When Celtic’s board gathered on Monday evening to rubber-stamp Martin O’Neill’s appointment as manager until the end of the season, the silence in the room was the silence of relief, not ambition. Brendan Rodgers had walked out 11 days earlier after a 3-0 capitulation at Tynecastle left Celtic seven points adrift of Hearts at the Premiership summit. O’Neill, 73, has not managed a club since leaving Nottingham Forest in 2019. He has not won a trophy at Celtic Park since lifting the league title in 2008. And yet, of every name floated since Rodgers cleared his desk — Kjetil Knutsen, Russell Martin, even a tentative inquiry about Ange Postecoglou’s availability — O’Neill was the one who required the least justification to a fanbase that has run out of patience for projects.
The path of least resistance
Dermot Desmond’s instinct, when the temperature rises at Celtic Park, has always been to reach for the familiar. He did it with Neil Lennon in 2019, parachuting in a club legend after Rodgers’ first defection to soothe a support that felt betrayed. He is doing it again now, and the parallels are uncomfortable. Lennon’s second spell ended with the ten-in-a-row dream buried and a manager who looked broken by February 2021. O’Neill’s mandate is narrower — bridge to the summer, stop the bleeding, qualify for the Champions League play-off — but the principle is identical. Hire the man the fans cannot turn on.
There is a case for it. Celtic have lost four of their last seven league games. Confidence among the senior players is, by every internal account, shot. Reo Hatate has played only 47 minutes since October. Cameron Carter-Vickers is carrying a knee problem he has been told to manage rather than fix. Kyogo’s departure to Rennes in January was not adequately replaced, and Adam Idah has two goals in his last 14 appearances. Into that environment, you do not parachute a 39-year-old Norwegian who has never worked outside Scandinavia. You bring in someone whose name alone buys six weeks of grace.
What O’Neill actually has to do
The fixture list is unforgiving. Celtic visit Pittodrie on Saturday, host Rangers on 4 January, and play three of their next five league games on the road. The points gap to Hearts is the headline number, but the more revealing one is the seven-point cushion Celtic now hold over fourth-placed Hibernian — a margin that has halved since the start of November. O’Neill’s first task is not to catch Derek McInnes’ side. It is to make sure Celtic do not slip out of the Champions League qualification places altogether.
The squad he has inherited has obvious levers to pull:
- Restore Callum McGregor to a deeper midfield role, where his passing range can dictate rather than chase
- Pair Daizen Maeda with Idah rather than asking the Japanese to lead the line alone
- Trust Arne Engels with the No 10 berth — the €11m signing has started only nine league games
- Reintegrate Anthony Ralston at right-back, with Alistair Johnston struggling for rhythm since the Copa America
None of these are revolutionary. All of them are what Rodgers, by the end, seemed incapable of doing. O’Neill’s gift in his first spell was clarity — Henrik Larsson up top, Stiliyan Petrov in midfield, the rest organised around them. Whether a 73-year-old who has been out of the dugout for six years can still impose that clarity in a Scottish league radically more competitive than the one he left is the question Desmond has chosen not to answer in public.
The summer that matters more
The honest assessment is that this appointment is about June, not December. Celtic’s recruitment department has been without a permanent head of football operations since Michael Nicholson took on additional executive responsibilities in September. The shortlist that produced Rodgers’ replacement was, according to people briefed on the process, drawn up in 72 hours. O’Neill gives the board six months to do the search they should have done in the autumn — to identify a long-term head coach, secure him before the European market reopens, and rebuild a squad whose spine is ageing.
That is the charitable reading. The less charitable one is that Celtic, a club with £75m in the bank and Champions League revenue still flowing, have once again chosen comfort over conviction. Rangers, under Philippe Clement’s successor Russell Martin, are spending. Hearts, under McInnes, are playing the most coherent football in the country. O’Neill buys Celtic time. What they do with it will determine whether this is remembered as a steady hand on the tiller or the moment a champion club admitted it had stopped knowing what it wanted to be.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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