Celtic ace should pick battles as spiky response shows there's life in the fight and Rangers comment regret

He didn’t quite say it. Almost, but not quite. There’s enough flak flying around at Celtic before irritating anyone with a phrase associated with the other lot across the city.

But Martin O’Neill doesn’t do walking away. Why would he? Celtic are top of the league – until Saturday evening at least.

They might have endured a nightmare seven days before the international break. They might be faced with an arduous nine-games-in-28 day-spell before the next break. But O’Neill has his self-respect. He is a proud man. He is a competitive animal. Why wouldn’t he stay and take the fight to Rangers, if that is what needs to be done?

Celtic manager Martin O'Neill is refreshed after a break with family. | SNS Group

As for Cameron Carter-Vickers, pick your battles son. O’Neill has come back out fighting. “It felt almost as if you are walking away from something here, then that doesn’t look great,” he said at Lennoxtown on Friday. “It feels like you have given up.” And O’Neill has gone through way too much, including being bombed out of a European Cup final by Brian Clough, to give up following a period of hardship. As for age, once you reach your seventies, who’s counting?

It was, O’Neill reflected, probably a moment of weakness – “of which I have plenty!” he added – when he started saying out loud what probably should have stayed between him and his confreres in the Parkhead press room on 20 September, right after a second Old Firm defeat in a week.

That was the last time anyone in the room at Lennoxtown on Friday had been in his presence. At the time, it felt very uncertain whether we would hear him conduct another press conference.

He now regrets placing this seed of doubt in people’s heads. He wonders whether he would have felt inclined to bare his soul so publicly had it not been the eve of an international window. It seemed to invite (along with three defeats in a week) some self-reflection. “It’s not the first time I have regretted saying something, as well you know,” he added on Friday, as he continued to explain why he had decided to stay on.

He revealed it took just 24 hours to reach this conclusion. He went on a break, although he didn’t say where. But it was clearly abroad, away from the football madhouse. Just him and the family. Wife Geraldine, two daughters, one son-in-law and two granddaughters.

"We were away for a few days,” he reported. “Really, genuinely, it wasn't that long, but it was it was as good a holiday as I've had with family.” He attempted to switch off. He caught some Nations League matches – Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland, mostly, very little of Scotland. “I floated in and out of matches,” he said. He feels renewed, which is good to hear considering what lies ahead.

The next week is challenging enough – Sunday's trip to Motherwell, where O’Neill says he has never not encountered a difficult game, and then Benfica in Lisbon on Thursday night. A rerun of last season’s title shootout with Hearts follows next weekend, when it feels as though he ought to be welcomed back by the Parkhead Tannoy announcer once more.

How many new beginnings is O’Neill going to have at Celtic? There was his original arrival, which was not so much a fresh start as a turbo-charged introduction. Aged just 48, he led the team to a treble in his first season.

Then came that remarkable, supposedly temporary, return aged 73, a year ago this month. Before long, he was gone again – only to be recruited once more when Wilfried Nancy’s reign hit the buffers. A league title and a Scottish Cup later he made a triumphant exit, only to re-emerge weeks later after other candidates were allowed to either slip through the net or were declared unacceptable by a perpetually unhappy section of the Celtic support.

Even then, O’Neill’s re-recruitment took a while to be confirmed. But you simply cannot keep a good man down. He is back once more, when many, including some players, wondered whether they might ever see him again.

Midfielder Mika Baur, fresh back from becoming the 1000th player to play for Germany after two substitute appearances v Serbia and Greece, was genuinely worried.

“I just read it online, as the other players did maybe,” he said, with reference to all the speculation about O’Neill’s future at the start of the international window. “But absolutely, I was glad that the coaching staff is still the same. I’ve only been here for seven weeks some things still feel new.”

One player might have had mixed feelings. Cameron Carter-Vickers allowed his thoughts to perhaps run away with themselves following the 1-0 league defeat to Rangers when he seemed to refer to muddled tactics and queried the “consistency” of the message. To say O’Neill scoffed at this seeming criticism of his methods is an understatement. The American defender, it emerged, is a doubt for the trip to Fir Park with a strain. There was no mention of whether the strain is linked to O’Neill repeatedly kicking his backside.

“Clarity is listening,” the manager had said earlier in the broadcasters’ interview.

O’Neill referenced the title shootout win over Hearts. Needing another goal with time running out, he signalled a switch to three at the back. “We go three at the back because needs must,” he said. “We must get a goal. If we concede, then too bad. We need something going forward and we get it. We get the goal at the end of the day. I didn’t see anyone in the dressing room going: ‘no clarity there’. I don’t accept that.”

So yes, O’Neill is back. Or still here. He even has a new signing. Or someone who feels like a new signing.

Jota has mercifully recovered from an ACL injury sustained 18 months ago against Dundee United and could feature from the bench against Motherwell. Pity the person detailed to get the winger up to speed with what’s been going on in the interim.

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