The Moment Has Come for Celtic to Call Time on Martin O’Neill

Martin O’Neill’s doubts must force Celtic to act before another damaging spell leaves the club further behind at home and in Europe.

Martin O’Neill’s admission that he will take time to reflect on his own position should not be treated as a harmless, emotional remark in the aftermath of another Rangers defeat. It should be the signal Celtic need to act.

If the manager himself is questioning whether he has the appetite, belief or conviction to remain in the job after a miserable week - three defeats, two of them against Rangers - then the club cannot simply wait and hope that a period of reflection produces a better outcome. Celtic have three weeks before they play again. That is not time to drift. It is time to make a decision.

O’Neill is a Celtic legend. That is beyond debate. But legend status cannot become a shield from scrutiny, nor an excuse for a board to delay the inevitable.

Losing three games in seven days is damaging enough at Celtic. Losing twice to Rangers, with performances lacking the intensity, aggression and urgency demanded by the fixture, is something else entirely.

The League Cup quarter-final was a chance to set a standard. Sunday’s league meeting was an opportunity to respond. Celtic did neither. The manner of those displays has rightly disturbed and angered supporters as much as the results themselves.

This has not emerged from nowhere, either. Celtic’s season has carried too many warnings, first of all the 4–0 lead in a Champions League qualifier was somehow thrown away before the subsequent exit to LASK. The defeat to Ferencváros added another humiliating European chapter. Against Rangers, Celtic looked short not merely of quality but of conviction. There has been no obvious sense of a team improving, adapting or becoming harder to beat when the pressure rises.

Every manager at Celtic is judged on Europe, domestic consistency and, above all, the results against Rangers. On all three fronts, this management team fronted by O’Neill has fallen badly short.

A bad result can be absorbed. A bad performance can be corrected. But when failure begins to feel repetitive - when the same fragility, tactical confusion and absence of fight return again and again - it becomes a problem of leadership.

There is a human side to O’Neill’s comments. Football management is relentless, and a manager who has given so much to Celtic should be allowed the dignity of honesty. But Celtic cannot build their immediate future around a 74-year-old manager publicly contemplating whether he wants to continue.

A manager does not need to promise trophies after every defeat. He does, however, need to project certainty, certainty that he understands the problems, certainty that he has a solution, and certainty that he is fully committed to leading the club through the next challenge. That certainty is what now feels absent.

Celtic cannot approach Motherwell at Fir Park, an away match against Benfica and then Hearts with the future of the manager hanging in the air. The fixtures are difficult enough without allowing uncertainty to infect the dressing room, the support and the wider club.

If O’Neill needs time to decide whether he is the right man for Celtic, the board should provide the answer for him. The answer should be no. Not because he is not respected. Not because he has not earned a permanent place in Celtic history. But because no club the size of Celtic can afford to wait while its manager decides whether he still has the stomach for the fight.

Celtic have lived through a version of this before. The Neil Lennon situation during the Covid season should be a permanent warning to every Celtic decision-maker. The club allowed sentiment, loyalty and the hope that a familiar figure could somehow find a way through to outweigh the evidence on the pitch. By the time decisive action came, serious damage had already been done.

That is the danger now.

Keeping O’Neill in place simply because he is Martin O’Neill would repeat the same mistake in a different form. Supporters are not asking the board to disregard the past. They are asking it not to sacrifice the future to it. The more a manager’s standing grows, the more difficult it becomes for those above him to make a hard decision. That appears to be Celtic’s problem. Dermot Desmond’s support and Michael Nicholson’s willingness to stand behind the current setup may offer O’Neill protection that another manager would not receive.

But that protection is precisely why the board must be challenged. Had this been a less decorated manager, would Celtic really have accepted a European collapse from a 4–0 position, an exit to LASK, a humiliation against Ferencváros and two limp defeats to Rangers in a single week? Would he still be given three weeks to reset and another batch of major fixtures to prove he has a solution?

The answer is obvious.

There is another uncomfortable issue Celtic must confront - the role of Shaun Maloney. The evidence on the pitch as I have suggested before is that this is not Martin O’Neill’s team in style or structure. Celtic appear to play to Maloney’s ideas. The training-ground patterns, systems and tactical approach look more closely aligned with the assistant’s influence than with the more direct, authoritative O’Neill teams supporters remember. That makes Maloney central to the debate, not peripheral.

If he is effectively the key football voice in the operation, if he is responsible for the training sessions, the tactical model and the week-to-week preparation - then he must be judged on the results of that work. And the results have been unacceptable.

There is little reason for supporters to believe that Maloney should be the answer to a crisis partly shaped by the current coaching setup. His previous management spells at Wigan Athletic and Hibernian do not provide the reassurance required for a club of Celtic’s scale, particularly when the present first-team performances have been so lifeless.

Changing the face at the top while retaining the same football operation underneath would solve nothing. Celtic do not need a cosmetic reset. They need a clean break, a clear football plan and a manager with the authority to establish standards immediately.

The timing is difficult, but it is also an opportunity. Celtic have three weeks before Motherwell away. That period must not be squandered on public holding statements, boardroom hesitation and vague promises of reflection. There is enough time to assess the situation, identify the next manager and give the squad a clear direction before a pivotal run of fixtures.

Motherwell at Fir Park is never straightforward. Benfica away is an enormous European test. Hearts arriving thereafter offers no comfort. The schedule will not wait for Celtic to regain confidence, and nor will the likes of Rangers or any other Premiership side.

The risk of keeping O’Neill is not merely that Celtic lose another match. It is that the club sleepwalks into a deeper crisis - further domestic ground lost, another damaging European display, a dressing room unsure of who is in charge, fighting among themselves, and a support continuously alienated from a board protecting its own decisions rather than acting in Celtic’s best interests.

Martin O’Neill deserves respect, gratitude and a place among the club’s great figures. But Celtic cannot allow reverence to become paralysis.

His reflection should be the final reflection. The board must make the call that has been delayed too often in Celtic’s recent history - thank him for what he has given, remove the current management team, and appoint a manager who believes - without hesitation - that he can take Celtic forward.