Make or break week facing Martin O’Neill

Martin O’Neill has one week to turn Celtic around. If he fails to impose changes, starting today the 26/27 season will be doomed.

At the end of August he will be left repeating the frustrations of Ange Postecoglou, Neil Lennon and Brendan Rodgers.

If O’Neill has been paying attention he will see the warning signs.

Managers see transfer windows as the opportunity to strengthen their team, their squads.

Dermot Desmond, Peter Lawwell and Michael Nicholson see things very differently. A transfer window is the chance to sell off performing players, bank a profit and hope for the best with some project signings from trusted sources.

If it goes wrong you can always fall back to the strength of a manager to see off the feeble domestic challenge and claim success.

Congratulate yourselves on a strategy that overcomes a basket-case club formed in 2012 and chucking away millions on constant managerial changes.

That is the culture inside Celtic. That is the strategy.

Lennon, Postecoglou and Rodgers suffered. If O’Neill doesn’t impose himself this week he will be the next victim.

ONLY O’NEILL CAN IMPOSE CHANGE

The positions of Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham are critical.

There is no acceptable spin for not getting those two coaches signed up on contracts and working on the pre-season schedule. None.

Already the flyers are out. Johnny Hayes and Scott Brown on stand-by. Efrain Juarez being talked up as a future manager. Some one with a profile similar to Wilfried Nancy.

All options being put forward because they are cheap and easily manipulated.

Surely O’Neill isn’t going to allow himself to be swept into the PLC/ Balance Sheet mindset. Where the team serves the PLC, not the other way around.

Towards the end of the summer 2025, after defeat to Kairat Almaty, Rodgers uttered the famous words:

Listen, if you looked at what Ange said or what Neil Lennon said it would probably be around about the same. That’s what I’m saying. It’s a trend, we need to understand that.

We certainly need to understand that from a football context, because you want to be as well equipped as you possibly can. Like I said, it’s not about investment, the club will invest. It’s all about timely investment. I think that it’s most definitely what we need to look at.

Rodgers said similar around the end of every transfer window.

That was after he had tried buttering up the men with the handbrake on the growth of Celtic. Chained to their favourite domestic rivalry.

We’ve got a major shareholder in Dermot [Desmond] who’s a super intelligent guy. We’ve got a board of directors who bleed for the club. They want the club to do well. So everyone here is connected. All this talk about total disconnection? It’s not what I see and I hear, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Every single guy here – me, the board members, Dermot – we love Celtic and want Celtic to be the very, very best. There’s a business model that you see works so well. But I want to try and ensure the football model works equally as well.

So it’s fluent and agile and we keep ahead of the game. So when we lose players we’re not in this cycle of waiting, waiting, waiting, standing still and then missing out on the competitions that we want to be in. So that’s the idea. Hopefully over the coming months we can do that.

Rodgers tried that approach to try and push Nicholson and McKay into action. He has been let down in the summer of 2023 as Mark Lawwell flooded the squad with third rate projects.

In the summer of 2024 there were no new players involved in pre-season training. Slowly Paulo Bernardo and Adam Idah returned after successful loan spells.

Eventually, with the window about to close Arne Engels, Luke McCowan and Auston Trusty were signed.

THEY BLEED THIS CLUB

After praising Desmond, Nicholson and McKay ‘they bleed for this club’ they laughed in Rodgers’ face.

A year after being signed on a permanent basis Nicholson sold off Idah then gave the messengers the Kasper Dolberg story that was never going to end in a move to Celtic.

It was never happening, if it was then Nicholson would have killed it off. He is good at that.

Desmond, Nicholson and McKay don’t bleed for the club. They bleed the club.

Every action since the sale of Kyogo Furuhashi in January 2025 confirms that.

Rodgers saw through it when he was presented with Shin Yamada. Like it or lump it.

In January O’Neill was handed Tomas Cvancara, Junior Adamu and Joel Mvuka. He gave them the Yamada treatment. Not good enough.

Fortunately Daizen Maeda rediscovered his scoring touch. That and the return from injury of Arne Engels and Alistair Johnston saved the day.

NICHOLSON PREPARING FOR THE GREAT CELTIC SUMMER SALE

On all known form Nicholson will be working night and day to sell Maeda, Engels and Johnston. It’s what he knows. What he learned watching his mentor Peter Lawwell.

Three weeks of inactivity have passed since the Scottish Cup Final.

Only O’Neill can shake that up. Brian Wilson, Nicholson and McKay could care less about the club as long as the gravy train keeps on rolling.

The anger and frustrations of the support weren’t flushed away by winning two domestic trophies.

Unless serious attempts are made to qualify for the Champions League and emulate the 12 point, 10 match haul of season 24/25 the  anger will resurface.

Rodgers will always be a bogey-man for many supporters. Portraying O’Neill in the same light and blaming him for failure won’t wash.

O’Neill has a very short window to force through change or he’ll be churned up like Rodgers.

Delivering change across the club is far more important than staged Q and A sessions in Kirkaldy, Galashiels and Uddingston

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