GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - SEPTEMBER 18: Celtic Manager Martin O'Neill (R) and Assistant Shaun Maloney during a Celtic training session at the Lennoxtown Training Centre, on September 18, 2026, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Williamson/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Just as important as the formation Celtic play tomorrow is going to be the speed at which we play. It is no use at all Celtic changing the formation if we continue with that slow-passing, awful game of football that we’ve been watching for far too long.
It is high time we got back to something more swashbuckling. Something more alluring. Something more dangerous. Because that is the Celtic way, after all, and we’ve been denied that version for a while now.
All of us have asked the question as to who is running the club at the moment. Who is picking the team? Who is organising the tactics? And it’s not an idle question. It is not a stupid question. It is, in fact, a seriously important question and one that we have got to have answered.
Celtic fans aren’t the only people asking it now. Former Celtic players like Stiliyan Petrov, who played under Martin O’Neill, have said that this does not look like an O’Neill team, and this echoes exactly the fears that some of us have had.
Are we really a team run by one man? Or is this a team run by committee?
The fact that it’s being discussed seriously now in the mainstream media, and the fact that former O’Neill players are now talking about it openly, shows that we really aren’t the only ones who see this. We’re not the only ones who harbour the suspicion.
O’Neill himself has said repeatedly that he wants to see a faster game from the team.
So why isn’t the team playing that way?
And what is the issue that is preventing it from happening?
It seems to me that before we get down to the serious business of fixing these problems, we have to fix something else first. Celtic’s dressing room has to know who’s really in charge. It has to be obvious who’s really in charge.
Obvious to everyone. Obvious to fans. Obvious to players. Obvious to pundits. This has to have the signature of a Martin O’Neill team. And right now it doesn’t.
If he has become cautious, if he has become timid in the way he approaches games, OK, then he needs to explain that properly. But the very clear impression a lot of people get is that this crappy, crummy, possession-based style of football does not have his signature.
I said last week that if this is the board trying to push Shaun Maloney, it’s failed.
If people at the club saw this as Maloney’s big audition, the moment when he stepped out from his academy job to become the next manager of this club, then they badly misjudged it. Because right now, the way we are playing, if this is how he wants to do it, nobody’s going to support that. Nobody’s going to get behind it.
Nobody will want anything to do with it at all. We are awful to watch. We look weak. And we look unstructured. Maloney is not going to be an acceptable candidate after this, no matter what happens next.
So, if the issue here is that Maloney wants his shot, if Maloney believes this is his best opportunity, then it’s already over, and O’Neill may as well take the wheel from here on in.
It doesn’t really matter any more whether it is Maloney running the team or whether it is Martin himself who’s in charge and all these errors, mistakes and everything else are down to him. Maloney’s getting blamed.
Is that fair? Maybe not. But all I can say is what I know, and what I know is that having looked across Celtic cyberspace, the idea that Maloney will ever be Celtic manager is considered unthinkable by a very large number of supporters. There will be very little enthusiasm for the idea if it ever comes to pass.
So, his audition is effectively over.
And there is no reason why the team should have to suffer in pursuit of that unattainable goal any longer.
No football club can be run by committee.
It’s just not the way it works.
A football club is the ultimate dictatorship. It needs to have one man at the top, one man running everything, one man in total command. Anything else endangers everyone involved because these things don’t succeed. These things don’t end well.
Players need to know the chain of command, and if there are even the slightest doubts about the chain of command, the club will eventually cease to function, no matter what the intentions were when it started.
See, that’s the crazy thing about this. I can see where this idea may have originated.
You have a manager coming into the club after years away, needing to lean on someone younger, someone with fresh thinking and new ideas, and O’Neill’s big thing has always been his ability to make the motivational speech and to get the best out of players.
So, it’s not crazy to think that they came to an agreement that Maloney would run the training and the tactical side and O’Neill would be there as the elder statesman. It was never as smart as it sounds.
And it was always doomed to end badly.
But now there’s the possibility that it ends catastrophically, with everyone’s reputations tarnished, and so whatever’s going on behind the scenes, it needs to end now.
If it is Maloney running everything, and that’s how it’s going to be, then perhaps it’s better that O’Neill walks and lets him get on with it.
I don’t think that would necessarily last long.
If O’Neill is running the show, then he has to get back to first principles, and he’s talked about them often enough. He wants a team that moves the ball quickly.
Well, let’s see it. And you know what? It may not be enough.
Whichever of these philosophies is the true one, whichever man is in charge, there are so many things missing from the way this team plays that speed on its own might not be enough.
But it would be a start. Because right now we are slow. We are predictable. And we do not know how to respond to adversity.
I don’t know whose fault that is. It’s a collective thing for me, and everybody should be carrying their share of the blame.
I just know that it has to end. And it has to end tomorrow.
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I agree with all of this and felt we started on Thursday with more purpose before reverting back. But there’s another wannabe manager in the mix. McGregor. Rodgers said he’d trust him with his life and maybe Rodgers and McGregor share the same possession based philosophy. McGregor has been there through it all and has been a superb captain over the years always talking about standards. It’s not a stretch for me to think he dictates day to day training and influences team patterns of play maybe more so than Maloney, either way it’s on O’Niell to sort it out.
The other issue is whether the players can easily adapt to a braver, quicker style of play. CCV has been a top performer for years but he takes an age to pass the ball, Donovan is learning and improving all the time but still a bit risk averse. We seen on Thursday Scales struggling yet we constantly gave him the ball and stood and watched to see what he’d do. There’s nowhere near enough movement off the ball. At throw ins too it’s terrible. Donovan is stood there waiting for far too long every time waiting for someone to offer and when it finally happens it’s only ever one guy. Refs will start punishing this. A lot of the other things on the pitch might sort themselves out when the confidence returns. At home against the huns might be perfect or might come too soon.
Rodgers ingrained the slow passing mind numbing possession is king, non entertainment philosophy into the club and we are now paying the price. The coaches must totally jettison this approach that perhaps the captain has a hand in. Right now I would rather they lost the ball trying to go forward than turning and passing backwards the non “elite” Brendan way.
MON always relied and took advice from his coaches, in his first time as Celtic manager he trusted implicitly in Steve Walford and John Robertson, they shared his football philosophy.
The relationship with Maloney and Fotheringham is a marraige of convenience, which suited the Celtic Board, but it looks like their could be incompatible differences between them, in the way to play football and get results.
Maloney was an assistant to Martinez for years at Belgium, when they had an abundance of World class players, they won nothing because of his possession based toothless approach to the game.
He then became Portugal manager and had a decent group of players but won nothing. To me Maloney’s Football Philosophy mirrors his mentor Martinez, where just like BR possession is all.
Possession with a purpose is OK, possession just for the sake of it, is boring and uninspiring.
I’ve noted a pile on developing in the criticism of CalMac, to me the criticism is very unfair.
Under BR, Callum was the outball for the central defenders give the ball to Mcgregor and the link with attacking players was built through him, Teams have cottoned on to this and are marking him closely man to man, you can see this when CCV or Scales get the ball, if Calmac is unavailable they have no one to pass it to.
Our system has to change, everyhhing can’t go through Callum, especially as the years catch up with him, I thought MON would do this, but for some reason we’re stuck with BR’s system without the players to play it.
Sunday is the last chance for our manager, coaches and players to show us some imagination and purpose in our game. Let’s hope the supporters get behind them big time, no moaning and groaning at the odd stray pass early in the game, that would be music to Hun ears.
Micmac that is one hell of a post. You have done something no other fan of his was able to do and that is argue the case for MacGregor. He is a good player but his uselessness to the team is down to being marked out the game and the the fact that Scales, Tierney CVV and Trusty haven’t a clue to do with the ball if they can’t pass to him. This has being going on for a very long time and I accept it.
Ange’s football towards the end was dire and I am sure it is for this very reason. Rodgers was consistently dire as it has been under MON and Maloney.
Two things, Firstly did all these managers see it and secondly why didn’t they do anything about it.
MacGregor should be moved forward or not play at all. The defence if they cannot find a midfielder should launch it in the the opposition box and let Hogh, Duran and Hassan worry about it this. This is not cool and less boring than possession football but it is the way out of this mess.
There will be no pile on Calmac from me from now on as it is down to the management failing to see/fix the problem.
No matter what happens I want a new management team like the guys from Lask and maybe some of their players. If Mon wins tomorrow he should retire on a high. He deserves it.
Agree Cgreen, our game should have had a mix of long, short and crossfield balls with a bit of risk taking. It had been become so predictable under BR, I’ll give him credit for giving us two good seasons in each of his two spells with the club, by the end of each of those two seasons, other teams knew what way we played and Brendan had no other system.
He was the same with every team he managed.
also agree McGregor should be used in a more attacking role, Two M/F’s signed, Van den Berg not seen, and Sorensen played in two games, with what seems no particular role in the M/F, didn’t look any better or any worse than most of the team, but hooked at half time in both games. That will do a lot for his confidence.
There’s somebody in charge?
I am now hazzarding a guess that the coach delay was becsuse martin didnt want them. They were foisted on. Him
Nancey thought vsry poorly of them, he vrought his own . Low bar addmittedly but still…
John McGinlay made an interesting point in the Glasgow Times.
“O’Neill’s reference to the club’s longstanding use of 4-3-3 was curious. As the manager, he is entitled to change it. He is also responsible for making it function while he continues to employ it. He is not powerless.”