Martin O’Neill is right on Askou. This job is bigger than anything he’s ever done.

Martin O’Neill spoke today at his pre-match press conference, and he had quite a bit to say about Jens Berthel Askou.

I thought what he had to say was absolutely spot on. It echoes what this blog and others have said for weeks now, perhaps even months, in light of the number of people who are promoting this guy as a serious managerial prospect for Celtic’s future.

I am not saying he is not a good prospect. Neither is Martin O’Neill. But this is a different type of job from the one he is in right now.

Someone said to me the other day that my credibility on this was zero because I criticised the Ange appointment and praised the Wilfried Nancy appointment. That is true. I did both of those things.

But in Ange’s case, I did not know how deep his managerial record was. I did not know how impressive it actually was until I started to look at it properly. Once I did, it was obvious that Ange had taken on difficult jobs in big circumstances, with a lot of doubt around him, and had overcome it.

I supported the Nancy appointment because it was radical, dramatic and different. There was not a single moment where I failed to realise that it was a risk, and maybe quite a significant risk. But I thought the moment required radicalism. I still think radicalism is required in Celtic’s next managerial appointment.

Just perhaps not that sort of radicalism.

My doubts about Nancy surfaced fully on the day of his press conference, when I realised that he did not speak English as a first language. People can criticise me for saying that all they like, but I stand by it 100 per cent.

That is problematic.

Paulina, who has a degree in linguistics and a master’s in languages, will tell you there is a difference between conversational English and instructional English. To get complicated ideas across, your instructional English has to be excellent.

His conversational English barely was. That was an issue. It is not stupid to say so.

In the case of Askou, I have done the complete opposite of what I did with Wilfried Nancy and Ange Postecoglou. I looked at the record in detail. Askou has positive qualities. He clearly is a decent coach. But he is more Nancy than Ange.

Again, it was Paulina who pointed this out, by drawing attention to some of the similarities between Askou’s start at Motherwell and Nancy’s start at Celtic. He is an ideologue. He is a radical. That should tick my boxes, but it doesn’t. I will explain why.

Both Ange and Nancy were radical appointments.

Perhaps it was my desire not to write someone off before I knew enough about him that made me back the Nancy appointment after criticising the Ange one. But when I looked at Ange’s record, I knew straight away that he was going to do just fine. It took me a while to look properly at that record, because I carried a lot of residual anger over how the appointment was made. But once I did, I settled down, relaxed and chilled out.

With Nancy, I never quite got over my misgivings.

Instead, they just grew and grew.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons I am so down on Askou. Perhaps I just do not see how it can work, because his football ideas are no less radical than Nancy’s. They are no less dramatic in terms of how they would impact the squad and how those players would have to learn to play in a totally different way.

If there is resistance to that, you need a big personality and real strength of character to stand up to it. That is one of the areas where Nancy never really impressed. He never seemed like the kind of person who would impose his will on this club.

Paulina pointed out that Askou’s start at Motherwell was virtually identical to Nancy’s start at Celtic. In one way, it was actually worse. He won one of his first seven league games. The victory at Ibrox is his only win in the last seven. His longest winning run in the league is three matches.

She asked a very uncomplicated question; one a lot of people have tried to complicate and will keep trying to complicate.

How far into a spell like that do you get at Celtic before serious hostility starts in the stands and elsewhere?

The cold, hard fact is that I think a lot of the stuff around this guy is overblown. I do not think he has put together the kind of run people suggest, and I do not think he has been as impressive as some claim.

Those saying Motherwell are the best footballing team in the league are not looking at the league table and seeing what I am seeing: a team in fourth place that has scored fewer goals than the Celtic side everyone agrees does not score enough, and a manager who is on his second major run of games with only one victory to show for it.

A manager who has not won more than three in a row.

Martin was not completely dismissive of the idea, but he was realistic about it. You do not get away with that record at Celtic.

You do not get endless time to bed in dramatic new ideas unless you do it over a summer, when the games mean nothing. Once the SPFL campaign kicks off properly, you have to hit the ground running and go like a train.

We have crucial Champions League qualifiers to come, whether we finish first or second, and we simply do not have the time for something as dramatic as that.

This time, radical has to mean something more imaginative than just going over the names of former Irish players from Celtic and calling one of them up on the phone.

We have to break out of the box.

But not so far out of it that we put ourselves in danger.

It has to be an ambitious appointment. As ambitious as we can get away with. If we win the title, that gives us some leverage to go out and make one of those appointments.

But that person needs to have a successful background. That person needs proof that he can command a powerful dressing room. He needs gravitas. The kind of gravitas that makes everyone feel better the moment they hear his name.

There are plenty of managers across Europe who have that. Managers who have won things in their domestic sphere and who, because of that, can come here and change just enough to get the best out of our players, while knowing enough to go out and sign good ones.

They need to know what it is like at a high-pressure club in a high-pressure job.

Otherwise, we are taking the risk that what happened with Nancy will happen again.

Ange was a national team boss with a whole country watching every decision he made. He had been in charge of the two most successful teams in Australia and then took his show to Japan. Everywhere he went, he got that little bit better, that little bit sharper and that little bit more accomplished at dealing with players and dealing with the media.

You saw how he reacted at Celtic and at Spurs during the bad times. At Celtic, I grant you, those bad times did not last long.

But in those early weeks and months, when we were not winning away games, when the record was poor, when people doubted that he knew what he was doing, when clowns like Keevins were writing “Absolutely Not Good Enough” and thinking that made them the smartest kids in the class, Ange never faltered.

He never flapped. He never panicked. He kept believing in his ideas. He kept getting it across to the players that they had to believe in them too.

They did. Everyone at Celtic responded to his leadership.

Askou has done none of that. He has never been in the furnace like that. He has never worked at a club where the pressure is constant. He has never worked in an environment where every single media interview has people trying to trip you up or get you to say something you should not say.

He has never dealt with the politics of working at a massive club like this.

Look at O’Neill and the way he has gone through this season. It has been a masterclass in how to do this stuff. But O’Neill has had decades at the top of the game to learn it.

That is why O’Neill is unflappable. That is why he does not stumble in front of the press. That is why Martin O’Neill can get the best out of players and command a dressing room’s respect. This is not the environment for a novice.

It is not the environment where you can learn on the job.

This is one of the toughest environments in football.

Let me put it this way. Do you think there is any rookie manager out there, no matter how good, who could have done what O’Neill has done this season? Who could have dragged this club off its knees? Who could have infused that dressing room with all the belief it had lost?

O’Neill is right. You have to know that this job is the biggest you have ever had, and maybe the biggest you will ever have.

Askou does not have the experience. He does not have the CV.

Anyone who thinks Askou can do it has not even begun to understand the scale of the challenge he would face.

Celtic need someone who is up for that challenge. Someone who knows the shape of it. Someone who is raring to go, not in spite of the pressure, but because of it.

The current gaffer knows this. You don’t have to listen to me.

It would be a mistake not to listen to him.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.