GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - SEPTEMBER 02: Celtic Manager Martin O'Neill during a William Hill Premiership match between Celtic and Aberdeen at Celtic Park, on Sepember 02, 2026, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Rob Casey/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Last night should have been a reasonably good night. Celtic got a very good result and produced a very good performance, beating Aberdeen 3-0 at Celtic Park and maintaining our perfect start to the league season.
Yet at around 11 o’clock I found myself extremely pissed off, because there were a couple of elements of the final hour of the evening which were so predictable that I could almost have scripted them in advance.
We have all known for a long time what this Celtic board is like, and when the signing of Joël van den Berg was not announced at the start of the day, I knew there was not going to be a deal for Gvidas Gineitis before the European deadline.
I just knew it. My suspicion was that Van den Berg was being held back as the big reveal at the end of the night, because this club has become that predictable.
The Van den Berg deal was plainly a very long way down the road. He had been at Lennoxtown, had completed his medical and then travelled to Celtic Park on the team bus, in club gear, alongside the rest of the squad. Yet as the match began, Celtic still had not officially announced him.
Whatever the precise reason for delaying the announcement, the theatre around it was ridiculous. Everybody could see the player was there. Everybody knew the deal was essentially done. Pretending there was some great mystery surrounding whether Celtic could complete it was never going to fool anybody.
So, the European deadline closed with Celtic sitting on a transfer-trading surplus approaching £20 million. People inside Celtic may well pat themselves on the back for a job well done, but it was not a job well done. We left more money than that on the table by going out of the Champions League after failing to build this squad in time.
Every priority this club has seems backwards.
Later today I am going to write about what that failure really cost us, because it goes beyond the Champions League money itself.
But none of that was what pissed me off most last night. I can handle Celtic behaving like Celtic. I know what this board is like, and the moment we were signing two midfielders yesterday I suspected there would somehow be a complication which prevented the third deal being completed.
What annoyed me far more was Martin O’Neill’s attitude after the game.
Before the match had even started, O’Neill confirmed that Landon Emenalo, the left-back we have just signed on loan from Chelsea, is injured and is expected to be out for another couple of weeks. Celtic had even tried to bring Greg Taylor back on loan from PAOK because of Emenalo’s fitness situation, only for PAOK to reject the approach.
That is extraordinary.
We have spent months knowing we needed a proper alternative to Kieran Tierney. We have waited until the last meaningful day of European business, signed an 18-year-old with no senior first-team experience and discovered that he cannot even play for another couple of weeks. At the same time, we were scrambling around trying to reverse Greg Taylor’s departure only months after allowing him to leave.
That is dysfunctional even by our pitiful standards.
I will hear people say that Emenalo was the manager’s first choice. I said much the same thing yesterday before I knew he was still injured.
Well, he might have been Martin’s first choice at left-back, but he did not get his first choices in several other positions. I strongly suspect that if those first choices had also been 18-year-old loanees with no real senior football behind them, he might have had a better chance of getting them.
But it was what happened after the match which really annoyed me.
O’Neill was asked direct questions about Celtic’s transfer business, the players who had not been brought in, deals which had not been completed and whether more business might happen before Scotland’s domestic window shuts at 5pm today.
Those are perfectly legitimate questions, and they are questions Celtic supporters want answered. His response was to joke about it.
He laughed about having another 15 players waiting in the car park to come through the turnstiles and treated the whole thing as though it was basically a bit of deadline-night fun. That is where he lost me.
He also talked as though the Van den Berg deal was still hanging in the balance, with paperwork to be completed and the possibility that it might not happen until the following day. Yet this was a player who had literally travelled to Celtic Park on the team bus. At that point, presenting the deal as some dramatic last-minute rescue operation was an insult to the intelligence of supporters.
Van den Berg has now been confirmed on a permanent deal from PSV for around £3.5 million, which confirmed all my suspicious about a pathetic piece of theatre from a club which long ago lost any ability it had to read the room.
When O’Neill was pressed about the European registration deadline, he made the point that some players Celtic might now try to sign would no longer come because they could not be registered for the Europa League.
Think about that for a moment. Their failure to complete the squad before the European deadline is now being presented as one of the reasons why it becomes harder to complete the squad after the European deadline.
That is not an excuse. It is part of the indictment.
Celtic knew when the UEFA deadline was. We knew when it was. Every club in Europe knew when it was. The fact that a player might be less enthusiastic about joining once he cannot participate in the Europa League league phase is not some unforeseeable complication which descended from the heavens at 11pm last night.
It is precisely why the business should have been done earlier. It’s precisely why the deal for Gineitis should never have been left until the final hours of the final days. It’s a joke to think that fans are fooled by any of this, even if the manager is.
If O’Neill wants to be a shield for the board on that, that is up to him. But he should remember who he is talking to when the media asks him these questions.
Those are questions supporters would ask if fan media was still allowed into these press conferences in the way it once was. Perhaps that is one reason why independent fan media is no longer welcome in the room, because I would like to think that if these lines were offered to people representing supporters directly, somebody would push back.
When journalists ask questions about transfers, deadlines and failures to complete important deals, they are almost always asking the very questions Celtic supporters themselves want answered. Treating those questions cavalierly means treating our legitimate concerns exactly the same way, and we get enough contempt from the people at the top of this club without O’Neill bringing his own.
Supporters have put the money into this football club. Tens of thousands have renewed season tickets. People are buying Europa League packages, merchandise and hospitality. They have sat through this entire summer waiting for some coherent explanation for what the strategy is supposed to be.
They deserve answers. They do not deserve Martin O’Neill’s third-rate jokes. He should save them for when he returns to his professional speaking tours, where he will charge our fans even more money for the privilege of hearing how old he is and how his memory ain’t what it used to be, and hope that his audience’s are fading quicker.
O’Neill seems to forget all this sometimes.
At times like this he seems way too passive for my liking when it comes to the people above him. He is far too willing to let other people hold his destiny in their hands, and he is far too willing to brush aside legitimate questions when answering them straightforwardly might put pressure on the people who actually created the problem.
We already threw away Champions League qualification because these people could not organise their business properly. He, by the way, had a role in that and it wasn’t a small role either. His performance in Linz was as dire as any person on the pitch or in the soft seats behind him in the stand. We have now failed to do everything we could to prepare adequately for the Europa League either and everyone knows it.
People will point towards the players who did arrive, and some of them may turn out to be excellent signings. I have already said that I like a lot of the business Celtic eventually did. But I’ll say it again; we tried to sign Greg Taylor on loan because our new left-back is not even fit. He is still weeks away from playing, which means that for the immediate future we are once again hoping Kieran Tierney remains available and that Liam Scales is not urgently required in central defence, another area where we signed nobody.
That is the reality and O’Neill is the public face of Celtic right now because apparently nobody else at the football club has the guts to get in front of the media and answer difficult questions. If he wants to radiate the same contempt for his audience that people above him have displayed, that is his lookout, but I found his approach last night patronising and insulting.
I respect Martin O’Neill enormously. I respect what he has done for Celtic, both historically and since returning to this job. But respect is not a one-way street, and there are moments when his apparent lack of respect for the concerns of supporters pisses me off.
He should also be very careful.
The people above him have already damaged his reputation by failing to give him a finished squad before the Champions League qualifiers. They have already put another European failure on his managerial record which should never have happened. They will not hesitate to do further damage to his legacy.
If that happens, plenty of people will eventually conclude that one of those responsible is the guy O’Neill sees when he looks in the mirror every morning.
If he wants to take their shit, that is up to him.
But when he starts reflecting their contempt back at us, we are going to call it out.
We do not have to stand for that and we should not have to stand for it.
We, the fans, are Celtic and last night we deserved answers, not that amateur attempt at low comedy.
Only a fool forgets that.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
I don’t like saying I told you so…..but!
6 signings, 5 loans…1 signing,( a psv youth)
The question now James is to the fans…..how much longer do we stand for being afterthoughts?
If your pals treated you like the Celtic board, then they’d no longer be pals. If your employer fkd you about the way the board have done, then you’d be job hunting.
They have us over a barrel because they know how much the club means to the fans. As Tommy burns once said, you don’t become a fan, you’re born a fan….and thses parasites know this, and fk us about year after year, costing us millions in the process.
I’ve been saying it all summer, and the time has come….a boycott of even the European package at least, should be the first start .
This can’t keep happening…if it does, do we continue to be gutless and do nothing….it’s make your mind up time guys
It’s 4 loans and 2 signings, Latomba (the RB) has left Feyenoord and been given a one year deal at Celtic.
And we’ve made 6 permanent this window, Hogh, Duran, Hassan, Baur, van den Berg and Latombo. It’s not bad even though we’ve sold good players.
James some good points there but a couple of things.
1. You say “People are buying Europa League packages, merchandise and hospitality” …so is NAP over or what?
2. MON failing in the UCL gave us our greatest european season in 60 years.
We no longer belong in UCL…us being there is unadulterated prostitution!
Why does Celtic not belong in the Champions League when clubs with a far smaller turnover have qualified for it?
If the board had any ambition then the players required in key positions would have been signed for the LASK match.
However, aside from that, what do you mean?
You ask if not another penny is over, why dont you just go online and check their twitter account and look?
Are you truly mental?
James…Thanks for highlighting some aspects of MON’s nature…which has pissed me off for quite a while…He is not good at answering leading questions…and deflects through attempted comedy…or sarcasm…His attitude,last night, was dreadful…so thanks for calling it out…But at the end of the day…the faithful through and through brigade will buy European tickets…and MON and the Board will be vindicated…again…Great article …you did your best.
This has all the hallmarks of being a transitional year — very transitional.
The more O’Neill ruins his legacy with snash talk and up and down performances the less chance Maloney has of our gig next year.
.
Sliding doors — they score to make it 2-1 and it would have gotten very messy very quickly.
.
Last night was a perfect curate’s egg — life in the first half / stagnation in the second.
Set piece coach has been mentioned — well please tell me what has he been doing?
Corners are still a chore and our offensive set up is honking with a focus on the front post.
Where is the Paul Elliot vibe we once had with attacks to the penalty spot and back post?
.
Donovan is a find / bit of a player who is growing as a footballer with every passing game.
But he is not a right back for a defence full of introverts and CB’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Running onto the park holding the Ladybird Book of Right Back defending is not a good look so he needs a lot more one to one stuff in regular afternoon sessions.
.
He will benefit / we will benefit / the club will benefit.
.
Second half — low energy / low effort / very unsettled coming out the dressing room.
Just what is going on at half time — if it is a shouting match then rein it in / if it is pretty please then lets get angry. We must be the only club that diminishes in the dressing room.
.
AOC needs to get more engaged. It needs to come from him as our squad is not very expressive.
McGregor is now rationing his effort like a diva on the slide — 72 minutes and he is going through the motions at walking pace. Looked horrible as they ran past him yet on 81 minutes with the spotlight available he puts in a shift to win the ball back. Far too obvious.
.
He is the captain and all this going through the motions crap has to stop.
His efforts set the tone for half the team — if he can’t be ersed they will take the hint.
.
Plus our conditioning is honking — as the fatigue sets in at 60 minutes the passes go astray.
NT egg chasers in the 90’s worked on fitness as the foundation of the team.
No matter your talent — if you are tired mistakes happen.
Our fitness levels are poor — Scales after 65 minutes became a walking bombscare.
His passing was a minute behind the play with possession lost constantly.
.
Sinisalo — is he improving? If not then at 24 we are the issue not him.
If his positioning is poor then where is the coaching?
Trusty is off form and totally lacking in confidence.
CCV is still worried about his injury record.
Scales is industrial but he is starting to find a pass (in the first half).
Nygren is a waste of a jersey in the second half and wasteful in the first.
Yang was 67% good to great / 33% bad to looking lost.
Hassan needs to tidy up his game — showed lots of promise but a bit loose with his footwork.
Duran — G40 could be the making of him but still a bit patchy dealing with the ghost of Maeda.
Very good to fantastic finishing but only at 50% regarding the closing down.
He is a bit of a find.
Mitch
You said that the defence is introverted.
Obviously you didnt watch the match as you would have seen that CCV was playing who was constantly speaking to the players around him and he is the opposite of introverted on the pitch.
So I ask, why did you lie about watching the match and not even aware that he was in the team.
A fanny does that kind of thing.
CCV did not look that comfortable.
He is a man of few words and that isn’t improving.
Complaining to the ref about the grabbing / wrestling from their No.9 doesn’t count
Trusty is lacking both confidence and form.
Scales took some time to warm up.
Plus the fatigue kicked in at 65 mins.
Sinisalo is a bit raw.
That is not the best environment for a teenager to learn his game with the first team. He is much better / natural footballer than he is a defender.
Lots of work still to do.
CCV was constantly talking to the defence last night.
You made a comment about him being introverted on the pitch last night.
He was the opposite.
So you obviously didn’t watch the match
Next, why do you think that the other 3 defenders were on the verge of nervous breakdowns?
What would possibly motivate a grown man to write shite like that?
You boasted numerous times on Sentinel Celts of being employed by the club as you knew all the inner workings of the coaching staff.
Every players energy levels are recorded.
You state that energy levels were poor 2nd half.
Could you post here the distances covered 2nd half by each player to prove your point please.
I need proof.
I trust you to do this as only a fanny would make this up.
My evidence — our performance in the second half.
You need proof — open your eyes.
Sentinel Celts stuff — you are making it up.
I did have some gossip / chat / scuttlebut on the St Ninian’s glee club / high school musical vibe that was ruining our youth effort a few years back.
Hate to say it but it was worse that I even imagined.
I challenged you on Sentinel Celts several times when you continually stated that you knew that the coaching of certain things were of a poor standard, when i asked you several times how you were so aware of the inner workings,so much so that you must have evidence of this, on what you job was at Celtic to see all of this, you wouldn’t confirm what it was.
Are you now denying all of this?
Evidence of poor coaching …
.
Our efforts at corners.
Our efforts at free kicks.
Our efforts at throw ins.
Our efforts at corners.
Our efforts at penalties.
.
Evidence of poor conditioning …
.
Blowing out our erse at 60 minutes on a regular basis.
McCowan walking about with a pot belly.
Trusty looking like / playing like Twiggy.
.
Do you need anymore evidence?
You went on evidence of your eyes.
The same eyes that were blind to CCV talking to his defence for chunks of last night!!
Either get to Specsavers or be honest and admit that you never seen the match.
Next, why do you think that the other 3 defenders were on the verge of nervous breakdowns?
What would possibly motivate a grown man to write shite like that?
You boasted numerous times on Sentinel Celts of being employed by the club as you knew all the inner workings of the coaching staff.
Every players energy levels are recorded.
You state that energy levels were poor 2nd half.
Could you post here the distances covered 2nd half by each player to prove your point please.
I need proof.
I trust you to do this as only a fanny would make this up.
The McGregor comment.. ive read it 3 times and im still none the wiser.
On Duran having to deal with the ghost of Maeda.. what makes you believe that he thinks of Maeda when he plays football for Celtic!!!!!!
To be fair, I burst out laughing at that unadultered pish!!!
Get well soon
MON is letting himself be a shield for the board. He’s being paid handsomely for it . I loved him first time around but he’s beginning to get on my tits.
Another unconnected thing: When does this set piece guy start working his magic- Last night was another example of how wasteful we are when it comes to corners.
Did we even need Gineitis? We’ve signed plenty of midfielders and if Torino were holding out for a reported £8m for a guy I don’t think would’ve got a game then I’m glad it fell through, that and the Torino fans being desperate to get rid of him.
The left back situation is a farce though, still time to get Ferry…
Why do you think Gineitis wouldnt have got a game for Celtic?
Because McGregor and Nygren aren’t getting dropped so that leaves one place for Ox, Baur, van den Berg, Sorenson, McCowan or Gineitis.
Five of our midfielders almost always play in the 90 minutes.
The chance of Gineitis not taking part would be so remote that it could be completely discounted
Okay the board are a bunch of clueless dickheads and MON is so disrespectful to the Celtic supporters
Give us some leadership here!!
Is this NAP still a thing?
Do we still refuse to buy merchandise?
Do we boycott the Europa League games?
Do we stock up the tennis balls?
Do we inform the club we want our season ticket subscription cancelled with effect from the end of this season?
We need to know!!
Obviously you have went on the Collectives twitter and asked the question.
What was their reply?
The collective have done fuck all for months. They not even throwing tennis balls about anymore.
Plenty of new shirts wandering about Scotland for sure. Heard fuck all about NAP for ages….sorry haven’t been checking on Elon Musks X for a while
Twitter? Ffs get fucking with it!
Good to see Chris back putting everyone right in his own inimitable fashion. Have to agree with him on Gineitis, why would he not get into the team? This is a player the manager apparently wanted for the last few months. He should have been signed in time for the Champions League qualifier.
We want to know about signings so just an update to the paying customers would be good .Oneil brilliant for winning the league last season and 20 yrs ago but now he is getting annoying deflecting by joking or spewing the party line . After last weeks result I think we are entitled to an answer
I’ll hold my judgement of the calibre of our latest signings until I see them in the heat of battle, as far as MON’s attitude goes, he’s a man who publicly goes for diplomacy, but privately lets those behind the scenes know his true thoughts. He is trying to dampen down any fires still smouldering from last season, and as a guy with his experience, he knows that large scale discord of any kind within the club, especially coming from the support on match days, does have an adverse affect on the players. You just have to look at the performances in games where the rubberballs and tangerine fiascos took place last season.
Most fans are reasonably happy with the signings, although maybe not with the timing of them, or the stupid theatrics surrounding young Van Den Berg’s signing.
Let the Post Window season now begin and see where it takes us.
Fair comment micmac and MON is a good man, no doubt about that….one thing though. I think Martin needs to move upstairs. He was great quarter of a century ago and obviously still good enough to get us past the domestic shambles we come up against.
But against LASK who are put together for pennies we got booted right out of the fucking park.
Their record signing cost less than we sold Johnny Kenny for…and most fans considered him to be a diddy who wasn’t good enough to wear the shirt.
How the fuck does that compute?
Read on another site today that there is word that MON is very unhappy about the transfer window, if there is any accuracy in that, his interview last night was maybe because he doesn’t give a shit anymore.
He didn’t push for the job, he helped out this board in a time of need and they have just shafted him in the same manner as they did to Brendan. MON hasn’t jacked yet like Brendan did, so it’s a we bit unfair to criticise him so much. Is MON perfect, no he’s not but the chance of getting anyone better with this boards reputation is slim.
Maybe we could sell Hogh and buy the LASK manager and his entire fucking squad?
Brendan is away taking the filthy lucre blood money in Saudi. Who gives a fuck about him anymore?…Kairat Almaty ffs
The guy wearing the new Celtic top says he’ll let me know soon ?