Redemption: Season 2025/26 Part Two.

January delivered the final confirmation that the Wilfried Nancy experiment had failed. Losing to the Ibrox club at Celtic Park ended it. Thirty-three days. The shortest managerial reign in Celtic history. Utter madness. Redemption felt impossible.

The club was in absolute turmoil. At that point a full-scale meltdown had to be considered a realistic prospect.

Then back came Martin O’Neill. The one who answered when Celtic needed him most. The old warrior returning for another rescue mission.

Honestly, there was something deeply emotional about watching him refuse to let Celtic drown. He did not arrive talking about projects, philosophies or transitions. He arrived talking about mentality. About fight. About togetherness.

That mattered.

Because from January onwards, Celtic stopped trying to look beautiful and started trying to survive. Survival became addictive.

The comeback against Kilmarnock. The draw at Ibrox from two goals down. The endless late goals. The refusal to collapse. This team became emotionally indestructible even when tactically imperfect. That is what changed the title race.

Hearts looked stronger structurally for large parts of the season. They absolutely did. Anybody denying that is rewriting history. Hearts led the league for 250 days because they earned it.

But when pressure reached boiling point, Celtic found something psychologically monstrous inside themselves.

That is the difference between a team that leads and a team that wins.

The transfer window was a shameful abrogation of the board’s responsibility to the fans and to the interim boss. It looked very much like we might have blown it. Martin got a handful of loanees thrown at him and we had to hope they did the job.

The 2-2 draw at Hearts was the first sign that this team was not ready to quit. We should have won that day but for the Austin Trusty sending off. We looked stronger. Better. More determined. But the signs were good.

Into February and three straight wins, the last of them at Kilmarnock in one of those season-defining comebacks which stunned the home club and sent a message to the rest of the league that this was a Celtic team which just would not quit. But a week later, we lost to Hibs. It was the worst possible preparation for what we were calling Hell Week.

March was the month that belief hardened. Because we did not collapse. We went to Ibrox twice and they did not break us. We secured a cup semi-final place. We won away at Aberdeen. We won in Stuttgart and showed Europe what we might have been with a more ambitious board. We then took care of Motherwell at home.

But again, it was like two steps forward, one step back; the defeat at Tannadice would have broken this side earlier in the season. It did not this time.

The Green Brigade returned to Celtic Park in April and that mattered enormously too. Celtic Park changed again after that. Louder. Fiercer. More united. O’Neill understood the importance of reconnecting support and team because Celtic without emotional unity become vulnerable very quickly. With the crowd back in full voice and the team rediscovering its nerve, the season began to tilt.

Not calmly. Not smoothly. Nothing about this season was smooth. But you could feel the light starting to break through the smoke.

Three league wins in a row that month. That crazy cup semi-final when we blew a two goal lead to go to extra time, where we scored four in six minutes as if the old Celtic had woken up again. I wrote in my piece that it was like watching the Celtic Lions shake themselves into wakefulness. Those six minutes reminded us what we could be.

Then came May. Honestly, it felt scripted by a madman.

Ihenacho’s goal with 20 minutes left gave us the away win at Hibs which we so badly needed going into a game against the Ibrox club. The victory of them came the night after Hearts had dropped crucial points at Motherwell as so many of us had hoped. The home crowd made sure Celtic Park was bouncing. We lost the early goal. We got level through Yang. We set us the second half for a grandstand performance. Maeda. Wow.

The win at Motherwell with the 99th-minute goal was like something from a dream. The final-day drama against Hearts was sublime. Every match felt like you were plugged into the electrical current. I could barely breathe watching Celtic during that run-in.

The victory over the Ibrox club put it in our hands, and with it the removal of one part of the equation. By then, their challenge had already faded badly, but that game still mattered.

The Motherwell game was so significant. Celtic refused to die. It was not just a win. It was an act of defiance. A declaration that no matter how badly the season had been handled, no matter how often we had undermined ourselves, no matter how many chances had been wasted, this team still had something inside it.

It mattered psychologically. It mattered symbolically. Celtic had dragged themselves from the edge of disaster and were still standing.

Then came the final day at Celtic Park.

Pure theatre. Hearts scoring first. Panic everywhere. Lawrence Shankland threatening to rip the title away. Then Arne Engels equalising. Ice cold. Proper bottle. A young player standing over a penalty with the season weighing on his shoulders and refusing to blink.

Then Daizen Maeda. Of course, Daizen Maeda.

The man had spent the season running through walls, chasing lost causes, harassing defenders, scoring crucial goals and playing like someone who understood that Celtic sometimes need heroes made of pure stubbornness.

His goal, first flagged offside and then given after VAR, was chaos and ecstasy in one movement. I genuinely think Paradise shook that day.

Then Callum Osmand scoring in stoppage time felt like destiny laughing in everybody’s face. A young kid from England running the length of the pitch into Celtic history. Hearts throwing everything forward. Their goalkeeper stranded. Celtic breaking away. The empty net waiting.

That was not just a goal. That was the season exhaling.

Celtic won the league against the very side that had spent months threatening to break the order of Scottish football. The symbolism was unbelievable.

Still, the madness did not stop there.

Pitch invasion controversy. Media hysteria. Endless noise. Hearts complaints. Conspiracies. Arguments. Scottish football spent the following week trying to make everything about anything except the obvious.

But beneath all the chaos sat one simple fact.

Celtic were champions.

That is what no statement, no podcast, no newspaper column, no bitter former player and no conspiratorial nonsense could change.

Celtic were champions.

Then came Hampden.

And Celtic finished the story properly.

The Scottish Cup final victory over Dunfermline completed one of the strangest, ugliest, most emotional doubles I have ever witnessed. Maeda scoring again because of course he did. Engels stepping up again. Iheanacho adding his moment too.

Martin O’Neill standing there at the end of it all, somehow having rescued Celtic twice in one season. That image will stay with me for years.

Because this season was not won through brilliance from the boardroom. It was not won through flawless planning. It was not won through strategic excellence. It was won because the players found courage in chaos. It was won because Martin O’Neill restored belief when the club was emotionally splintering.

It was won because supporters refused to abandon the team even while furious with the hierarchy. It was won because Celtic, somehow, irrationally, gloriously, kept winning.

But this is the important part.

Nobody serious should confuse survival with strategy.

The double cannot erase the failures of the season. The recruitment issues were real. The political fractures were real. The Kairat humiliation was real. The managerial instability was real. The boardroom chaos was real.

Celtic escaped the fire this season. That does not mean the fire never existed.

And maybe that is the true story of 2025/26. Not perfection. Not domination. Not a fairy tale in the simple sense. A survival story. And redemption.

A beautiful, exhausting, emotionally deranged survival story that somehow ended with Celtic standing above everybody else again, covered in green-and-white ribbons while the rest of Scottish football wondered how on earth they had done it.

Maybe that is why this double feels so personal.

Because Celtic did not glide towards it like untouchable kings sitting comfortably on a throne. Celtic crawled through fire for it. Through noise. Through pressure. Through fury. Through doubt. Through nights where everything felt broken and every headline screamed crisis.

Then, somehow, impossibly, beautifully, this football club still found a way to rise again.

That is Celtic. That is redemption.

That is why this double will be talked about by all for the rest of our lives. We redeemed it when it seemed impossible. But that is Celtic. Celtic is impossible.

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