Celtic should stop messing about and appoint O’Neill to a senior role in the rebuild.

There’s a story doing the rounds right now that Martin O’Neill could remain at Celtic next season in an advisory capacity, bringing some much-needed football authority back into the structure. It came about because he was asked the question several times in several different ways yesterday, and I was intrigued by what he had to say.

On the face of it, this sounds like one of those ideas that gets floated every so often. A big name, a respected figure, brought back into the fold to steady the ship. We’ve seen versions of it before. But this one feels different.

Because this time, it’s necessary and everyone at Celtic knows it, from the boardroom to the boot-room. We’re sitting third in the league with tens of millions in the bank. The reek of failure is wafting off us in waves. It cannot be ignored.

Not as a gesture nor as some nod to the past. This is not about giving a man who has served the club well a lifeboat after his current spell ends. This should be part of a fundamental rebuild of the football department itself.

Let’s be clear about where Celtic are right now.

As Paulina wrote so well recently, the problem at this club is not just results.

It’s not just recruitment or the manager or the players. It’s structural. This club needs a rebuild right across the football operation. Someone has to be responsible for that rebuild at the highest level of the club. A football person, preferably.

For a long time now, there has been a glaring lack of synergy between the key components of the football operation. Scouting does not align with the manager. Recruitment does not reflect the system.

Players are signed without a clear understanding of how they fit into the way the team is supposed to play.

We have identified talent. Nobody can deny that. There are players who have come through the door who are clearly capable footballers. But capability is not the same as suitability. That’s the mistake we keep making.

A player can be good. A player can even be very good. But if he doesn’t fit the system, if he doesn’t match the style, if he doesn’t understand the role he’s supposed to perform, then he becomes ineffective. Worse than that, he becomes a symbol of confusion.

And we’ve had too many of those.

That is not a scouting failure. It’s not even strictly a recruitment failure. It’s a failure of structure. Modern football clubs do not operate like this.

The best-run clubs have alignment. The manager, the recruitment team, the analysts, the data department, all working from the same blueprint. Players are identified not just on ability, but on function. On how they fit into a system. On how they interact with the rest of the team. It is a joined-up process.

At Celtic, it hasn’t been. We have run the most chaotic and incoherent system I’ve ever seen at a major club. Players are signed without the manager’s direct input and he is expected simply to make them work. It’s idiotic.

And that is why this talk of Martin O’Neill returning is interesting. In many ways, he represents something we are missing. Not data or analytics. Not modern recruitment processes. Of course, those things matter, and any club serious about competing needs them at the highest level. However, none of those things mean anything without football intelligence at the top.

After all, he is someone who understands the game deeply enough to ask the right questions. For example, why are we signing this player? Where does he fit? What role does he perform in this system? And, crucially, what does the manager actually need? More importantly, he knows how management works and, as he said yesterday, he would come down on his side over and over again.

So that is what we have been missing. Indeed, that is what the moment needs.

However, O’Neill is not a modern Sporting Director in the data-driven sense. In other words, he is not someone you would ask to build a global scouting network or oversee analytics models. Instead, he would immediately recognise that those things are essential and, furthermore, he would know who the best people are to come in and build these systems.

More importantly, he is someone who would understand how they are supposed to fit together. That’s the key. What Celtic need is modernisation and a better integration of modern methods with football understanding.

Right now, the whole club feels disconnected.

Analytics without context is useless. Scouting without direction is wasteful. Recruitment without a clear tactical framework is chaotic.

We’ve seen the results of that. Players signed for roles that don’t exist and cannot be used. Players who might thrive elsewhere but look lost here. That doesn’t happen in well-run football departments.

It happens in ones where nobody is truly in charge of the football side of the operation.

This is where O’Neill could make a difference and not a little one. A huge difference. This is why I’d prefer it if this club got real and stopped messing about offered this guy a proper role in the rebuild. He has the skill-set. He has he knowledge. Putting this off is madness. Let us have some stability going forward. Let him start planning right now.

Call it Head of Football or a Director of Football Operations.

Call it whatever you like.

What matters is the function. Someone at the top of the football department who understands how all the pieces are supposed to fit together, and who has the authority to make sure they do. Because without that, nothing changes.

You can hire better scouts and you can invest in better data. You can bring in new personnel. We’ve had top class managers and even that doesn’t guarantee synergy if the structure remains fragmented, if the same disconnect persists. More good players who don’t fit. More confusion and more wasted potential.

Celtic do not need a cosmetic change. They need a rebuild. A proper one. A rebuild that recognises that modern football is not about choosing between old-school knowledge and modern analytics. It’s about combining them.

It’s about creating a system where data informs decisions, scouting identifies options, and football intelligence ties it all together; however, Martin O’Neill won’t build the spreadsheets, but he will understand why they matter.

More importantly, he will understand when they are pointing you in the wrong direction, and therefore that is what Celtic have been missing; as a result, that defines the gap at the top of the house, and consequently, if this idea is real, people should not treat it as a throwaway advisory role.

Instead, it should form the cornerstone of a wider restructuring.

Because until this club fixes how its football department actually functions, it doesn’t matter who the manager is; in other words, they will all face the same problem, and ultimately we will keep having the same conversations.

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