Ange, Martin and Brendan. Breaking new ground and good endings

If you were around 20 years ago, you lived through an era when every time a manager in the English topflight came under pressure, we had to endure speculation Martin O’Neill would leave us to move back south.  We even had the Tory party leader urge Liverpool to appoint Martin!

These days., Ange Postecoglou’s name is sure to appear on betting lists whenever a vacancy appears.  The issue is also put into the public domain on occasions like yesterday, when Ange is back home in Australia and was asked about moving to England.

Ange responded correctly, “Celtic play in front of 60,000 people, we have the opportunity to win trophies and we’re in the Champions League. It’s a massive football club.”  I expect it would take an incredible offer to move him now (maybe something like Liverpool), specifically because he thinks – he thinks, not I think – he has only scratched the surface of what he could achieve at Celtic.

There is a glass ceiling here.  We are never going to win the Champions League without huge environment change.  It is possible, however, to go deeper into the tournament that we have gone before in its current guise.

Martin’s name will forever be sacred around these parts.  While Wim Jansen won the league for Celtic two years before he arrived, it was Martin who truly put us back on top.  Since then, we have never been the underdogs we were even at the start of this first season.  Five years into the job, Martin’s race was run at Celtic in every respect and he left for personal reasons, without an enticement from elsewhere.

There are two requirements necessary to achieve enduring legendary status: break new ground and when you leave, do so on good terms.  Four years ago, Brendan Rodgers had us eating out of his hand, but his abrupt departure means he would not be considered appropriate to make the Paradise Windfall Draw these days.

If Ange remains as successful as he is, someone will eventually put a £10m/yr offer in front of him and that will be the end of this era.  He has work to do to justify anything like that, as he said on Australian TV yesterday, “I keep saying to [the players]if they do what they do well then all this other stuff takes care of itself, whatever their ambitions or my ambitions may be.”  Within a couple of years, I believe Ange can do something very special here.

Martin is at Dalziel Park Hotel, Motherwell, this Saturday, 24 September, for a brunch, a Q&A and photos.  Tickets are £50 and available from Alan, 07970 716422.  Kick off 11:45am.