GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - SEPTEMBER 17: Celtic manager Martin O'Neill during a UEFA Europa League 2026/27 League Phase MD1 match between Celtic and Ferencvaros at Celtic Park, on September 17, 2026, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ross MacDonald/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Yesterday, at his press conference, Martin O’Neill said that he doesn’t care what people are saying because he doesn’t read it. He’s not on social media and he does not care what anyone on it thinks.
And that’s fair enough.
If he doesn’t want to know what supporters of this club are thinking, that’s perfectly fine. In his job, I would want to know, but if he believes there’s some major level of support for where he is at the moment, and where this club is at the moment, then he is grotesquely mistaken. But ignorance is bliss, I guess, and he would prefer not to know this stuff.
But it seems like only a couple of days ago — in fact, it was last week — that I wrote that his age is becoming a problem. And it’s not that his age is becoming a problem in and of itself. It’s that he keeps drawing people’s attention to his age.
And he’s still doing it.
He did it again yesterday, in the most ludicrous possible fashion, and if he doesn’t read this stuff, I suggest that someone who does taps him on the shoulder and tells him that it’s becoming a thing he’s already lost control over.
I don’t know why he brought it up at all.
I don’t know why he keeps bringing it up.
There are a lot of us who’ve complained about his tactics. There are a lot of us who’ve complained about whatever style of play this is supposed to be. There are a lot of us who’ve complained about the organisation of this team, whatever the organisation of this team is supposed to be.
But not a single one of us, as far as I am aware, has written that he’s too old to do the job.
The only person who keeps mentioning Martin O’Neill’s age is Martin O’Neill.
And if he wants people to stop talking about it, he should be the one to set the example.
There are people who can’t stop listening to Donald Trump. There’s some kind of sick fascination with his rambling, shambling, erratic, self-aggrandising way of speaking that some people find dreadfully funny and some people find darkly fascinating.
I don’t find it to be either of those things.
I don’t find it in the least bit amusing, and I don’t find it to be a source of interest for me, even in the anthropological sense. I can’t listen to him. I don’t know how people around him can tolerate the selfishness and the egomania. I can’t listen to it for longer than a minute before my brain mentally disengages and I have to switch it off.
Martin O’Neill now makes me feel like that.
The jokes are stale. The evasions are boring. I cannot remember the last time he answered a direct question with a direct answer.
I’m sure that at some point this stuff was amusing to journalists who went to his pressers. But I’m betting that they are equally bored by it now.
And I’m sure that Connie McLaughlin, for all she’s played it down, is still a little pissed off at the way she got treated on Thursday night before the game.
I don’t understand what he was doing there at all. If you’re getting leaned on, if you’re getting a hard time undeservedly, if the media is looking for things to blame you for and accuse you of, that’s one thing. But she wasn’t doing that.
She was merely asking a question about his team selection.
A perfectly reasonable question.
And the contemptuous way he answered it was ridiculous.
He’s done that before, and recently, and I’m sorry that he doesn’t like scrutiny. I’m sorry that he doesn’t like being under pressure. This is a high-pressure job.
It goes with the territory. He’s telling his players that they have to understand the atmosphere they’re in now. Well, he should understand it better than anybody.
He was going into that game on Thursday night needing all the goodwill he could get and, instead of answering questions honestly and putting some goodwill in the bank, he went out of his way to antagonise the broadcast journalist who he knew was going to be interviewing him again right after the game was done.
If that makes any sense in any world, please explain it to me.
It’s hard to know at the moment what’s going on with him, but all the tales of yesterday do is remind us that he’s from another age of football. All the references to his health do it. They remind us that he is frail. He projects weakness. He talks like a man who’s pondering his mortality a little too much, and I just wish he would stop.
It is unbearable listening to him at the moment. Even when he isn’t talking about days gone by and how stiff his joints feel, he sounds more and more like someone who belongs in another age. And some of the things that he and his coaching staff have said are really coming back to haunt them in a big way.
Such as when he said he was satisfied with the transfer window. Such as when the coaching staff made it clear that they didn’t think we needed any cover at centre-back. Then there were his comments about Liam Scales and how the club couldn’t live without arguably its weakest central defender.
I don’t understand what we’re watching right now. I don’t understand what we’re seeing, or what he thinks he’s seeing. But I need him to stop with the jokes. Stop with the dissembling. Stop with the refusal to answer basic questions.
But more than all of that, I need him to stop talking about his age.
Because now all it’s doing is making matters worse.
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I stopped reading when I got to the bit about you said if he wants people to stop talking about it, he needs to stop himself, having already stated that as far as you were aware, nobody else has mentioned it.
Your article on Liam Scales was good which made me start reading this, but God almighty, what nonsense.
Wnat the fuck are you on about?
HE BROUGHT IT UP. HE SAID PEOPLE WERE MENTIONING IT.
NO-ONE MENTIONS IT EXCEPT HIM.
WHAT’S HARD TO UNDERSTAND HERE?
You really are one angry prick – you cannot take anyone disagreeing with you!!!
Yes, he mentioned it, but you said he’s the only one talking about it then said about everyone talking about it – so you contradicted yourself!!!!!
Some of your stuff has a bit bit of merit, but you don’t half spout some unadulterated bollocks – so fuck off!
Another piece of sheer waffle, the mega critic has now turned on MON. You don’t take into account that he did the club a favour after being asked by the horrendous board to help them out in a crisis. They then shaft him completely in the transfer window the same way as they did to your “elite” Rodgers. He didn’t need to take the job, but he doesn’t need to be hammered for helping when asked. I hope the man resigns now after seeing the criticism he is getting. Don’t expect a new exciting manager, the board’s reputation is known throughout Europe now. Maloney would be my guess. Your views display a disrespectful immaturity.
I’ve been saying it for a while now, Dan. Maloney will be the next Celtic manager. God, how I hope I’m wrong.
Maloney will not be the next manager.
If this was his audition he’s blown it. Completely.
No-one forces you to read this stuff.
And no, he didn’t “do us a favour.” As I understand it, he got paid a salary.
So he took on a job. He did it brilliantly. He is not doing it brilliantly now.
If he resigns now, I would be very relieved. For him and us both.
I generally don’t read them, mostly just the comments. However, your pieces are usually critical analysis of someone, but it seems people doing the same to you is something you cannot tolerate, as I said earlier, immaturity
Exactly – prepare for him to throw his toys out of the pram because you dare question what he says!!!
Your feelings on one of the overseers of the Palestinian genocide are only those of any decent human being.
I know people who are saying it’s curtains for MON if he doesn’t win tomorrow and I personally wouldn’t go that far, but I would say the clock would then start ticking until he turns this around, if he can.
The 2 weeks off could give him the time to rectify all the glaring errors in our .. I was going to say style but so far we don’t have one, so perhaps he could create one before we lose anymore games and we see a legend under serious pressure.
No one wants that, but Celtic’s continued success is bigger than any one person, as he would be the first to acknowledge.
MON has never spent much time on the training pitch, relying on his coaches to get the team ready. It seems clear to me that the coaching staff are failing to put together a team and approach based on the squad available to them.
Regardless of what happens tomorrow, we need to bring a top line coach to join and lead the coaching team – if SM or MF don’t like it, then tough – and have us properly prepared.
We have the strongest squad in the SPFL and should have enough to see us through. We should also have two important players back after the international break (Johnston and Jota). But we need to be better coached and prepared and have a lot of work to do on the training ground over the international break.