Martin O’Neill’s “old geezer” act has become a problem. He needs to ditch it.

In politics and in public relations, there is only one thing worse than having created a negative public perception, and that is feeding a negative public perception.

It is the stupidest act in all of public-facing activity, and yet it is a mistake that people make over and over again, for reasons passing understanding. But maybe it has some relationship to the frog and the scorpion story I mentioned earlier. Some people have a self-destructive streak. Others simply can’t read the room.

I don’t think Martin O’Neill is self-destructive, and I don’t think he can’t read a room. But I guess it all depends on the room.

When Martin O’Neill came back to rescue us from the Rodgers resignation, another self-inflicted wound from the people running things in our boardroom, I am choosing to believe that he was genuinely being disarming when he made those constant references to his age.

How he had to be shaken out of an easy chair and convinced to put himself on the line. How he didn’t see it being more than a short-term appointment.

Well, when you’ve heard those jokes a hundred times, they aren’t quite as funny. They start to become a little bit grating. You start to wish he would answer direct questions instead of going off on a tangent. You start to wonder if he’s really being disarming or disingenuous.

Nobody who knows O’Neill, and who knows O’Neill’s mind, was taken in by any of it. O’Neill uses his age to set traps for people, and it works. Or it did work, like any magician’s trick works until you can see the mechanics of it for yourself.

On a few occasions, he’s put aside the mask and brought out his claws, and that’s been genuinely funny to watch as people come within range of those claws and regret doing so.

If I were him, that’s the public face I would present from now on.

I wouldn’t bother with the old-man act anymore, because it’s now become a millstone around his neck. Every time he does it now, it draws people’s attention to the two things you don’t want to draw their attention to.

First, your relative fragility and mortality. Football managers should not look fragile and mortal. You’re the leader of a team, and you should project toughness and strength. Whenever he draws attention to it, people are reminded that we really do have an old guy running the football department.

Second, when you highlight how old you are, you make people think about antiquated thinking. About a lifetime of ideas that have taken root and whether you are now too set in your ways to change them. Those are precisely the doubts you should be trying to dispel.

You can sort of get away with those things when things are going well. But the moment things get rocky, you start to project a completely different image. You go from being a guy playing a part to a guy people wonder about in much different terms.

People are looking at O’Neill now and asking: is this guy past his best? Can he still do it at this level? And when you see the team making obvious mistakes that even Derek McInnes can identify, it becomes less and less clear that you do know what you’re doing and that you can make changes.

See, every time O’Neill talks about all our yesterdays and his first time at the club, he’s reminding us that it was over 20 years ago and that the game has moved on in quantum leaps since then. Every time he talks about the things we used to be able to do, he is advertising that he no longer thinks we can do those things, or that we should try to do those things. As if this club aged along with him.

What I’m saying is that back when he could still use it as a trap, it was a handy trick to pull. But the trick itself is getting old. It’s time to put it in the retirement home, because now fans are using words like “past it”, “out of touch” and “stuck in the past”.

The very last thing you want to do when people are starting to form that opinion of you is give them more ammunition by constantly referencing how old you are, how much you’ve seen and talking about times gone by. Because the only person you’re making a trap for then is yourself. The only person who’s going to fall into that trap is you.

And if people believe you don’t have it anymore, they’re going to start looking around you. At the people you brought in and the responsibilities you’ve given them. And that’s going to make it even more damning.

At the end of last season, Martin O’Neill was a titan of Celtic history, and that’s how a lot of us wanted to remember him. As a kick-ass conqueror. As our Cincinnatus, the man the Republic called out of retirement, who came, rendered service and went back to the farm.

But as I said in one of the pieces I wrote about that subject, in the traditional account, Cincinnatus came out of retirement twice.

The first time was to save the Republic, and that’s what he’s remembered for. The second was to confront an alleged threat to the established order at home. To my mind, that is the more uncomfortable comparison: the great man called back to serve the interests of those at the top, his standing placed at their disposal.

People remember that second episode less, but that was a different time and place. When people talk about the appointment of O’Neill as boss for this season being lazy and lacking ambition, it’s not a criticism of the man. It’s a criticism of the men who hired him so they could hide behind him.

That is where the comparison with those senators comes in. The interests of the people calling him back takes precedence over the reputation of the man answering the call. They put their own interests first, and they gamble with his legacy.

As I said earlier, no one made Martin O’Neill accept these conditions. No one but Martin O’Neill. And I didn’t see any advantage for him in returning to this club for another campaign. I didn’t see what positive could come from it, because what more was there to do after making yourself a hero and leaving that as the abiding memory everyone had?

But that memory now has to contend with that night in Austria. It has to contend with yesterday and God knows what else is in front of us. If Martin had to leave the role tomorrow, this is how his ending would be written: as a man out of his time, as a man who stayed too long. As an easy option. As a lazy appointment.

He still has time to turn it around.

But he’s not going to do it by referring to how tired he is or how he cannot wait for that soft seat in the coffee shop back home in London. Like a guy who sounds overwhelmed by his position, exhausted by its demands and eager to get it over with.

Even if he’s joking, what possible good can joking about that do?

Remember, perception is dangerous because it does not have to reflect what is real. It’s about what people believe is real.

Once a negative perception exists, the last thing you do is give it fuel to grow.

So, for God’s sake, man, stop with the kidding around and start to get a grip.

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