MARTIN O’NEILL doesn’t need to be reminded that second is nowhere as far as Celtic are concerned.
The runners-up place is for also-rans and that is not an acceptable or comfortable position for the club who have illuminated and dominated the domestic scene while lifting thirteen of the past 14 Premiership crowns.
There is the old adage that goes along the lines of: Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.
It’s in Celtic’s DNA to embrace winning, that’s the mentality that comes with the green and white shirt and the badge.
The Parkhead club do not want to run with the pack, all too easily accepting the tag of serial losers. We’ll leave that to others.
O’Neill has never once shirked the awesome and relentless responsibility that comes with being Celtic manager, whether full-time or interim.
WELCOME TO PARADISE…Martin O’Neill addresses the Celtic fans on his first day as Celtic manager on June 1 2000.
Back on June 1 2000, in an unseasonal stormy, wet day in the east end of Glasgow, the Irishman stood at the dais at Celtic Park and spoke to the club’s fans for the first time after quitting Leicester City to answer his first SOS from Dermot Desmond in the fall-out of the failed Kenny Dalglish-John Barnes experiment.
Four months earlier, Inverness Caley Thistle had arrived at Parkhead as no-hopers to make up the numbers in a Scottish Cup-tie and left with a 3-1 victory. The reverberations of a seismic reverse shook rookie boss Barnes out of the manager’s chair and Dalglish saw the team through to the finishing line.
As the downpour continued, O’Neill addressed his new admirers, fans desperate for success, and raised his left hand to acknowledge their welcome on a damp day in the city.
Unfalteringly, he said: “First of all, thank you very much for waiting in the rain. I really appreciate it.”
O’Neill paused, waved again and continued: “It’s an absolute honour for me to be the manager here, I’m telling you that now. It’s an absolute honour.”
He stepped back as the rapturous applause from the drenched supporters gathered momentum.
The new team chief signed off: “I will do everything I possibly can to bring some success here to the football club. Thank you.”
And with that, the fourteenth full-time manager in Celtic history disappeared back into the labyrinth of his new football home where he would rule for five highly interesting – and mainly entertaining – years.
DUTCH OF CLASS…Martin O’Neill masterminds Celtic’s 3-1 Champions League win over Ajax in Amsterdam in August 2001.
He delivered a treble in his debut crusade, only the second Celtic boss to achieve the feat following the legendary Jock Stein who masterminded two silverware clean sweeps in the unforgettable 1966/67 season and followed up with another two years later.
O’Neill won three championships in his first five years and knows it should have been a 100 per cent sequence after losing out twice, once on goal difference and once by a solitary point.
Such are the fine margins that separate success and failure in the beautiful game.
If any of the trademark drive, determination and ambition that marked his earlier years at Celtic have deserted O’Neill, I haven’t detected their removal.
Nor have thousands of others.
There’s always a fair bit of hooha and hubris when a manager takes the job at a Glasgow club. Some are swept to power on a tidal wave of promises and ideals.
The new American owners at the club across the city invested something in the region of £40million in strengthening their squad this season.
In the summer, Russell Martin was introduced as the latest knight on a white charger who would overturn Celtic in the annual flexing of muscles in an effort to sell season tickets.
Droves of folk, thirsting for some sort of tangible success, bought into it. Months later, grim reality intruded upon dreams.
Martin, like Michael Beale and Philippe Clement before him, was led away gibbering into the night and will never be seen on these shores again.
HANDS UP IF YOU’RE A WINNER…Martin O’Neill acknowledges the fans after Celtic’s Scottish Cup knock-out success at Ibrox in March.
How long before Danny Rohl joins the exodus? He has seen the team go out of the two domestic Cups, fired into oblivion on both occasions by O’Neill’s Celtic.
The German and his players suffered again in the east end of the city on Sunday when their rivals rolled over them and, at the same time, obliterated any slender hope they may have harboured of a place in the top two that could have led to a landslide injection of £40million prize money in the Champions League.
The 49ers Enterprise Group will certainly think long and hard before okaying deals of such a magnitude this time around.
And, in the midst of all this mayhem in Govan, I’m still reading about Celtic being in a mess during a dysfunctional season which has bordered on bonkers and downright crazy with O’Neill being brought back twice after Brendan Rodgers and Wilfried Nancy took their leave.
Certainly, this has not been a vintage campaign and there will be an upheaval in resources on and off the field in the coming months, but we can deal with that situation once the final whistle shrills following the Scottish Cup showpiece against Neil Lennon’s Dunfermline at Hampden on Saturday May 23.
I also saw an article that was having a pop at Rohl – welcome to the real Glasgow, Danny Boy – for not being able to beat a 74-year-old dug-out opponent on four occasions.
The point was made that this particular OAP had been out of the game for six years before twice answering the call to bail out the team closest to his heart.
I would say such one-eyed observations denigrate the qualities of O’Neill.
THE FINAL RECKONING… Martin O’Neill waits for the referee to blow for full-time as Celtic overwhelm Rangers 3-1 at Parkhead on Sunday.
Are there such misguided folk out there who genuinely believe that someone’s abilities must be dimmed because of a date on a piece of paper?
I’m actually one month older than the Celtic manager and I’m not quite ready for the cardi, slippers and endless supply of Werthers Originals.
Maybe that’s around the corner – who knows? – but until such times as I absentmindedly forget to change out of my comfy stripey pyjamas on my way to pick up the papers and rolls every morning, I’ll continue to give it my best shot.
And that’s exactly what a resilient Martin O’Neill is providing at Celtic at the moment.
This “dysfunctional” club are a mere three wins away from a league and Cup double.
O’Neill is ready to go again in the penultimate Premiership encounter of an arduous crusade against Motherwell at Fir Park tomorrow night.
I can’t think of anyone else I would prefer in the Celtic dug-out in North Lanarkshire.
ALEX GORDON
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