the Hoops out in next month’s Scottish League Cup final. “Look, we’re in the results business and all of these things can change.
“I was actually at Midtjylland’s game against Nottingham Forest, where they were just too strong for them, really, and that was at the City Ground. And then we’ve got the Kilmarnock game on Sunday. So, honestly, these games, it’s all about results and that will determine whether the board might think about taking their time. If we’d got beaten today, I might not even have seen Thursday.”
Nobody could have predicted the way this season would go for Celtic. O’Neill likely thought his management days were behind him. Now that he’s back in the dugout, though, the Hoops might wish to keep him there until another way forward emerges. O’Neill’s return might have been a footnote in the Rodgers debacle, but it could be a headline in the success of Celtic’s season.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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