HARD CASH AND NOT SOFT SOAP
O’Neill will demand board spend big to land his targets as a condition to stay
THE full extent of Dermot Desmond’s clout at Celtic has been revealed in documentation that has been lodged with Companies House in London.
Dermot Fachtna Desmond, to give the club’s principal shareholder his full name, is described as “one person of significant control”.
I think that’s all we need to know about who calls the shots at the home of the league and Scottish Cup Double winners.
The members of the Celtic board and chief executive Michael Nicholson are supernumeraries or, if you like, message boys.
Dermot’s control will rarely be as significant as it will need to be next week when Martin O’Neill’s future is determined.
Only one man holds all of the cards.
And that’s man is the manager who gave Celtic that most improbable of all Doubles against all odds and reasonable expectation.
Only one man can provide the terms and conditions that can convince the 74-year-old O’Neill that it makes sense to extend his stay into next season and that’s the one with “significant control”.
The deadline for Celtic supporters to renew their season tickets expired on Friday.
A full take-up, if that is what has happened, will be down to unswerving devotion rather than any explicit belief in what lies around the corner.
How could a sell- out be explained in any other way when tens of thousands of people pay three or four-figure sums while not even knowing who will be manager of the club when the new season begins?
O’Neill successfully brokered a truce between warring fans and an intransigent hierarchy at Celtic Park when he agreed, not once but twice, to become the club’s manager.
It was a fragile peace but it held firm because of the chief negotiator’s identity.
But that peace is likely to be breached if Martin is given sufficient cause to doubt the wisdom of extending his stay on the basis that he will not be given the financial backing to make it worth his while.
What is the point of winning the title, for instance, if you are denied the resources to buy the right players for gaining qualification to the lucrative Champions League.
Brendan Rodgers suffered that fate and went out to the might of Kairat Almaty, from Kazakhstan, at the beginning of the season just ended.
A club statement, unsigned, was subsequently released apologising for transfer window shortcomings.
Too late was the cry.
O’Neill brought the club back from the precipice and won a Double fit for posterity.
There was a commitment from the radical wing of the club’s support, that nothing disruptive would get in the way of backing the team and the manager all the way to the finish line in the Premiership, that was the definition of a compelling watch.
Since then, Rangers have signed one high-profile player, Lawrence Shankland, and made known their interest in several others.
This, on an annual basis, always prompts the accusation that the Ibrox club get their business done early while Celtic turn procrastination into an art form.
Celtic could, however, argue that since they’ll begin next season looking to win six titles in a row procrastination isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
O’Neill is unlikely to see things that way, however.
He wants assurances and not the presumption that you can always bumble your way to the major prizes.
Hard cash and not soft soap. We’re back to 2000 and O’Neill’s arrival at Celtic from Leicester City.
The time when he was backed to the hilt and brought in Chris Sutton, Neil Lennon, Alan Thompson and the rest who had Celtic in a European final three years later. The squad
O’Neill will want assurances and not presumptions you can always bumble your way to major prizes
in 2026 is a pale imitation of the one who went to Seville.
It could become even more anaemic if players such as Daizen Maeda and Arne Engels are sold in the summer.
If O’Neill is to be beguiled into hanging around he’ll need to know that he’s shopping in Waitrose, as opposed to Asda, and his recommendations for players are followed through without question.
My understanding is that Celtic have not had dialogue with any of the managerial names linked with the club.
If O’Neill declines to stay they are back to square one – a state otherwise known as being up the creek without a paddle.
Time is marching on and a man with significant control would surely understand that managers talk to each other.
That means, of course, the word could get around that Celtic want champagne on a lemonade budget and are therefore to be avoided. O’Neill has the supporter base in the palm of his hand and a Celtic fan of status, Lord Willie Haughey, is spending fortunes trying to get a fan accepted on to the board to improve customer relations.
It is a delicate time in the affairs of a club where volatility is never far away.
Martin getting his trademark tracksuit out again would represent continuity and placate the fan base.
No Martin at a ll wou ld be the equivalent of sending a distress flare into the sky.
Significant distress.