Martin is having sleepless nights over Celtic’s transfer dithering? You can bet your bottom dollar that Michael Nicholson is sleeping sound though…
Just over a week to the start of the season, and we're still sitting on one confirmed signing, while Silent Mike sleeps like a baby...
Eric Knott 
Alan Brazil reckons Celtic’s dithering in the market is giving Martin O’Neill sleepless nights.
And you know what?
On that one narrow point, I’m not going to argue with him.
Because Martin has been handed the keys to a Toyota Aygo, and been asked to drive it like a Honda Civic, and no manager alive sleeps soundly under those terms.
But here’s the thing Alan Brazil didn’t say on talkSPORT this morning.
Martin isn’t the one you should be worried about losing sleep.
The manager frets. The players fret. We fret. Silent Mike sleeps like a baby.
Let’s be honest here.
If Martin O’Neill is lying awake at 3am staring at the ceiling, it’s because he knows the men above him are out for the count.
Michael Nicholson isn’t losing a wink over this.
Why would he?
A cardboard cut out would lose more sleep than Silent Mike, and the cardboard cut out would at least have the decency to look worried while it did nothing.
The absent meddling golfer in Barbados isn’t tossing and turning either.
He’s had his best night’s sleep in weeks, because Daizen Maeda is about to be turned into £8 million plus £2m in add-ons, and every pound is a prisoner in Desmond’s world.
That’s not a man with a problem.
That’s a man with a payday.
Brazil is dead right about one thing, and I’ll give him that.
“Our recruitment is diabolical. I don’t know who’s in charge of it.”
That’s Brazil, on talkSPORT, this morning.
Astonishingly, I actually agree with him.
Camilo Duran, at £6 million smackers, is the only new face through the door this summer.
One.
Yes 1.
Meanwhile Derek Siege Mentality McInnes has bolted seven new arrivals into his squad across the city.
Seven to our one.
The title defence is eleven days away.
There’s a £40m winner-takes-all Champions League play-off sitting right around the corner.
And our idea of a summer rebuild is to sell our top asset and sign a solitary striker.
As I said the other day, when I wrote about Maeda being asked to drop a price nobody will name, this is a club that does bad business and bad PR in the very same breath.
Nothing has changed in 48 hours.
It never does.
But then Alan Brazil had to go and spoil it, didn’t he?
Because this is where I stop nodding along and start reaching for the off switch.
“Celtic in my opinion were very fortunate to be champions last year.”
The Celtic-daft radio host, ladies and gentlemen.
Fortunate?
Are we??
We won the thing over 38 games, Alan, not on a coin toss.
“The endeavour and the heart were there,” he says, “but the quality wasn’t.”
Give me a f*****g break.
You can’t stand there and tell us our recruitment is diabolical, and in the same rant tell us we were lucky to lift the trophy anyway.
Which is it?
Because those two things don’t sit in the same sentence.
Either the board starved a good squad and it dragged itself over the line on grit, or we were a bunch of lucky chancers who didn’t deserve it.
You don’t get to have both.
And then, right on cue, the Ibrox love letter.
“You look what R*****s are doing,” Brazil purrs, “Ally must be laughing… they are the team to beat next year.”
The team to beat.
It’s always the same at this timed of year, isn’t it?
We have heard this exact hymn every single close season for as long as I’ve drawn breath.
The Raynjurz are cummin.
Seven Gumtree Galacticos in the door and suddenly the title’s heading back to Govan on a flatbed lorry.
Pull the other one. It’s got bells on.
I don’t doubt Brazil is a Celtic man, and I genuinely wish him well coming back to the airwaves next month after everything he’s been through.
But a Celtic man doesn’t hand talkSPORT a stick to beat his own club with, eleven days before a ball is kicked.
Here’s the part that actually matters.
Brazil aimed the whole thing at Martin.
Wrong target.
The manager didn’t set the two magic numbers.
We all know who did that.
The manager didn’t scribble £3 million to buy and £25 million to sell on the back of a beermat in Barbados.
The manager isn’t the one who’ll let Maeda walk in the final year of his deal for a fee that doesn’t reflect a fraction of his worth.
That’s the board.
Not Martin.
That’s Silent Mike.
That’s the absent golfing meddler.
Martin O’Neill is the poor sod handed the Aygo and told to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and then he gets the pundits queuing up to tell him he isn’t sleeping.
None of them are stupid, remember.
This isn’t incompetence.
It never was.
So no, Alan.
Martin might not be sleeping.
But the men who actually did this to him?
They’re sleeping just fine.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ…
Key Takeaways
- Alan Brazil criticises Celtic’s transfer market actions, suggesting it’s causing Martin O’Neill stress.
- However, the real concern lies not with O’Neill, but with the board members who appear unconcerned about the team’s situation.
- Celtic has signed only one player this summer, while rivals have made multiple signings, raising questions about the club’s strategy.
- Alan Brazil’s comments about Celtic’s success being lucky contradict his criticism of the club’s recruitment.
- Ultimately, the blame for the club’s performance falls on the board, not on Martin O’Neill.
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Last night, I joined Bhoycie on the Bhoycie Bus as his guest for his Wednesday night blether. You can check the show out below:
