The Celtic boss could win a double, but the game has its Manager of the Year

On Sunday night, I read Tom English talking about the title race, and he wanted to bring up Celtic’s summer spending to suggest that we should not be in this position.

His argument was that we should be over the hills and far away, and that Hearts have done something exceptional simply by keeping pace with us.

You would not think, listening to him, that a shambles had descended on our team at all.

But that is a typical Tom English trick. It is a way of denying Celtic any credit.

A lot of us have highlighted the lack of credit Celtic get. We have lamented it too. It is notable that we have not had a pat on the back for how well we have responded to all the adversity, even if much of that adversity was self-inflicted.

One reason we have not had that credit, of course, is that most people still do not quite believe we are going to make good on all this. They speculate endlessly about how it might still unravel for us.

I am not going to sit here and tell you they are wrong.

In all honesty, and in point of fact, they might not be wrong. They might have got this absolutely on the nose.

It might be that this Celtic team is not equipped to go on and win the title. It might be that they were right to write us off.

It might also be that they are about to make themselves look stupider than the hacks around here have looked for many years, and that is saying something, considering their long history of foolishness.

It is not impossible that Celtic finish this season on a note of triumph.

It will not be a triumph for the board of directors. It will be a triumph for us as supporters, and we will still know that it should never have been this close. We will still know that the only reason it is this close is because of the men sitting in the boardroom.

But the real triumph would belong to the players and to the manager, who will have exceeded all expectations and gone beyond what most people thought possible.

If this comes off, those guys will write their names into the history books in a big, big way.

And Martin O’Neill, who came in and pulled a club off its knees, will have done something absolutely exceptional.

There is no chance whatsoever that the media will ever properly recognise him for it. There is no chance they will give him the credit he deserves.

How would it be best to honour O’Neill if he wins this? How about making him Manager of the Year? Unfortunately, that ship has sailed. The ceremony has been held. McInnes gets the gong, before he’s won anything, before his team’s final position is known.

This only confirms what we have long known; the Manager of the Year awards in Scotland are an absolute farce.

We have had treble-winning Celtic managers who did not get Manager of the Year. So O’Neill was never going to be in the running for it, no matter what he did, yet he could finish this season with the best managerial win percentage in the league and two trophies to his name. It would have been three, had he been left in post for the League Cup final.

By any sane measure, a man who does what Martin O’Neill has done would be Manager of the Year contender if not the outright winner.

If the ceremony were held after the season is done as opposed to them holding it with weeks left to go, he would have been on the shortlist and dominating the conversation. I think he should have been in any case.

If we do win this, people will say at the end of it all that Martin only did what was expected of a Celtic manager. Which I will openly laugh at, and so should he. Not a single one of them will accept or acknowledge that they did not expect it, but none of them did.

None of them have expects Celtic to be on the winners’ podium even now, when it’s a two-horse race. We were written off early in this campaign.

So, Martin will not have done the expected. He will have done something very unexpected, and there is zero chance (yes, this is the only way to use that phrase, when it is literally true) that he will take home one of the award gongs.

There are people who will say O’Neill was not there long enough to win Manager of the Year. But this is rubbish.

The very fact that his time at the club this season has been split into two phases actually makes it more impressive. The first time, he came in and dragged us back to our feet. The second time, after Nancy had rolled us back into the gutter, he returned and steadied the ship all over again.

Not only did he steady it, he turned it around.

How long does a manager need to be in charge to be judged on impact anyway?

Based on O’Neill’s stats, if he had been here since the start of the season, this would not even be a contest. It would be a coronation.

The Manager of the Year award for Scotland’s top flight is farcical, and I don’t know how many times we have to say it.

Brendan Rodgers became the first Scottish coach ever to win back-to-back trebles, and he did not get it that year because, apparently, we cannot give it to a guy who only does what he is expected to do. As if making history was something they expected him to do.

Then there was the year Callum Davidson won two domestic cup competitions with St Johnstone. Did he get Manager of the Year for doing the absolutely unexpected? No. Because all involved made sure that had the most expected outcome imaginable; they gave it to Steven Gerrard at Ibrox.

I have lost count of the number of times they have practically invented excuses not to give a Celtic manager his due.

I can tell you this much; if the Ibrox boss had established a lead at any point in this race, and if they had enough time to nominate him they would have found a way to give him the prize on Sunday night, and then faced the embarrassment of the Tynecastle reversal the next evening before telling us it didn’t matter anyway.

But nobody even thought to mention Martin O’Neill. Nobody even thought to suggest that, with the title still in the air, it might be a little premature to simply hand the award to Derek McInnes.

Look, I don’t grudge McInnes it if his team wins this league, but it’s a ludicrous award to give a manager who might still finish third in spite of leading the race for months. That’s how moronic the system we have here in Scotland is.

The Manager of the Year might yet again be someone who wins nothing, while the guy who everyone knows deserves serious consideration isn’t even in the conversation.

Don’t get me wrong. I am absolutely certain that the thanks of our fans will be enough for Martin O’Neill, now and forever. But it once again shows up the way we do things here.

It is amateur hour stupid. It refuses to consider context unless that context suits whoever happens to be the media darling at any given time.

If O’Neill pulls this off, the media will tell us Celtic only did what Celtic are supposed to do. But that is not what they have been saying all season. They wrote us off and said we were finished. They said the title was gone.

So, if Martin O’Neill drags this team over the line from there, they don’t get to shrug and call it routine. It would not be routine. It would be one of the most remarkable rescue acts this club, and the game, has ever seen.

But McInnes already has the award.

If it’s all he ends up winning, long may it haunt his mantlepiece.

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