Three letters.
WFM.
Win football matches.
If you’ve listened to Martin O’Neill throughout his career, particularly during his years as a pundit, you’ll know how much he comes back to that fundamental point.
Football can become complicated.
We talk about philosophies. Systems. Identities. Patterns of play. Inverted full-backs. High presses. Low blocks. Expected goals (XG).
Martin has always managed to cut through most of that noise with the hardest philosophy of them all.
Win football matches.
Managers who do that tend to keep their jobs.
Managers who don’t eventually lose them.
That’s the business.
And that’s why, as painful as it is for me to write this about one of my favourite Celtic managers of all time, I think Martin O’Neill has to leave Celtic this week.
Not because I’ve suddenly forgotten what he did last season.
Quite the opposite.
What Martin achieved was remarkable.
He inherited chaos, steadied Celtic and eventually delivered a league title in circumstances which looked increasingly unlikely. Celtic finished last season with seven consecutive Premiership victories and chased Hearts down when the title appeared to be disappearing.
He gave us belief and pride back.
Most importantly, Martin did what Martin does – he won football matches.
But football doesn’t allow you to survive forever on what happened last season.
And judged by O’Neill’s own favourite measurement, something has gone badly wrong.
One Win From The Five That Really Mattered.
Look at Celtic’s five biggest tests of this season.
LASK at home.
LASK away.
Rangers at Ibrox in the Premier Sports Cup.
Ferencváros at Celtic Park.
Rangers at Celtic Park in the Premiership.
Five matches.
One win. Four defeats.
That isn’t a tiny sample of unfortunate results against ordinary opposition.
Those were the moments when Celtic were asked serious questions.
And four times out of five, we’ve failed to answer them.
The consequences have been enormous.
Celtic surrendered a commanding European position against LASK and crashed out of the Champions League.
We went to Ibrox and were beaten 3-0, exiting the Premier Sports Cup.
Ferencváros then arrived at Celtic Park and won 3-1 in our opening Europa League game.
Then came Sunday.
Rangers again.
Celtic Park.
A chance to respond to everything that had happened during a horrendous week.
We lost again.
Only 1-0 this time.
Yet bizarrely, I thought Rangers looked more comfortable and more in control of Celtic yesterday than even the week before when the sides met.
They didn’t need to blow us away.
They looked organised, they knew what they were doing.
Celtic looked like a team searching desperately for one.
The result leaves Celtic only two points ahead of Rangers in the Premiership.
Three consecutive defeats.
Two competitions already seriously damaged or gone.
And one victory from our five biggest tests.
WFM.
By Martin’s own mantra, those numbers matter.
Sunday Removed One Of The Remaining Alibis.
There’s been an uncomfortable debate surrounding Celtic for weeks.
Whose team were we actually watching?
How much of the football was Martin O’Neill?
How much was the coaching staff?
Who decided Celtic should play out from goal kicks in ways that appeared completely alien to the football Martin has traditionally believed in?
Who determined the shape or controlled the tactical direction?
I’ve asked those questions myself.
Perhaps, in some ways, they provided Martin with an alibi.
If this wasn’t truly an O’Neill team, maybe the solution was simple.
Take control.
Put your stamp on it.
Play your football.
Sunday looked to me like Martin finally did exactly that.
Celtic changed.
The starting XI and the shape changed.
There appeared initially to be something resembling a back three, with Cameron Carter-Vickers, Auston Trusty and Liam Scales all starting.
Kieran Tierney and Colby Donovan were both included. Mika Baur played alongside Callum McGregor, with Luke McCowan selected ahead of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Benjamin Nygren was used in a deeper role than we’ve generally seen from him.
It looked like an attempt to make Celtic more solid.
Perhaps there was an element of containment after what Rangers had done to us at Ibrox.
Whatever the intention, it didn’t work.
And that matters.
Because if the argument earlier in the season was that Martin’s coaches were influencing a style he wasn’t entirely comfortable with, Sunday looked far more recognisably like the manager taking control.
That should have happened weeks ago.
If Martin O’Neill doesn’t believe a centre-half should be taking a goal kick and knocking it backwards to his goalkeeper, don’t do it.
He’s the manager and paid to make those decisions.
He’s paid to tell his coaching staff the direction he wants the team travelling in, not reluctantly preside over something he doesn’t believe gives Celtic the best opportunity of winning.
So even if we accept that explanation for some of the earlier performances, it raises another question.
Why wait until now?
Changing Everything And Fixing Nothing.
The Ferencváros game was particularly alarming because Celtic seemed to be changing shape and approach throughout the evening.
Then, three days later, we changed again.
Different ideas.
Same outcome.
Defeat.
Eventually you reach the point where the problem isn’t that the manager has run out of ideas.
Perhaps the ideas he has simply aren’t working anymore.
That’s a much harder thing to admit.
Especially when you’re talking about Martin O’Neill.
I don’t want to spend an article hammering the man.
I won’t do it.
His place in Celtic history is secure as far as I’m concerned.
But respect for Martin doesn’t mean pretending Luke McCowan ahead of Oxlade-Chamberlain was the right call.
It doesn’t mean pretending Sunday’s shape and the tinkering throughout worked.
And it certainly doesn’t mean ignoring four defeats from five major tests.
Managers have to get a tune from their players.
Martin did that spectacularly last season.
Right now, he’s not.
Maybe It Isn’t About Running Out Of Ideas
There is a difference between saying somebody has no ideas and saying their ideas aren’t working.
I think that’s where Celtic are.
O’Neill has tried things.
Nobody can accuse him of sitting doing absolutely nothing while the season begins to unravel.
But look at Thursday and Sunday.
Changes were made during and in between the two games.
None of it has solved the fundamental problem.
Celtic aren’t functioning as a coherent football team.
That’s when a manager reaches the danger zone.
When players stop responding, tactical changes stop producing improvement and confidence starts draining from the group, sometimes the only remaining lever a football club can pull is changing the person in charge.
Martin O’Neill because of this hasn’t become a bad manager.
It doesn’t erase league titles, cups or Champions League nights.
Football can be brutal enough to allow two things to be true simultaneously.
Martin O’Neill can be one of Celtic’s greatest modern managers and it can still be time for Martin O’Neill to leave Celtic.
Both are now true.
Celtic Still Have Time.
This is why I believe it needs to happen now.
The season isn’t gone.
Far from it.
Celtic are still top of the Premiership.
We’re two points ahead of Rangers.
There’s an enormous amount of football still to play.
European football can still be salvaged.
There is still plenty worth fighting for.
That’s precisely why Celtic cannot wait until the situation becomes irreversible.
Don’t wait until we’re six points behind.
Don’t wait until we’re out of Europe.
We can’t afford to delay the call.
Martin himself has now said he’ll reflect.
He said after Sunday’s defeat that he would consider whether he remains capable of turning this around.
I think the evidence from the last few weeks has answered the question.
Sadly, I don’t think he can.
And Then Comes The Part That Terrifies Me.
Here’s the problem.
Saying Martin O’Neill should leave is considerably easier than trusting Celtic to replace him.
And I have absolutely no confidence in the people above the manager getting the next decision right.
That’s an article in itself.
Because Celtic don’t simply need another manager.
They need a proper football structure capable of identifying one.
A recruitment network.
Succession planning.
People capable of looking beyond the same familiar contacts and names that somebody around the boardroom already knows.
Changing Martin O’Neill without addressing any of that simply changes the face standing in the technical area.
It doesn’t fix Celtic.
And after everything we’ve learned about this club’s decision-making, supporters should be extremely wary about what comes next.
But fear of Celtic making the wrong next appointment cannot become an argument for retaining a management team when the evidence on the pitch says change is required.
You can’t keep something that isn’t working because you’re frightened the people responsible for replacing it might make an even bigger mess.
Celtic have to get both decisions right.
The first one, painfully, is accepting this has reached its conclusion.
The second is considerably more difficult.
Let Martin Leave With Our Gratitude.
I desperately wanted this to work.
Martin O’Neill coming back decades after his first spell, winning another league title and riding off into the sunset would have been almost too perfect.
Perhaps that’s how it should have ended.
Instead we’ve reached this uncomfortable point where every additional defeat threatens to change the conversation around somebody whose Celtic legacy deserves much better.
I don’t want supporters remembering Martin O’Neill through the prism of whatever might happen over the next six months.
Last season was extraordinary.
Nothing happening now changes it.
But neither can last season protect the manager indefinitely from what’s happening this season.
Martin’s philosophy has always been beautifully uncomplicated.
Win football matches.
When Celtic desperately needed him last season, that’s exactly what he did.
Right now, in the matches that are defining this season, Celtic aren’t doing it.
There is enough time to save this season.
That’s why Celtic have to act while there still is.
It pains me to say it.
But for Celtic’s sake — and perhaps for the sake of Martin O’Neill’s legacy too — this week should be the end.
Our footballing Dept that decides on managers is in DDs head.
Surely MON has told them he’s finished already and they are arranging another Irish guy (yeah probably, unfortunately) as we speak.
They just haven’t released it yet until they dot all their T’s and play the game for a few days.
Bhoycie agree with that whole article, Martin should walk away with pride, as you say what comes next is the big question.
Steve Clarke anyone,,,,
would rather have no one at all
Not many managers get to go out as Champions and whilst top of the league. Martin’s league record this season averages almost 2.6 points per game (higher than his career average with us of 2.5) – he has won us plenty of football matches.
Everyone can see that he has been let down dreadfully by the recruitment team and the board, particularly with the glaring failure to replace Engels.
For Martin’s sake he should walk away – he is owed a huge amount of gratitude from us and an even greater apology from DD and the board for their failings in running a football club that is focused on football.
I do worry about what is next for us – is our board so obtuse that they can’t see the underperformance of so many aspects of our club?
Whoever is appointed as manager if Martin walks needs to be followed by a credible Director of Football with the mandate to transform the football department.
Bhoycie if the structure of the club is fundamentally wrong which you alluded to then change is only passing the problems onto the next manager. In essence nothing will have changed we’d just be hamstringing the new guy as well, unless we have a root and branch clear out of the deadwood and build the football club to run as professionally as it should do already then I’m afraid appointing a new manager is a waste of time. I think Martin should walk for the shabby way he’s been treated by a board of negligent, incompetent bastards. They baulked at bringing back the assistants he wanted which set the coaching side back three weeks while they argued over wages, that’s cut the preseason training to pieces. Then the took over a month of the transfer window to bring in our first signing but as usual the signings that came in should been in on the opening day or first week of training, a club of our stature should have all this in place for months before the window opens. The constant lowballing for selling clubs players and the way we deal with transfers in general is embarrassing and until the structure of the club is overhauled then things will get so much worse before they get better. How do we force those changes its about starving the club of money which I know would hurt the team for a while but in the long term it would force this board to change things. I’d go the whole hog and ask the support to stop attending games or put any money into the club’s coffers be it through stopping buying merchandise, Celtic pools, eating at the restaurants or going on tours of the stadium. I understand that those are drastic measures but if we really want change giving those bastards our money is giving the board a mandate to carry on in this slapdash and negligent way and I know a lot of our support wouldn’t want to harm the team but it’s already being harmed by inept arseholes whose only interest is hoarding money to the detriment of the product on the park.