Of Course The Celtic Boss Feels Vindicated After Sunday’s Performance – But We Stumbled Onto This Winning Formula

Martin O’Neill is now taking the plaudits for his decision making and our performance last Sunday at Celtic Park, and rightly so.

As the old saying goes, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth.

It’s been rough for quite some time for the Celtic boss, so when the smooth comes, you’ve got to milk it.

O’Neill is doing exactly that.

He deserves to after a 7-1 victory over what we would consider a title rival, or at least did, until the final whistle on Sunday.

But let’s not kid ourselves on here, O’Neill and his coaching team stumbled onto this winning formula and frontline after our hammering in Lisbon.

As Joe said on the Trinity Tims podcast on Monday night, pre-season is now over, we’ve finally found our starting 11.

And possibly our mojo.

The reality is that we can really believe this if this starting 11 drives us onto victory tomorrow night at Celtic Park

But I’ll reserve judgement until then.

As reported in the Daily Record last night, Martin O’Neill was interviewed on the Celtic Player by Gerry McCulloch.

And since the Celtic boss has been pretty beleaguered over the last few weeks, I suppose it made sense to celebrate an emphatic victory like Sunday’s.

However, I still feel we might be jumping the gun here.

A respectable result against Celta Vigo tomorrow night, followed by a win at Easter Road, and I’ll be firmly on the reinvigourated Martin O’Neill bandwagon.

I just can’t help feeling that Interviewing O’Neill last night was a tad premature.

I guess you don’t get 7-1 victories very often, so that much alone probably warranted it, to be fair.

However, the Record took the opportunity to view as O’Neill hitting back at ‘Celtic fan media flak’

That’s not really what I read from it, but hey, I’m sure Ryan McDonald has an axe to grind with us because we’ve ridiculed his Pulitzer prize winning work in the Record on a regular basis.

Here is some of what O’Neill had to say:

Well, the interesting thing you talk about the media, in all honesty, is that I know whatever you say, it’ll go whatever way they want it to go. But I was really positive about the second half.

I told the players in the dressing room after the Benfica game that that’s it, we’ve got to take the positive side of it, otherwise you just might as well lie down.

All fair comment, I can’t argue with that.

I wasn’t widely bothered about what media or fanzines were saying at the end of it all, as long as the players believed it was the most important thing. And they certainly did.

We had great moments on Sunday, it was lovely to win, it was lovely to score the goals that we did. And now we’ve got a massive game on Thursday to try and win, to try and get back into that competition.

I assume by Fanzines, this is what Ryan McDonald construes to be fan media?

The only fanzine I know is The Celtic View.

So, if Martin O’Neill wasn’t bothered with what they publish on a quarterly basis, then I guess we’re all good?

Then again, maybe O’Neill is stuck back at the turn of the century?

And he can’t tell the difference between a fanzine and fan media.

I guess we’ll just have to give Ryan McDonald the benefit of the doubt on that one

Look, Martin O’Neill has every right to be bullish after Sunday’s win.

But he’ll know better than anyone that we require consistency here, and not just domestically.

We got a proper impression of what our domestic rivalry amounted to last weekend.

No offence to them, or actually, loads of offence to them, a Celtic that gets its act together properly has nothing to fear from them.

If we continue with the kind of form we produced on Sunday, the domestic side of things will take care of itself.

The real aim here need to be to qualify for the knock out stages of the Europa League.

And that aim needs to begin in earnest tomorrow night.

O’Neill seems to think the same thing.

As I’ve discussed before, he’s become very bullish about qualifying for the knock out stages.

It’s a far cry from his early attitude towards this competition.

Where he believed we weren’t good enough to compete in it.

Well, now it’s up to him to change that perception.

He can start with a win tomorrow night.

That’ll do nicely.

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