Peak hilarity from Simon Jordan, as he seems to think Martin O’Neill would choose Fulham over Celtic – the man either takes the Parkhead job, or he retires…

Well, well, well…

The self-styled voice of football reason is back at it.

Same talkSPORT microphone and same Simon Jordan.

Same gormless take.

Out he came on his own show this week to tell the world – with a straight face, mind – that Martin O’Neill should be in the frame for the Fulham job.

Yes.

That Fulham.

The Fulham who finished 11th in the Premier League last season.

The Fulham who missed out on Europe by a single point.

Yes, THE Fulham who have just shown Marco Silva the door because, apparently, 11th was no longer good enough at Craven Cottage.

And the man Simon Jordan reckons should be considered for that job?

The 74-year-old Celtic interim manager who just won the Premiership on the final day and lifted the Scottish Cup six days later.

You couldn’t make it up.

Read his words for yourself, courtesy of the Scottish Sun:

“The interesting thing will be what do Fulham want to do? That might sound very left-field, but you’ve got Martin O’Neill back in the management world. Why wouldn’t Martin O’Neill be considered as somebody that could do a very decent job at Fulham?”

Why wouldn’t he??

Are you for real, Simon??

Let me get this straight.

Martin O’Neill, the Celtic legend, the man who delivered three SPL titles and dragged us to a UEFA Cup final in Seville.

The same man who walked back into Paradise and bagged a domestic double in three months.

And we’re expected to believe he’s going to chuck all of that in to try and keep Fulham in the Premier League?

Sat on the Cottagers bench in late November, midtable on 19 points, trying to inspire a fightback against Brentford in the rain?

Right.

Yeah, right.

This is, without doubt, the daftest take Simon Jordan has produced in a long, long career of daft takes.

And I mean that.

Because this is a man who has built an entire media career out of being wrong about Scottish football.

The same Simon Jordan who told us our title was “tainted”.

The same Simon Jordan who told us the Scottish League “doesn’t really count”.

This is the same Simon Jordan who told us you couldn’t have stopped 5,000 Sheffield Wednesday fans flooding the Hillsborough pitch with the militia.

The same Simon Jordan who told us – with a straight face – that Celtic should face sanctions for a pitch invasion, after he personally defended the same thing three years earlier at Hillsborough.

And now this very same man wants us to believe that Martin O’Neill – who at 74 has the heart of a 25-year-old the moment Celtic is on his chest – is going to drive past Glasgow, drive past every memory he has ever had at this football club, and rock up at Craven Cottage for a f*****g relegation dog fight.

Geez peace, wull ya?

Let me lay this out for those at the back, and Simon, that means you.

Martin O’Neill will choose to be in the Celtic dugout for one reason, and one reason only.

It is Celtic.

It is the job, and it is the only job that could ever have tempted him out of the punditry booth at 74 years of age.

He has said as much himself, repeatedly, since the day he agreed to step in for Brendan Rodgers.

He didn’t come back for the money.

Nor did he come back to enhance his CV.

He didn’t come back to test himself in the relentless grind of the Premier League.

He came back because Dermot Desmond asked him to, and because Celtic is in his blood.

And now we’re being told that, if the “absent golfing meddler” decides to go in a different direction this summer, Martin O’Neill is going to dust off his Fulham scarf and start swotting up on Adama Traore?

Aye.

Of course he is.

And after that he’s off to Bournemouth, then Brentford, then a wee stint at Luton.

Bollocks.

The bottom line is this. There are exactly two outcomes for Martin O’Neill this summer.

Outcome one – Dermot Desmond gives him the permanent job, and Martin O’Neill takes it.

Outcome two – Desmond gives the job to Robbie Keane or somebody else, and Martin O’Neill rides off into the sunset with a double in his back pocket and a wave to the Green Brigade.

That is it.

That is the entire list.

There is no third option in which O’Neill, having just lifted the Premiership and the Scottish Cup with the club he loves, packs his bags for west London and a job nobody at Fulham has even offered him.

I rest my case.

And yet here is Simon Jordan, with his microphone glued to his face, telling the talkSPORT audience otherwise.

Because, well, of course he is.

This is what he does.

It’s what he has always done.

Wind up the Celtic supporters with a take so transparently ridiculous that even Fulham fans, hearing this on the drive home, will have spat their coffee out at the windscreen.

“Martin O’Neill at Fulham, you say, Simon?”

“That’s left-field alright.”

“Left-field” being talkSPORT for “I have nothing to say but I’ve got 90 seconds to fill.”

And fill it he did.

The man went from “tainted title” one week to “perfect for Fulham” the next, without so much as drawing breath in between.

Convenient, isn’t it??

So let me close with this, Simon.

Martin O’Neill isn’t going to Fulham.

Not this summer.

It won’t be next summer either.

Not ever.

He will either be in the home dugout at Celtic Park come the first ball of next season.

Or he will be on his couch in London, watching it on the telly with a cup of tea and a wee word in Geraldine’s ear.

There is no scenario in which the man chooses Marco Silva’s hand-me-down job at Craven Cottage over the chance to manage Celtic again.

None.

Zero.

Not happening.

Oh wait – unless Simon knows something about Fulham’s plans that the rest of us don’t?

Unless Shahid Khan has already had that conversation and O’Neill has said “yes, absolutely, count me in”?

Sorry, my mistake.

That hasn’t happened.

The Fulham line is hilarious – I’ll give Jordan that much – but it is also classic Simon Jordan.

A pundit reaching for any angle, any name, any bit of nonsense that fills the airtime and gets him quoted in the Sunday papers.

Just so happens, this time, the angle insults the intelligence of every single Celtic supporter listening.

And before anyone says “Eric, you’re just ranting into the void again” – yes, I probably am.

But what do you expect me to do when the takes are this bad?

You see, Simon, here is what you missed.

Martin O’Neill at Fulham makes about as much sense as you defending Celtic.

It is never going to happen.

Hypocrites and fantasists, the lot of them.

End of.

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