Celtic's Martin O'Neill Questions Future After Disappointing Results
Simon Jordan has called on Martin O'Neill to show more steel after the Celtic manager openly questioned his own future in the wake of a bruising run of results.
Celtic have just endured a grim seven days. Three defeats in a week, two of them to Rangers, have turned early-season optimism into anxiety.
It started with a 3-0 humbling at Ibrox in the Scottish League Cup quarter-final. Rangers outplayed them, out-fought them, and sent Celtic out of the competition with something approaching ease.
Then came Europe. Hungarian side Ferencvaros arrived for the Europa League curtain-raiser and left with a win, deepening the sense that Celtic’s season had suddenly veered off course.
The week ended back in Glasgow, and back against Rangers. This time at Celtic Park, this time in the Premiership – and this time a 1-0 defeat. The loss not only handed their rivals another derby victory, it also snapped Celtic’s perfect start to the league campaign.
Four defeats in all competitions already. That’s as many as they suffered across 35 games last season. The contrast is stark.
O'Neill, 74, returned to Celtic in January as caretaker and promptly delivered a league and Scottish Cup double. The club rewarded him with a one-year deal in June, a short-term pact built on the idea that he could squeeze one more big season out of this group.
Now, only a few months on, he is openly wondering whether he is still the man to lead them.
"I genuinely will reflect and see," O'Neill said after the latest loss to Rangers. "It's a matter of whether I can help the team. If that's the case – the manager's supposed to be able to do that. I will have a look at that there this week."
Those words jarred with Simon Jordan.
The former Crystal Palace chairman, speaking on talkSPORT, expected defiance from a manager of O’Neill’s stature, not introspection.
"I've liked to see him being a bit spikier and a bit more robust, rather than sounding relatively defeated in that clip," Jordan said.
For Jordan, this was the moment for a line in the sand, not a pause for reflection.
"I certainly would have been wanting to say back to them, 'This has happened, it will not happen again,'" he added.
That, in his view, is the message a Celtic manager should send after losing twice to Rangers in the space of a week.
Instead, O’Neill spoke about whether he could still help the team, and whether his time might be up. Jordan admitted he found that side of the response hard to square with the combative figure he has long associated with O’Neill.
"The fact that he's talking about whether he can help the team and whether it's his time – I find that slightly strange of Martin, but he's having a reflective moment."
Reflective or not, the questions now hang in the air at Celtic Park. A manager who walked back in as a saviour last season is suddenly under the microscope, and a fanbase used to dominance is watching to see whether this is only a wobble – or the start of something far more serious.
