Sometimes I look at the trajectory of Martin O’Neill’s career and wonder why he didn’t land another top job after leaving Celtic. He was the hottest property in football while he was in Glasgow, almost joined Leeds United (then a top side), while he was short odds for the Liverpool manager’s job at each annual crisis on Merseyside. At the time Ferguson at Manchester was talking about retiring, had he gone, Martin would have moved to Old Trafford.
In 2003 he met Mourinho in the Uefa Cup final. The Portuguese had some of the finest footballers of that generation at his disposal, unquestionably a better collection of players than Celtic, as their Champions League win 12 months later would prove, but Porto were pinned-in for long spells in the second half and required (literally) every trick in the book to prevail.
Despite losing, O’Neill did better with the resources available to him than Mourinho.
After a few meritocratic years at Aston Villa, where he spent more than the club could afford, but delivered a better team than they would otherwise expect, he left a day before the season kicked off, apparently unhappy Villa’s budget was being curtailed.
Without meaning offence to Sunderland, I was disappointed when he pitched up there. Martin O’Neill was surely a manager who should be competing for league titles and in the Champions League. His early form at Sunderland was transformational but it was a transformation built on fragile foundations.
Those founds’ have now disappeared, Sunderland sit two places above relegation. Their play is recognisable from how Celtic played a decade ago, and how Leicester played in the 90s. Opponents know what they get from Martin’s teams, so they know how to prepare for them.
Martin’s former players talk about his inspirational qualities not his tactical incision. It’s hard, if not impossible, for a manager of a major club to master all the attributes required in the job. The successful ones realise this and delegate.
One of the frustrations we had with Martin when he was at Celtic is his reluctance to indulge the scouts. We signed former Leicester players, players who featured on Match of the Day, or players from other SPL clubs. The Wanyama, Izaguirre, Kayal-recruitment model, players signed with greater trust in the scouts and limited supervision from the man at the top, would never have happened under O’Neill.
The technical side of the game is perhaps even more important than recruitment. Great football systems, clubs and countries develop from one coach doing something sensational. Successful tactical changes are then studied and copied, but how do you study and learn from a system that’s not utilised against you, or on TV, when you are manager of a large club? You can’t, on your own.
Instead you have to deploy the systems you already trust and used to get yourself the big job in the first place. Or you can tinker a little, or use what, for the want of a better term, we’ll call a technical research team. People who can say to the manager, “A club in Romania is doing something really clever, we should try it”, without being frog-marched off the premises.
The lesson of evolution is that it is not the biggest, strongest or healthiest who thrive, it’s those who can adapt to a changing environment. The list of great managers who end their career in humiliating relegation is longer than the list of greats who regularly discard their tried and tested formations and become early-adopters of successful new systems.
‘By any means necessary, Journey with Celtic Bampots’ by Paul Larkin, is now available at Lulu and other outlets. Paul charts the remarkable events the Internet Bampots became embroiled in since 2008.
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summa of sammi….
08:34 on
6 November, 2012
This is the 125th anniversary of the day the very idea of Celtic first came to light.
A meeting attended by Brother Walfrid among others took place and they decided a football Club should be formed to provide charitable relief for the poor of the East End of Glasgow.
The club was not founded and played its first game until 1888 as you say.
I’m sure you knew that.
PS, you’re never 24;-)
I’m looking forward to everything about tomorrow, but the GB display will be a highlight.
Of to work now, Aberdeen here I come.
One sleep!
HT
I never said the entire support was ashamed of it, I said it shamed the club and the entire support to the outside world.
There is a difference
greenjedi
09:03 on 6 November, 2012
”The poppy banner shamed the club and the entire support.”
Only in the eyes of intolerant, authoritarian halfwits like yourself.
Hamiltontim
And Lubo. The good doctors greatest legacy to Celtic.
ernie
so you don’t give an eff what the actions of a small section of the celtic support do to the image of the club?
I’d say it the minority who impose their views on the majority who are intolorent authoritarian halfwits.
I thought the tone was being lowered for a moment there……ernie has recued the situation 0:-)
Stuart Cosgrove – gamekeeper turned poacher or voice of the Internet bampots?
greenjedi
At no point have I used the word ‘ashamed’, I used ‘shamed’ because that was your initial point.
The vast majority of Celtic supporters that I know were not shamed and that is the claim that you made.
Greenjedi, I’m loathe to get involved here but it sounds like you are suggesting that you speak for the majority of Celtic supporters. A very difficult position to argue.
greenjedi
I suspect the vast majority of the outside world have no awareness of the GB and their Popppy Protest. Of those who do, there may well be as many who admire them as there are who detest them.
If ALL political statements were banned from football grounds, then the GB would have been wrong. Whilst we have The Establishment view not only allowed but actually encouraged/enforced by the Authorities, then the GB are quite within their rights.
JJ
greenjedi: Honestly pal your statement, “I never said the entire support was ashamed of it, I said it shamed the club and the entire support to the outside world.
There is a difference”. Yes you are right, it’s couched in a clever way. But why was it penned in such fashion ?
Trolling was mentioned earlier.
greenjedi
09:28 on 6 November, 2012
‘so you don’t give an eff what the actions of a small section of the celtic support do to the image of the club?’
The GB banner gave voice to a sentiment that was excluded from the public debate. They didn’t bring the subject to Celtic Park, others did, and the GB responded to it honestly.
If that tarnished the image people had of the club, then the image people had was wrong and required to be corrected.
The GB didn’t impose their views on anyone. Others tried to impose their views on them, and on the whole support.
.
Doc is Neil Lennon..
So it’s Happy Anniversary Celtic..”O)
Summa
Ps..Glad l don’t Celebrate the Anniversary of the Glint in My Dads Eye..Ha Ha..
“Leavin’ on a jet plane….”
: > )
miki67
Safe journey to ye ;-)
Not sure why anyone would feel shamed by that banner; it was a perfectly honest summation of what that symbol has become.
Tell me greenjedi, how would you feel about having a Swastika on our tops?
Happy birthday to us,
Altered Images style..
Love wee Clare ( still )
34 hours…
.
Think the GB are a Bit Misunderstood by People reading Random Stuff about them..
How many Understand what their Upside Down banner really Meant..???
Summa
Count me in as not a supporter of the poppy. And another thing why are we playing this Sunday, whats wrong with playing on Saturday?
HH
Southside @ 09:18,
Totally agree.
Someone wrote yesterday – a Lenny vs MO’N post. I was reponding to that and Murdochbhoy’s common sense post this morning.
To compare the Watt to Sutton or Lenny to MO’N at this juncture is premature if relevant at all.
For me it’s insulting to Martin to belittle his achievements by comparing them to Lenny’s.
I expect great things from Neil’s reign (a G.o.D???) he seems to be getting a great squad together but we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Martin might well have had a substantial budget true but, Lenny has by far the largest budget in Scotland – Martin didn’t have.
dirtymac
Too far mate.
The poppy may have become something else for some, not for others.
Greenjedi made the point the GB chose to display the banner. They knew the statement, (whether we agree with it or not) was using the club as a vehicle for their views.
Big Cup
It was couched in that way as that was the point I was making
Gorbals Tam
I don’t claim to speak for the majority of the Celtic support, however I am having a go at the GB for occasionally using Celtic games as basis for their political agenda
Ernie
Comical Ali has nothing on you
Jungle Jim
Ground RegulationsCeltic F.C. Limited (“the Club”) Celtic Park Ground Regulations (the “Ground Regulations”)
11. The use of threatening behaviour, foul or abusive language is strictly FORBIDDEN. Racial, sectarian, political, homophobic or discriminatory abuse or chanting is also forbidden and is considered as unacceptable conduct and may result in arrest and a lifetime ban from regulated football matches.
hamiltontim:
>>>>>
Ta.
I still think planes only fly because we believe they do.
: > )
The football authorities can’t tell people not to bring politics into the stadium if political parties are allowed to have trackside advertising, which they do at St Mirren Park and Fir Park to name just two.
I even have a memory of Motherwell having trackside advertising from UKIP or some boak-inducing mob of that ilk. The SNP and Labour are also involved in trackside advertising at football grounds.
What’s it to be, politicos? In or out?
BIG-CUP-WINNERS
09:49 on 6 November, 2012
”Greenjedi made the point the GB chose to display the banner. They knew the statement, (whether we agree with it or not) was using the club as a vehicle for their views.”
The GB didn’t bring the poppy issue to CP.
Others did.
It was they who were using the club as a vehicle for their views, not the GB.
The GB responded.
palcio67
It couldn`t be because Sunday is the 11th? Surely not!
ernie lynch
09:51 on
6 November, 2012
BIG-CUP-WINNERS
09:49 on 6 November, 2012
”Greenjedi made the point the GB chose to display the banner. They knew the statement, (whether we agree with it or not) was using the club as a vehicle for their views.”
The GB didn’t bring the poppy issue to CP.
Others did.
It was they who were using the club as a vehicle for their views, not the GB.
The GB responded.
………….
The way I see it is that the GB walked straight into a trap and that was exactly why it was done in the first place
greenjedi
09:49 on 6 November, 2012
How totally in character for you to be quoting the stadium regulations.
Not like you’re intolerant or authoritarian or anything.
Are those the regulations that forbid fans from taking photographs in the stadium?
Maybe you’d like to enforce that as well.
BIG-CUP-WINNERS
09:49 on 6 November, 2012
+++++
I don’t think it is. It’s demonstrating that the symbolic nature of imagery is easily perverted by those who would do so. The poppy of today is very far removed from it’s origins, which was to remember those who gave their lives in rather needless wars.
In a direct parallel with the now accursed symbol I mentioned above, it’s symbolic nature has changed, becoming all too militaristic – and there appears to be very little political, or even public, will to turn aside that very gradual change.
We now have a government that are quite openly embarking on a course of action that somewhat celebrates the commencement of hostilities that led to the creation of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and quite frankly the bastardisation of it utterly disgusts me.
greenjedi
“Racial, sectarian, political, homophobic or discriminatory abuse or chanting is also forbidden”
What is politically abusive about saying ” not in my name” in reference to having the poppy symbol on a Celtic shirt?
JJ
dirtymac
Not to mention travelling to the Middle East to try to sell jet fighters …
Mon the Costa Rica.
“I’d say it the minority who impose their views on the majority who are intolorent authoritarian halfwits”.
Greenjedi, how do you know that the a minority are imposing views on the majority?
Last word to you, I’m out.
Summa – I see your Green Moon tip came up in the Melbourne Cup…and you didn’t back it?
I had the 2nd, Fiorente at a big price. Was it close a race?!
Happy birthday to all you Timternet Bampots.
T4
On the GB display for Wednesday I imagine the GB and Celtic have been in discussions to make sure it is appropriate.
Had similar discussions taken place two years back (and I know there was a communication breakdown between Celtic,supporters groups and between the groups themselves (caused I believe by poppy fatigue not dissension) then the chances are that the banner that caused the media outcry would not have been raised. There might have been another but not that one.
I think lessons were learned by all parties from that event and there has been a softening of attitudes as a result leading to a different approach.
Thats life, that is how it works and it works in time.
This shouldn’t deteriorate into another blooming poppy debate.
greenjedi
Your views are your own I wasn’t questioning them.
My point was in reference to your statement that the GB banner ‘shamed the entire support’.
That’s patently untrue.
I reckon the CQN server is down and the posts on here for the past hour have been a ‘copy and paste’ by Paul67 from last November.
What happened to the Seville money anyway?
Auldheid
I’m pretty sure that the Green Brigade would argue that there has been no such ‘softening of attitudes’.