Martin O’Neill is already a victim of Nicholson’s transfer pain

Martin O’Neill wasn’t broken but he did look worn down as he faced the broadcast media early this afternoon. Welcome back to Celtic.

On Tuesday the interim manager had been full of jokes, gags and put downs as he staged a 22 minute media conference marking his second return of the season.

Michael Nicholson was either hard at work on transfer deals or hiding in his office, unable to attend.

Everyone at Celtic is always working really, really hard on signing players. But unfortunately the hard work never pays off, deals rarely get done. Theexcuses are made alongside promises to do better next time.

There wasn’t much spring about O’Neill today, it almost seemed like he had just heard some bad news.

Over the weekend he had held talks with Dermot Desmond about another returned to the front line. Five weeks after being eased out the picture for a soccer-ball guy with a philosophy.

SOS FOR MARTIN O’NEILL, AGAIN

When that project crashed and burned it was back to O’Neill for another rescue act. This time with the carrot of a transfer window. An area of business that O’Neill excelled in during his five years as permanent manager at the turn of the century.

You have to assume that transfer business was fairly prominent when O’Neill spoke with Dermot Desmond. Especially in terms of signing strikers.

Being streetwise O’Neill will have been well aware of the transfer problems Brendan Rodgers encountered.

When you have Michael Nicholson as CEO and either Mark Lawwell or Paul Tisdale heading up recruitment you are in for trouble..

Only Nicholson survives, for now, but his influence runs deep.

Recruitment is a laboured process at Celtic.

It identifies inadequate players. See Shin Yamada, Hayato Inamura, Sebastian Tounekti and Michel Ange Balikwisha. Many other examples are available.

CELTIC TRANSFER TEMPLATE

Celtic sign players too late in the transfer window or after they’ve been knocked out of the Champions League qualifiers. This season they managed both.

They then pay over the odds and are lumbered with flops on extended contracts. See Maik Nawrocki, Luis Palma, Odin Thiago Holm and others. Those three are on contracts until June 2028.

Rodgers highlighted the issues as diplomatically as he could.

After each failed transfer window when the squad was weakened he would speak of the club needing to learn lessons.

Celtic never learned. Nicholson remains as CEO, almost a monument to failure. In January 2022 Ange Postecoglou showed the ‘leading sports lawyer’ how it should be done. Since then Nicholson has gone back to ‘doing whatever big Peter would do’.

I think there’s work going on behind the scenes. It’s clear we need to improve the squad. A lot of work is going on behind the scenes, there are loads of names floating about.

On 26 August 2024 Glasgow World Reported Rodgers saying:

We shouldn’t have been getting into this last week in the position we’re in. That’s the reality. However, that’s something for us for after this window. We’ll get the players in that we want. We don’t need to manufacture our own stress when there’s no need. So we’ll be calm this week. We’ll look to get the players in that can strengthen us.

At today’s broadcast media conference O’Neill delivered a very similar message about all of the hard work that is being put in on transfers.

1 minute 40 seconds

QUESTION: Anything else imminent on the transfer front?

O’NEILL: We’re doing plenty of work on it, seriously. I know that’s a big generalisation. We are doing that there and hopefully try and get a few players in. There’s a lot of work going on at the moment. I think that we are well aware that we have to supplement the squad.