GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MAY 23: Martin O'Neill is pictured as Celtic celebrate winning the Scottish Gas Men's Scottish Cup at Celtic Park, on May 23, 2026, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ewan Bootman/SNS Group via Getty Images)
According to Stephen McGowan, Martin O’Neill has agreed a one-year contract with Celtic, with the option of another year. And in some ways, what I feel right now is a deep sense of relief.
I cannot pretend enthusiasm. I do not feel particularly enthusiastic about this. I think it is a lazy move, an easy option, one which means people at Celtic Park do not have to do too much work. It calls into question the roles of any number of people at the club and what they are actually doing for their money.
Not a hell of a lot, it seems to me.
I will be writing about one of them tomorrow. No prizes for guessing who.
But tonight the relief is very real.
The other two candidates sat on varying degrees of the unacceptability spectrum.
Craig Bellamy has never managed a club team for even one game, and his appointment would have been an act of insanity. It would have been impossible to judge him by any previous standard because there was nothing to judge him on. Yes, he has managed the Welsh national team, but that does not translate easily into club football.
And Robbie Keane, for all the reasons we have written about, talked about and speculated about, was the unthinkable candidate.
Not just a bad idea. A potentially catastrophic idea.
That O’Neill has agreed to this may again be O’Neill doing what he can for the unity of the club. I have no way of knowing whether that is an accurate assessment, but I am sure O’Neill was well aware of the enormity of the damage Celtic would have inflicted on itself, to no obvious benefit, had Robbie Keane got the job.
I said the next managerial candidate, the next person to walk through that door, had to be a unifying candidate.
Martin O’Neill will bring us back together to an extent.
There are still people who will have to answer for what has happened. There are still people who cannot remain at Celtic Park. The sooner we have a mechanism for breaking Dermot Desmond’s control over this club, the better. If fan pressure has to be brought to bear to force that, then that is what will have to happen.
But at least the complete disintegration of this club has been averted.
For that, I am thankful.
Martin O’Neill knows how to do this job. Martin O’Neill knows how to win. That was evidenced by the double. He will now go back to the drawing board and try to come up with a new way of approaching games against SPFL and European opposition.
He has talked before about how a summer would have allowed him to implement real changes, rather than simply tweaking around the edges. Those tweaks had a positive effect. We secured the double. We got through those last seven games with seven wins.
It was not easy. It was not always pretty to watch.
But it worked.
If he is serious about implementing deeper changes now, that is all to the good. He must also be angry at the way January went, because they hung him out to dry in January. I am encouraged to think he would not have accepted the job unless it came with some serious conditions on the board.
Not on him. On them. I expect, once this deal is announced, activity around the club to accelerate dramatically. Because it has to.
The one thing O’Neill has is a bank of goodwill unprecedented in the modern history of the club. It is the kind of power Brendan Rodgers had only briefly after securing the Invincible Treble, and I never thought he used it to the full extent.
O’Neill is literally seen by supporters as the guy who saved last season. The guy who dragged a beaten, deadened, crushed club off its knees and pulled it over the line. He won unanimous acclaim from the support in doing so.
He will never be as strong or as powerful as he is right now.
He has to use all of it to maximum effect.
This is the exact inverse of what I wrote about Robbie Keane. Even those who did not hate the idea of Keane were not going to go out of their way to defend it. On this side, even those who are less than thrilled about Martin O’Neill, and who still think this club is complacent, lazy, amateurish and run by people who do not know what they are doing, are not going to condemn the decision.
On the Keane side, you had people united in their detestation of the entire idea. On this side, you will have people elated that O’Neill continues in the dugout.
I had a maximalist opinion on Keane and a very muted one on O’Neill. I am not elated. But I am not going to criticise the decision either.
Because I have no doubts about the man himself. I have no doubts that he can see us through another campaign and to more success. He is the guy I trust absolutely to get us through that Champions League qualifier.
Furthermore, way back many months ago when he made his return and we started putting results together again, I said there was an argument for O’Neill coming back for the next campaign as a stabilising force.
Not as a permanent solution, but as a guy who gets one year to restructure the squad, while allowing the club to do its work in restructuring the football department. To have O’Neill play a leading role in that. To restore some credibility to Celtic as an organisation capable of serious thought and serious work.
I am not happy that he seems to believe he owes everything to Dermot Desmond. Everything O’Neill has had in his career, he made happen. When Desmond hired him the first time, O’Neill was the outstanding candidate available. He would have been the first choice of the majority of Celtic supporters at the time.
There was not the slightest doubt he could come in and change the whole psychological makeup of this club, even if we did not expect a 6-2 in the first derby and then a treble.
He does not owe that to Dermot Desmond. O’Neill did that on his own. Just as he won that double last season on his own.
Now he has to break out of Desmond’s shadow completely. He has to do what is right for himself and make sure he gets the support he needs.
This is the one guy the Celtic board does not want to screw with.
Even with Rodgers, there was some element of the Celtic support that believed he was the devil and responsible for everything bad, a grotesque characterisation put into the public domain by a small group of people and allowed to grow roots.
There are no such doubts about O’Neill.
He is the one person behind whom the fans are united absolutely.
To betray him is to betray Celtic itself.
This has to be the start of something. As I will say in the Nicholson piece tomorrow, it is high time for him to step off the stage. He has contributed nothing. He offers nothing. He does nothing. This club will not heal and it will not move on while he is still in the building.
But at least tonight we know that Celtic is not going to be further fractured in a way that would have been disastrous. O’Neill has saved these people again, because I genuinely believe that had he turned the job down, we would be in a perilous place.
So, Cincinnatus comes back from the farm.
Remember what I said about that.
The first time they called him out of retirement, it was to save the republic. The second time they called him out of retirement, it was to protect themselves.
That matters. It will matter going forward.
But on both occasions, Cincinnatus did the job he was brought back to do. So, it will be here, because O’Neill knows how to win.
His decision to stay should strike fear into the hearts of everyone in Scottish football who thought this summer might see Celtic disintegrate completely.
That will not happen now. So yes, relief is the appropriate emotion tonight.
We will see over the next few weeks whether it is temporary, whether it is misplaced, or whether it changes into something closer to optimism.
But at least tonight this summer got a little less dramatic, a little less strained, a little more … yeah, hopeful. Bring it on.
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I love MON but Celtic must be the worst run club in Europe, six feckin months to come up with a quality manager and we get a 74 year old who should have his feet up. This board is beyond useless. We really are in a seriously bad place. Jist wait for the dross that is signed. How the hell did it come to this we are now cannon fodder in Europe and will struggle to beat Govan FC to the title next year. Feckin shambles of a club
Yes, a sense of relief is my emotion too, but there is also a sense of underwhelming disappointment. MON is the safe option for the time being and it means that we have a sort of uneasy peace going into the season as none of us are going to complain about his leadership qualities, and none of us will be split, as we would have been with Robbie Keane in charge. We can certainly do without that sort of infighting and I am now more content going into next season. I just hope that he can make a real difference and have some sort of positive influence on the board toadies. I wish him luck
Agreed James MON is the best option we had under the circumstances.
I’d say he was the least bad of the three options. He does, at least, offer some sort of continuity and will make it easier to find an elite replacement IF the board now fund a proper rebuild. As James says, you’d expect O’Neill wouldn’t have agreed to this without some guarantees of funding but I thought the same thing when Rogers came back.
Under what circumstances? The board being fucking useless and nkt even trying to do their job properly. We all love Martin but this appointment ins disgraceful- the club are a total shambles
6 months to scour the world and they can find no one
But Martin has my support- even though it doesn’t seem like it
Agree, this is pathetic by the board and sadly enough we just have to accept that we will never get an upgrade. The board love the status quo.
NOT A PENNY MORE.
Agree also…but the fact it can to this just shows what a shambles our board is…we have kicked the can down the road for a year or two…lets hope that MON has got some assurances re:player recruitment.
Lazy unimaginative shoddy corporate governance.
I love Martin but seriously they had 6 months to find a new manager and they have failed.
I hope Martin wins the treble next season but for us and not for those board cunts
Embarrassing appointment. Useless board and manager who is well past it.
Very glad didn’t renew season ticket.
Don’t think he’ll last the season but he will ask for a statue for Desmond to be built…..
What has actually happened here? After everything MON has done across his 3 tenures he surely only had to give the word and the job was his, his record is exemplary and we couldn’t have got anyone better but all this bollocks with Robbie Keane makes me think either a) O’Niell didn’t necessarily want to continue, or b) he did but the board we’re looking elsewhere anyway. And if it’s b, then I wonder if Keane said no? A crazy proposition but why the delay?
It doesn’t matter so much now, he’s here (thank fuck) and our self destruct has been postponed by at least a year. He had them over a barrel and hopefully made some demands about transfer budgets. We need first team ready stars asap, I’m glad O’Niell is on it.
There is a high possibility Keane did say no!
Good luck to Martin!
Well – it’s a bit of stability or should be….
The Keane fiasco is over thankfully for the sake of CELTIC the most important player in this by far over the support and that fuckin board…
Personally I think Martin should have left the dugout at the pinnacle as a champion and I worry about his health in such a stressful and unforgiving envoirnment…
The Scummy’s will be unrepentant in their efforts to scupper him…
Probably so will The Celtic Board…
They’ll have promised him the moon, the stars and the fuckin earth and I just hope that he’s not been duped as they’d think fuck all of throwing him under a bus to save their own brass necks…
I don’t trust them one iota not fuckin one !
Why Bellamy continues to be mentioned here is beyond me – he quite clearly stated he is staying with Wales. MON wanted time to reflect post the cup final – not unreasonable and also not unreasonable for the board to have other candidates under consideration – whether that was one other candidate or more than one we will never know.
We can talk about scouting the globe for candidates, but these would probably be largely unknown to us – Trpisovsky for Slavia Prague for example – and I am far from convinced that we would cut them much slack.
Once MON confirmed he was willing to go again, I think the board were pretty much duty bound to give him the gig. MON is a clever man and he goes out of his way to give DD some credit in public – I have no doubt he drives a hard bargain in private though.
(and Trpisovsky has a strong track record at Slavia Prague but he managed them whilst they were under Chinese ownership – so given the widespread human rights abuses in China and the oppression/genocide being waged on the Uigers by the Chinese Government I guess he would be off limits)
Glad that MON and his backroom staff are back for another season at least, it will unify the club in the short term, and if this Board have any sense they will back them big time.
Last season they dragged this club over the line, winning the double. Under the circumstances it was a great achievement with a limited pool of players. Hope they are backed with money by this Board, how many times have we said that, with no positive reaction from these impostors in the Boardroom.
Worldwide search my feckin arse, to our board , the World begins in Scotland and ends on the west coast of Ireland.
I’ll welcome Martin back , gives them a year to get a manager search, they will start the search in may
A feckin cheapskate board. They need to fucking go.
Not another penny
Good article as a Keane appointment would have fully reignited the civil war to new levels.
We avoided the catastrophy of losing a league with £70 million in the bank last season and change must happen, or not another penny carries on into next season
I wasn’t sure if I should open with…” The lunatics have taken over the asylum”…or.. ” The Empty Vessels win the day “….Either way…its a bad day for Celtic Football Club…A really bad day…And let me be clear…I’m not a cheerleader for RK…but when a group of zealots decide Club policy, then we are in trouble…Will we ever know what happened here…,??…Well i have a very good source, and I will do my utmost to find out…In the meantime I’m convinced that RK’s contract has been torn up and compensation has been paid…As for MON…I love the guy…but if he continues with the Victor Sylvester type of football…we will struggle…again…Finally a note of caution to any aspiring future Celtic manager…Check out what sections of our support don’t find acceptable…before submitting your application…A dark day indeed.
Well said Terence Nova, I wholeheartedly agree with your comment! It’s a sad day when bullies, for that is what these zealots are, bullies, can decide who can or cannot be the Celtic manager because therein leads to anarchy and that is not the Celtic way. Celtic is a PLC and decisions should be taken by the Board, not fans. If this furore had carried on and badly affected the share price, this could be very bad news for the club and it’s financial situation and we certainly don’t want to end up like the team across the river.
I am no apologist for our Board, if you check many of my posts I’m continually saying that DD should go and take his cohorts with him! However, whether we like it or not, these are the people currently running the company and we can’t change that even though we know that they’re making a pig’s ear of it.
Of course we can protest and make our feelings known to the Board and I have no problem at all with this, but we have to be careful that we don’t cause too much damage to Celtic PLC, as it could have a detrimental effect on the finances, which in turn could affect our ability to function properly.
By all means we can show our absolute displeasure at the way we are being run and we can show the Board how passionate we are about our club, but we need to do this in a less damaging way. I will say again, I do not want to see Celtic going the same way as the team across the river, and I worry that this could happen.
Well said Broony…Agree with all your thoughts.
The second mon annouced that yang had signed you knew he was coming back.
I wish you’d told the headbangers eldraco…It would have stopped all the vitriolic crap we had to suffer. Cheers.
One bit of sloppy reporting by James – you say he has signed a one year deal with a one yar option at the end. Who has the option? MON or Celtic?
MON has stated several times that he is grateful to DD for the opportunities to manage Celtic. James tells us that MON shouldn’t be grateful to DD as he owes him nothing. I think on this point and all things football I know who I am trusting.
And maybe James and the Green Brigade can act in some official capacity as our Morality Police (the Taliban have a model they can adopt) to assist the board in future manager and player searches. Celtic – a club open to all (as long as the zealots agree).
Well said portojoe…Morality police indeed…And nice to see “zealots” mentioned.
If Mon takes Celtic through the CL qualifier then everyone will be happy again!
I hope MON was our option whilst we find a replacement for Nicholson. That would be a move none of us could criticise.
MON was the only option available, no manager in his right mind would even consider the job after Desmonds character assassination of Rodgers on the Celtic website . That could really cause major managerial problems for many years and certainly gave MON the job this year as the only option