MARTIN O’NEILL is poised to take his final bow as Celtic’s interim manager after the champions’ High Noon kick-off against Hibs at Easter Road on Sunday.
Before that clash in the capital, of course, the Irishman will lead the Hoops into the Europa League encounter against Feyenoord in Rotterdam tomorrow night.
It will be his sixth game since his dramatic return following the rapid exit by Brendan Rodgers just over a month ago. The returning boss, who had a five-year stint at the club after initially arriving in the summer of 2000, has won four domestic games with his only blip coming in Denmark.
TOUCHLINE TALK-IN…Martin O’Neill makes a point to Sebastian Tounekti.
O’Neill has steered the team to three crucial Premiership successes over Falkirk (4-0), Kilmarnock (4-0) and St Mirren (1-0) to collect nine points after the champions had suffered back-to-back reverses at Dundee (0-2) and Hearts (1-3).
He also guided the holders into next month’s Premier Sports League Cup Final against Stephen Robinson’s Paisley outfit after a 3-1 extra-time semi-final triumph over Rangers at Hampden in only his second comeback outing.
The only setback has been the 3-1 defeat against FC Midtjylland and he will get the opportunity to atone for that loss against Robin van Persie’s outfit in 24 hours’ time.
In the midst of some heavy conflict surrounding the club, O’Neill still retains the ability to smile at adversity.
The stand-in boss has been tipped in some quarters to get a backroom role, such as the director of football post.
O’Neill smiled: “No, I put that all out myself! I never asked a board member at all. I just want to hang around for a bit – so I put that sort of message out.
DIRECTOR OF FOOTBALL…Martin O’Neill points the way.
“Of course, if they asked me, would I be a director of football, and I know from the past that’s the best role in football now, because you can blame the manager for the bad results, and that’s what I’d like to do!
“To step in and become the director of football and then being the manager after every bad result. And if a good player comes up, I take the credit for it, which is brilliant.
“No, I genuinely don’t know. I would imagine my time here would be, again, short or sweet.
“You know, or maybe not even sweet after we’ve got a game tomorrow.
“I would only treat it game by game, but in terms of what might happen, I genuinely don’t know.”
It’s been no easy task to point the team back in the right direction after all the upheaval, but O’Neill, speaking to the Daily Record, admitted: “In a perverse sort of way, I actually have enjoyed it, I must admit.
“Could I really do the job again week in, week out, week in, week out, for months on end? I really don’t know.
“Do I have energy and enthusiasm? Yeah, I have those. Is that enough? Not so sure.
“I’ve got all of those particular things. Do I have knowledge of the game? Of course, yeah, I think I have. But in the end, I really don’t know.
“Imagine shifting me out of what I was doing into doing this here.”
LOT OF BOTTLE…Martin O’Neill stood up to be counted.
O’Neill added: “I bet you when it is over, I’ll think: ‘That was actually quite nice’.
“It kind of, in that sort of way, reinvigorates you for a while because you are actually concentrating on something that you used to do before and you’d almost forgotten how to do it.”
Wilfried Nancy is waiting in the wings as he assembles his backroom team before being given the green light to quit Columbus Crew and take over at the Hoops.
He is due to make his debut in the champions’ league match against Dundee at Parkhead a week tonight.
O’Neill will be doing everything he can to make sure the 48-year-old Frenchman inherits a winning team.
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