Martin O'Neill has lost the right to remain Celtic manager after last Sunday's league defeat to Rangers, according to Hugh Keevins. Writing in his column, Keevins said the home team, losing emphatically to their greatest rivals, looked like a side chosen and coached by a fan who had won a competition to be Celtic manager for a day. He said it gave him no pleasure to say so, but by the time the final whistle blew at Celtic Park, there was only one thought in his mind.
Loss of moral authority
Keevins said he had written the previous week that O'Neill was losing the moral authority to be Celtic manager, and he would now change the tense and say Martin has lost the right to stay in charge. He acknowledged this may not be the view of the board, which O'Neill does not trust but refuses to criticise in public for their handling of recruitment policy, nor of the old boy network that has thrown a protective cordon around him since he cast doubt over his future.
Keevins, who described himself as an old boy, two years older than O'Neill and 12 months younger than Neil Warnock, said he reserved the right to go against the flow. He said Warnock had delivered one platitude after another about Martin without having a complete understanding of the mess Celtic now find themselves in amidst supporter unrest.
Erratic behaviour and tactical concerns
Keevins said O'Neill made a mockery of Celtic fans' concerns at a critical time when he gave his post-match press conference after a worryingly awful performance against Derek McInnes' side. He noted that impulse control has been a problem for Martin of late, recalling that he forgot his manners when a lady TV reporter questioned his team's mentality after the first defeat to Rangers at Ibrox in the Premier Sports Cup, and then went through a comical mea culpa on camera when the same lady interviewed him before the European tie lost to Ferencvaros at Parkhead.
Last Sunday, Keevins said, Martin took a real walk on the wild side. First, he hinted at retirement, then addressed the subject of age and its negative effects by drifting off into a rambling discourse about being two years away from becoming 110. The manager then compounded the felony by going on about Mick Jagger, someone he admitted he had never met. Keevins said bemusement and bewilderment had consequently been taken to new levels of confusion for those trying to get to the bottom of an Old Firm defeat for the second time in eight days.
Board backing and fan unrest
Keevins said it is unequivocally time for Martin to go, but he appears to have taken precisely two days to decide on his future and somehow convinced himself that is not a good idea, hence the public backing from Celtic's chief executive Michael Nicholson on Tuesday evening. He described this as a vote of confidence to accompany club accounts showing a financial loss, underlining the board not being good at anything they do.
He said it would not be possible for a manager in the prime of life to survive the ritual beatings Celtic are now taking in European and domestic football, far less someone of advanced years who recognises the frailties associated with old age but refuses to do anything about it. Keevins said he was fed up saying that Celtic as a club have a duty of care towards the man they brought in almost a year ago to salvage last season. The problem now confronting the club, he said, is that, like everything else associated with their currently dramatic fall from grace, they have no idea what to do about it, other than getting behind someone who has lost the trust of a large percentage of the fan base.
Warnock and player criticism
Keevins said O'Neill has no idea what to do with his team any more, and that Martin's mates at talkSPORT and any member of Celtic's 2003 Seville squad will form a protective shield around him at the drop of a league point, Champions League KO, domestic cup exit or Europa League going-over. He said there is no equivalent of Gary Neville using his media profile to call his former club Manchester United "absolutely pathetic". Instead, what you get are prejudiced and sycophantic views which do not correspond with how the fans see the situation at Celtic Park.
Now it's Warnock, a self-confessed Rangers supporter, who is citing O'Neill as a victim of Scottish football's inclination towards managerial madness. Keevins said Neil should concentrate on being an advisor to Torquay United in the National League and let those involved with the Premiership get on with their business. He cited defender Cameron Carter-Vickers, who spoke up on behalf of the Celtic squad in the wake of Rangers' second victory in just eight days. Keevins said you could summarise his thoughts by repeating the word he used to describe Celtic's tactical approach: "Random."
Keevins interpreted "random" as meaning the Celtic players, in the absence of any coherent assistance from the touchline, made it up on the hoof when they were being played off the park for the second time in succession by Rangers. He asked why, if O'Neill regarded Celtic's player recruitment as unsatisfactory enough to play only two of 10 summer signings against Rangers, he did not make his feelings known in public rather than covering up for his employers.
No succession strategy
Keevins said Martin, lumbered with mediocrity in his dressing room, had made the worst motivational speech in the history of the Old Firm fixture when he said at his pre-match press gathering that, even if Celtic lost to Rangers, they would still be two points clear. He said the next problem for the Celtic fans will come when circumstances finally convince the manager enough is enough and the club has to do something about it. At that point, there will be two things for certain: no succession strategy will be in place, and whatever they do, Dermot Desmond, the principal shareholder, and the board will get it horribly wrong.
Keevins noted these are the people who appointed Wilfried Nancy as manager of the club and then removed him after a month, calling it proof of dangerous leanings towards the incomprehensible. For now, Martin appears to have decided to stay, meaning the club is, in the face of a formidable run of domestic and European games to come after the international break, entering a phase that runs the risk of making Nancy's time as boss look like a model of stability.
