GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - SEPTEMBER 17: Celtic manager Martin O'Neill and assistant Shaun Maloney are seen during the UEFA Europa League 2026/27 League Phase MD1 match between Celtic FC and Ferencvarosi TC at Celtic Park on September 17, 2026 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about Derek McInnes and how he was on the brink of losing his job. I said that this is a crazy time we’re living in, and people fall, even powerful people, in record time. Keir Starmer was gone two years after an election victory. Boris Johnson’s victory didn’t buy him much time either.
Football has always been a little nuts.
People tend to forget that one of the greatest managerial triumphs in recent football history, achieved by the quite brilliant Claudio Ranieri at Leicester, ended in his dismissal within 12 months. As extraordinary as that still seems to me.
It is crazy to believe that our coaching team are safe in their jobs right now. Maybe they should be. Maybe this is the knee-jerk era. Maybe it’s just the jerk era. Perhaps all of us need a little patience, a little tolerance and a little gratitude, and perhaps it doesn’t speak well of us or the time we live in.
All I know is that we cannot wish the world were a different place and have it happen. It is what it is, and I’m not suggesting that we simply make the best of it. Maybe we should all work a little harder to change the world into that better place we talk about wanting to see. But whilst we’re living here, there are things we have to get on with.
And in this world, with all its imperfections, this Celtic management team is not safe. They performed a miracle last season and secured a domestic double when that seemed like Mission Impossible. But Brendan Rodgers secured us a domestic double and got us to Munich the season before last, and he wasn’t safe.
There are people to this day who will still say that Rodgers deserved everything he got. Well, by that rationale, they should have no problem contemplating what we may have to do here. O’Neill might be a nice guy, and the darling of a section of the support, but we cannot let that change the reality of where this crisis might be headed.
If you polled our supporters right now, I don’t know how many would favour giving this management team all that much more time. I know that a lot of people who are not in favour of dismissing them right now are only in that position because the present board of directors would pick their successors.
There is a very real fear that these people, with their lack of imagination, their lack of ambition, their inability to sell this club properly and the damage they have done to its reputation, will not be able to attract a candidate of calibre.
But if there were major changes in the boardroom tomorrow, it’s not even clear that the management team would get until Sunday.
If we lose on Sunday, and to be quite frank with you, I think that looks more likely than not, there will be an almighty clamour for heads to roll. Celtic Park will be a truly dreadful place to spend that afternoon.
Depending on the nature of any defeat, we may need a new management team by the following morning, giving the board the international break to bring someone in who can steady the ship. At this moment in time, I dread to think who that would be.
But I know that this can’t go on.
This isn’t just about a handful of defeats. There’s a wider piece to be written about this club as a whole, and I’ll get to that in the course of the day. This is about something much bigger. But if you want me to tell you where I lost faith completely, it was in Linz.
I can’t get it out of my head.
I can’t comprehend how a four-goal aggregate lead was squandered in 60 minutes of football. I cannot process the idea that it was allowed to happen.
At the second goal, the shutters should have come down.
The whole system should have been bent towards not conceding another. I’ve seen Celtic managers do it. That result that night should have been impossible, and what haunts me is the ineptitude of the coaching staff, who stood on the sidelines frozen, unable to mount any kind of coherent response.
This was a game of enormous magnitude against an opponent who, although technically gifted, are not a brilliant side. They are not even a mid-tier European team. For our coaching staff to be so unable to respond was a moment so stark and horrific in all its implications that I still can’t quite bring myself to believe we watched it.
But we did watch it, and having seen it, you can’t unsee it. Because of that, no one was fully confident going to Ibrox. I know absolutely nobody who thought we would win last night, and this is a new place for us to be.
The confidence we have in the coaching team has not just been shaken. It has been shattered. As I said at the time, Linz was not a bad night at the office, and nobody should have been treating it as one.
It revealed this club’s systemic problems, not one of which was fixed in the days and weeks that followed the full-time whistle. The end to the transfer window was a flat-out disgrace and left us short in any number of positions. The full effects of that are being realised now.
The failure to sign at least one midfielder of real quality has probably hamstrung this club for the foreseeable future. We’ll be very lucky to get to January top of the table. We might not get through October top of the table.
I don’t know if they know how to fix it. I don’t know if they have answers. But this season could very well collapse all around us after the international break if we don’t move to address this problem now.
Nobody is going to take that action before Sunday. But at the end of that game, we’re going to have to take stock of where we are and where this season is headed. None of the signposts is encouraging.
The teams we’ve beaten so far have been teams we would have expected to beat comfortably. In the games where we have been tested, we have been found wanting. Even in several of those games we’ve won, we have been unconvincing, and the idea that we might be on the brink of a disaster has never really been far away.
These problems should have been fixed before last Sunday. If they’re not fixed before this Sunday, there’s going to be no place to hide. And the problem with the summer is that O’Neill fought for all these guys.
This is his backroom team.
The club did not want to rehire them on the same terms as last season. O’Neill had to fight to get them, and that means that if this failure runs deeper than tactics and the ability to motivate these players, he’s going to carry the can for that.
These are his people, and every one of them is in it together.
The fact that he took such an aggressive stand against the board to get them will not have been forgotten, and it damn sure won’t be forgiven. If those in the boardroom have even the slightest suspicion that this can’t be turned around, nothing is going to save him. Nothing is going to save his backroom staff either.
There’s no exaggerating the scale of this. We know what we’re watching, and we know it’s not getting any better. We’re floundering right now.
The coaching team is floundering, and I’m already convinced that the best thing we can do is throw them a cinder block, because I don’t think they’re coming back from this. And I badly want to be wrong.
A lot of us supported O’Neill quite vocally in the summer when he fought for his coaching staff, because you cannot hire the manager and then refuse to let him pick his own team. But by any definition you use, these people are failing. All of us will be forced to re-evaluate everything we thought was true if the Ibrox side beats us on Sunday.
And remember, he had a choice to go at the end of last season. He was at the pinnacle of his powers and his reputation at this club. Some of us were very clear in warning him that it was the right time to walk away.
His standing at the club had never been higher. It had been spectacularly enhanced, and he could and should have let that be the lasting monument to his time as a servant of Celtic.
But he chose to stay, and nobody should be infantilising a man who made a choice with his eyes wide open. He doesn’t need protecting except from himself, and it’s way too late now for that.
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Its chaos. Celtic make it up as they go along. Incompetence on a grand scale, so many people are saying “Celtic is Grace Brothers!”
Abject lack of quality of the playing squad as a direct result of the incompetence of senior management, purposeful managed decline and chronic lack of investment whilst determinedly conserving cash. Recruiting a right in front of your eyes manager from the Billionaire Despot “Owner in Chief” extremely limited Black Book of Football Contacts with a strict criteria- Some connection to Celtic, Irish, and will take what he is given and be grateful or at least a pal of someone who is already kicking the arse out of their current job and contract with Celtic and who is the living definition of a the Peter Principle and is a confirmed Yes Man.
Celtic is absolutely Grace Brothers!!!! 🙂
“This is his backroom team.
The club did not want to rehire them on the same terms as last season. O’Neill had to fight to get them, and that means that if this failure runs deeper than tactics and the ability to motivate these players, he’s going to carry the can for that.”
Interesting that you chose the word “club” rather than “Board”.
On the whole though I think you’ve nailed it. A defeat at Ibrox is surely more than a defeat in that game. It’s a sign that things will never work under this setup and it’s time to ditch it. WHo would be acceptable replacements? Certainly not Broonie as he’s proved nothing as a manager.
Martin looks like an unwell man at the moment and I fear for his health. I believe that he is there as the face for the media and that Maloney is picking the teams. The substitutions are looking like they have come from someone who hasn’t a clue what they are doing and I don’t believe that is an accusation that could ever be thrown Martins way
At the start of the season I said I wished Mon had gone . After last season, his already saint stature would have propelled him to god like levels. I also asked the question re if it all went tits up this season, would he risk losing that?.
Although we’re not at that point yet, there is a feeling amongst the fans, that maybe he should have stayed away, and is stuck in a time warp of 20 odd years ago.
It was interesting listening to Stan petrov & Neil Lennon when asked if they thought this style of play was down to Mon. Both agreed that it wasn’t. Knowing mon as they do, they were 100% confident that this style would be alien to him. They couldn’t say for sure the coaching staff were having a bigger say than him about style, tactics etc, but confirmed their thoughts were it almost certainly was not down to Mon.
If this is the case then we are in a bigger mess than I thought.
We need a positive result on Sunday…and by that I mean a win. Even if it’s just to shut up the delusional fans across the city. 8 points clear of them at this stage, the way we are playing, would be a miracle. If we did win, it gives us a bit of breathing space.
January will be massive, and tell us even more than we may already know.
If results are favourable up until then, then surely they’ll know our out of jail card has been played and it’s time to spend money on quality players
Maloney said they would be tweaking Rodgers style not changing it so I think Maloney is the culprit. I think the board were trying to do MON a favour by not renewing the coaching staffs contract.
Where do you really start on our current situation?
We all know that MON should have retired after securing the double and his wonderful legacy.
The answers as to why he was tempted to return may be obvious or they may be multi-fold!
For me, yet again, the blame lies with those in “charge” of our club. They created & watched the chaos unfold last season, and by god’s will, we managed to win a highly improbable double.
That they could not find even an ounce of professionalism and nous, to study available managers from February/March onwards, and have a competent one in place for the start of June, tells us everything we already know!
The timing and choice of WN told us all we needed to know !
To then appoint MON early in summer, hinder his backroom appointments and then ignore the hugely vital squad replacements that we have been waiting on for years, is downright disgraceful and shameful.
So we are where we are, with the manager, coaches and players that we have available.
We can complain all we want about certain players but nothing can change, personnel wise, until January at the earliest…and do we trust the board of incompetents to spend what is required?
We can now complain about MON and coaches as the buck stops with them, but I really do have sympathy with O’Neill, regardless of how that may be perceived.
I’m not sure if he’ll survive, if we lose this Sunday, but I have to still believe, whilst he is at Celtic, and with the knowledge that he has, that he can turn this around.
As I said in an earlier article, it again has to be a collective effort.
We are all currently drained of enthusiasm for watching our beloved club, and the flashbacks to last season are eerily familiar.
We need a performance that can get us off our seats and let us all start believing in MON & players again.
Hopefully that can be this Sunday !!!
No matter what happens, this board’s role in our regressive malaise will never be forgotten.
Currently, MON is providing the shield for their abject incompetence, and as a result, everyone else suffers !
Look no further than their performances to ultimately find out, why we’re here! HH
Everyone is blaming Scales for his distribution but none of the players in front of him were showing for the ball/moving into space. After the glorious first few minutes they were hiding. It’s almost impossible to find a team-mate if they’re standing still and closely marked.
Kevin been saying it for years. No one will run with or off the ball and most passing is done while standing still. The default- receive the ball stop , look around and in most cases turn around and pass back.
The players must have become professionals because they once enjoyed playing football, set them free.
Let’s be honest James…thanks to Martin for stepping up to the mark when called on but in my opinion we only won the league last season because the other mob where pure rubbish and the mini huns s**t themselves, O’Neill is a football man stuck in the 80s/90s and is totally lost for tactical ideas in the modern game, after watching out total collapse in the championship league I’ve lost all confidence in our management team and sooner we get a modern thinking young manager in who will be about to sort this s*** show out and save our season.
To be fair MON’s win rate last season (averaging 2.5 points per game) would have had us on 95 points over 38 games, which would have won the league 18 out 26 times since we moved to a 38 game league (and three of the times it wouldn’t were MONs first three titles). He definitely turned it around for us last season and dragged us over the line.
Having said that he should have walked away, because signing on for one year seldom works for managers (and given his age it’s not going to be more than one season). As soon as Fergie said he was retiring at the end of the season, the team’s form bombed. I think with BR last season the players sensed he wasn’t signing a new contract and that created problems.
MON should have been appointed Chairman in the summer and a new manager in situ from June. There are always plenty of managers between jobs and I would use the international break to make a change (irrespective of Sunday’s result). Three names stand out – Howe, McKenna and Keane. The first two probably out of our league. Personally I would ask the question of McKenna and if not interested then cast the net wider across Europe (maybe we could ask PL to speak with his pals at City Group to see if any of their network available…).
Winning a one horse race is not a miracle.
I dont expect to lose on Sunday. The problem is a convincing win against basket case FC will keep MON in a job. He is not cut out for modern football. Ferencvaros is one of the worst teams in the europa and to be honest we got a great draw in that competition.
We need a new manager appointed ASAP.
Hogh was ripping up the UCL playing for a wee team from Norway last year, and we dont play him because he doesnt fit our system? I reckon Mbappe, Messi and Harry Kane wouldn’t fit our system either and we would have all 3 of them on the bench also….. because our system is incoherent….. has been for years!
Well said. I believe Kyogo, Idah, Oh, Iheanacho, Kuhn and the rest left for that very reason you’ve highlighted.