Martin O’Neill returns to Celtic as interim manager alongside Shaun Maloney

They have a full squad to pick from and remains to be seen how their new manager changes things up. With our injuries and attacking options I expect to lose tomorrow unfortunately. I think Martin O'Neill has brought a bit of positivity to the place after the * show of the last week but I'm not expecting it to last. Hopefully I'm majorly wrong.

 

Exactly, but hopefully things go well for them because, knowing our board, the manager search could run for quite a while.

 

Plus, it’s more than likely Maloney who’s making all the big calls.

 

To be honest, I think that would say more about Maloney than MON.

 

Fair enough. Thought we looked a lot more effective midweek but it was only one game. If we can play similar though I think we have a real chance.

Guess we will find out soon?

 

If we had Rodgers in charge, I'd be in the glass half empty side.

Wi MON, I'm in the glass half full side. Just that change up away from the horse shoe gash, the directness and unpredictability gives me hope.

 

Fingers crossed! Huns are definitely weaker to a direct style of play so it may work in our favour. Just a lack of firepower in our team that gives me the fear. I'll take any sort of win tomorrow.

 

The thing that fills me with optimism is that the huns would have been well versed to set up against a Rodgers team. There scouts would have informed the new hun manager on this.

But now we have MON, they genuinely have no idea how we set up or how he wants us playing.

Its a cup semi final, they have a 30 something year old manager with less than 50 games in pro football.

We have a man who has been in football longer than the hun manager has been alive ffs. Been there, seen it, trained under the great Brian clough and did no too bad as a manager himself may I add. Has the same aura as a shankly, Busby Stein. The players will sense this vibe and understand very sharply that failure or anything less than 100% is not acceptable at our club.

No issues at all. We will run over the top of these *.

 

I feel the exact same.

 

I'd be very surprised if anyone doesn't feel that way, regardless of how they view Rodgers tenures.

 

If Hatate starts tomorrow, I think we lose.

We might lose anyway, but its definite as far as I am concerned if Hatate starts.

 

Don't think MON rates Hatate.

 

I don't think Martin rates Hatate either, but we will find out tomorrow for sure.
I still think Rangers are favourites, because we have key players out and I don't fancy Schemeichel in goal.
Rohl has them more compact and more tactically disciplined.
They will be tough to break down. And that Danilo has hit a bit of form.
See what happens.

 

When Martin O’Neill gathered his Celtic players for the first time this week, he didn’t need to overcomplicate things. No grand tactics lecture. No sentimental speeches about returning to the club two decades on.


“I said to them that they had disturbed my coffee in London. And why should I be coming all this way up here to tell them what they should already know? That they are actually very, very talented players,” he explained.

O’Neill’s pre-match team talks have taken on legendary status in the time since his first spell, primarily thanks to countless retrospective interviews from his former players. John Hartson once described them as 'magical' while Johan Mjallby reckons his former boss could have become a world leader. But even now, the interim Celtic boss insists you can never quite know if your words hit home.

“I think that might be stretching it,” he said. “I would always take the credit for it, but I wouldn’t be totally sure about that.”

The modern Celtic dressing room is more multilingual than the one he inherited in 2000. “When I had team talks in the early days at Celtic, even the Swedish players could speak English. Lubo Moravcik might have found it a bit difficult, but outside of that, they could understand it. Here now, there might be one or two who struggle. For instance, the little Uruguayan fella [Marcelo Saracchi] can’t speak a word of English, or very little English, but he’s a nice kid. And he’s dogged, isn’t he?

“I sat at the table with him there and Jota was in, and he can speak a few languages, so he was doing a bit of interpreting. Wee Jota said to me, ‘do you know Gaffer, when you first met the players and had that little talk, and asked if everybody understood, he nodded his head, but he didn’t get it!’”




In O’Neill’s world, nothing is abstract - football always comes back to people. The game may have evolved tactically since his first spell, but he still believes the difference between winning and losing often comes down to mentality. His Celtic teams always thrived on strong personalities, and that is what he now wants to awaken again. However, he reinforced that this won't come by default.

“You would have to instil that in them. I think outside Callum McGregor and the goalkeeper, you wouldn't have that many really boisterous characters. But my dressing room with the likes of Neil Lennon and all that group... outside a couple of fights with Bobo Balde and Stiliyan Petrov when he had him by the neck, they were good, they were terrific.”

For all his humour, O’Neill hasn’t lost that competitive glint and his immediate task has been simple: restore Celtic’s confidence. A 4-0 victory on Wednesday night has helped.

“Just winning the game against Falkirk was the most important thing, and just getting back to that,” he said. “Every side that has won has had dips, and they’ve had dips during the course of the season, you just have to try and come out of it.

“I’m not saying all of them in the dressing room are winners, they’re not. There’s a group of young lads in the side. But they have a winning captain, James Forrest has been here a long time as well, so they should know how to win. It’s just a matter of reinforcing that.”

Sunday’s semi-final against Rangers presents another opportunity to take a step forward.

“That would give you an enormous lift, it would give the whole dressing room an enormous lift,” he said. “Of course, Rangers will think exactly the same too in the state of their season, but for us, that would be terrific.”

There will be late selection calls on Kieran Tierney, Marcelo Saracchi and Daizen Maeda for the encounter, all of whom have dealt with fitness issues this week. On Celtic's Japanese forward, who had 25 minutes off the bench against Falkirk after a hamstring complaint, the hint from O'Neill is that he will be involved from the start if it's at all possible.

“Daizen Maeda is a big player for us,” he said. “Especially at this minute considering some of the players that are out. He is absolutely the talisman, there is no question about it. He’s a big player for us and he’s been a really good player as I’ve watched the games from afar.”

O’Neill is the first to admit he wasn’t expecting to be back at all.

“On Tuesday I had a lunch in London with myself and Barry Hearn as the guests,” he recalled. “It had gone quite well before, so we had lunch prepared, so to tell them we can't come was disappointing.”

Would he have been watching Celtic v Rangers anyway? “Oh, absolutely. I would have been tuned in to watching this game, in the house.”

“It would be ridiculous for me to say that I got as passionate about it as I was as a manager, but I'd take more than a passing interest in it. The Celtic-Rangers game I would seldom miss.”

Now, he’ll be living it again at Hampden Park, no less, a venue that holds decades of memories.

“I've had good moments at Hampden and I've had bad moments,” he said. “In fact, Rangers beat us there one day in the Scottish Cup Final, Peter Lovenkrands scored. I’ve tried to find out where he’s living for a number of years so I can shout ‘boo’ at him.”

O’Neill’s return has been warmly received by supporters and former colleagues alike. “Lenny dropped me a wee message and Gordon too,” he said. “Ange is probably hanging about in Australia at the minute, I don’t know, but I’m sure it won’t be Celtic he’ll be talking about, he’ll be talking about Evangelos Maranakis! I would just say to him, ‘I got a longer stretch than you, mate!’”

He hasn’t spoken to Rodgers since the handover. “I can understand Brendan’s thoughts at this minute might be miles away, and I’m not even sure that Brendan and I have got each other’s numbers,” he admitted. “I met him at a Celtic function last time, and for one of the Champions League games last season I came up and did a little interview with him for TNT. That was actually the first time I’ve ever been to Lennoxtown.

“I came up here when Celtic were just thinking about it, and it was just a set of fields and the castle. That was it. The next time I came up this had all happened.”

That detail says plenty about how much has changed - the club, the training ground, even the football world itself. But the sight of O’Neill back on the touchline this week, gesturing, urging, demanding, offered Celtic supporters a reminder that some things don’t fade with time.

For him, this weekend is another chance to draw on those instincts. To lift a team that has looked unsure of itself and to remind a club of its identity.

The thrust of Sunday's dressing room address then? As simple as ever.

“My message would be one, remember what you are representing for a start, and two, be up to the task. And this is a big task. But just be up to it.”

 

Said already but he’s not lost his sense of humour at all


Some brilliant wee bits from him

 

All feels surreal as *. MON managing a game against them in 2025, absolutely mental.

First game against them I’m buzzing for in about 2 years. BR sucked the life out of enjoying Celtic for me.

 

Huge improvement, but please stay away from the showers, Martin.

 

I have seen enough. Give him the * gig

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I need a good picture of him in that tracksuit for my phone wallpaper.