Martin has now become Nancy’s worst nightmare
MON shone light on Celtic’s poverty and now it’s burden for new gaffer
THE Celtic Fans Collective will surely put forward a motion to give Dermot Desmond a vote of thanks in the wake of the Europa League win over Feyenoord.
After all, it was Desmond’s idea to put Martin O’Neill in interim charge after the principal shareholder had unceremoniously dumped Brendan Rodgers out in the street in a fit of pique last month.
Credit where it’s due, right?
And, on that basis, Dermot and his son – Ross, the boss to be – can show their appreciation to O’Neill by offering him an apology.
Martin, when he arrived in Glasgow after a 20-year absence, immediately gave Celtic presence. Desmond, in return, gave him poverty.
There was poverty of choice, poverty of performance and poverty of ideas.
The stand-in manager highlighted the lack of quality available to him when the team he chose to start in Rotterdam on Thursday night contained none of the players brought to Celtic at a cost of millions of pounds in the summer transfer window.
The window that failed to provide Rodgers with additional players before the unmitigated disaster that was the home-and-away humiliation at the hands of Kairat Almaty in the Champions League play-off round.
O’Neill effectively marked Paul Tisdale’s homework in the Netherlands and found the club’s head of operations to be a dunce.
The rarely-spotted Tisdale has been getting away with murder.
One questionable buy after another and a complete lack of accountability. Until O’Neill shone a light on his shortcomings.
The problem is that
Martin has now become
Wilfried Nancy’s worst nightmare.
The old guy will leave the building, temporarily at least, after Celtic have played Hibs at Easter
Road today.
And with a lot of fans wondering if the right man’s going out and the wrong man’s coming in to take his place. Talk about a hard act to follow.
Now it’s all about Celtic’s choreography on Wednesday night. Nancy is expected to waltz into Celtic Park, dispose of a dismal Dundee in jig-time and be declared the Lord of the Dance by time-up. Or else.
But the spectre of O’Neill will hang over him because of a result in Europe that nobody saw coming. The win over Feyenoord came 31 years to the very day since Celtic lost the League Cup Final to Raith Rovers, another happening that nobody had foreseen, to prove the game can be a source of eternal mystery.
But less so if you buy the right players. The last guy who tried to tell Celtic’s hierarchy the club were short of talent who could progress the team in Europe didn’t get on too well.
He was denounced as a “self- serving individual” in a blistering statement put out on the club’s website by order of Desmond and shown the door in spite of having won 11 out of 13 domestic trophies. I wonder how Rodgers felt on
Thursday night when O’Neill put Celtic’s risible recruitment into perspective, with no place in the team for the £5million waste of cash that is Michel-Ange Balikwisha.
O’Neill was the last man to take Celtic to a European final, against Porto in Seville 22 years ago, and that feat alone might give some weight to his opinions on personnel for continental competition.
And strengthen his case for a recall in a non-managerial capacity in the not-too-distant future while bringing dignity back to the club.
O’Neill got slaughtered on social media for saying Celtic’s most iconic manager, Jock Stein, would have found the recent AGM that was turned into the scene of public disorder a “sad day”.
He’ll be glad to hear “Sack The Board” sung for the last time at Easter Road today.
It has become a chant for people who clearly don’t follow how their club works at administrative level.
When, 10 days ago, the AGM had to be brought to a premature close in the middle of that statement from Ross Desmond, which was critical of fans who “dehumanised and vilified” board members, voting on numerous resolutions took place online.
The directors were re-elected en masse by a majority of over 99 per cent. A vote of no confidence in the board, put forward by The Celtic Collective, was not carried.
Nobody’s getting sacked in the morning – or any other time.
The Desmond family will now get on with runningg the club as theyy see fit – but butO’Neill’s O’Neill’s appointment, appointment in any kind of advisory capacity, could dilute disharmony.
Martin said before Feyenoord that reaching a competitive level in Europe can be achieved by recruiting properly.
And he underlined his point by omitting the poor signings and enhancing the team as a result.
Nancy has, meanwhile, been recruited from Columbus Crew in the MLS for two specific reasons.
A hope and a prayer.
It is right to suggest he could be Ange Postecoglou mark two and wrong to present that argument as a statement of fact.
He will need to start by proving the veracity of the best soundbite I have heard from him. Nancy said: “Impossible is an opinion.”
He should be careful about that stuff and remember the American newspaper columnist Doug Larson, who once said: “Accomplishing the impossible only means the boss will add it to your regular duties.”
Nancy, thanks to O’Neill’s work the other night in Europe, now carries a burden on two fronts.
A high-maintenance, low-quality squad will need to protect their status as defending champions in the Premiership and not lose the first cup final of the season to St Mirren two weeks from today but while building on O’Neill’s parting shot in Europe.
Those demands will be an early test of whether or not impossible is an opinion or a consequence of poor judgment.
If the team across the road on the other side of the city got rid of their director of football on the back of being a serial squanderer of the club’s money on the transfer market, what price Tisdale?
This is, incidentally, the person about to be entrusted with taking charge of the January transfer window.
In the meantime, if the hoped-for Lord of the Dance doesn’t get the equivalent of four 10s from the judges it’ll be strictly pandemonium by the time Hearts visit Celtic next weekend. Welcome, Wilfried.
Repeat after me, a draw’s a disaster, a defeat’s a catastrophe.