When Martin O’Neill answered Celtic’s call earlier this season, it was never supposed to become this.
The original plan sounded simple enough. Brendan Rodgers had resigned suddenly, the club were scrambling and O’Neill agreed to steady things for a short period while Celtic searched for a permanent replacement.
Instead, he ended up rescuing the season twice.
His first spell brought calm back to the club during the autumn before Wilfried Nancy was appointed permanently. Then after Nancy’s collapse in January, Celtic turned back to O’Neill again with the title race slipping away and the dressing room looking drained physically and mentally.
Now he heads into the Scottish Cup Final against Neil Lennon’s Dunfermline with a Premiership title already secured after one of the wildest finishes to a campaign Celtic have ever produced.
What changed most under O’Neill was probably belief.
Celtic stopped looking nervous late in matches. The comeback from 2-0 down at Ibrox shifted momentum in the title race because Celtic looked stronger as the game went on while Rangers faded badly. Then came the Hearts match where Daizen Maeda and Callum Osmand scored deep into stoppage time after Arne Engels’ equaliser.
O’Neill admitted he had serious doubts before accepting the job initially.
Speaking this week, he opened up on the fears he carried about returning to modern management at his age.
He said: (Sky Sports), “I got a call from Dermot Desmond, a major shareholder here at the Football Club, and says that Brendan Rodgers had resigned, and I think it genuinely took them by surprise that took the Football Club. So he said, would you come in? He said, you can either be there two weeks or two months until we get somebody.
“I think he said somebody better, but I’m prepared to say that he said somebody younger. All right, I’m not sure. But I always felt it was really, really interim.
“Very much so. My doubts, I might have mentioned to you, might not even think it’s worth reiterating, but my doubts were not of what had happened here in the past 20-odd years ago, was really my age as much as anything else, whether you could handle it, whether you would be feeling outdated in many aspects.
“And if it didn’t happen for you, yes, you would just be like the dinosaur, not involved in today’s game, things like that there.
“And I think that was the worry.”
Those comments probably explain why O’Neill has looked emotional at times over the last few weeks.
This was not a nostalgia appointment built around old stories. Celtic became harder to play against again under him. The midfield pressed with more aggression, Maeda’s form exploded and Callum McGregor regained control of matches after looking overloaded earlier in the season.
The strangest part is nobody still knows whether Saturday will be his final game.
O’Neill arrived expecting a couple of weeks helping the club through chaos. Instead he rebuilt the season and dragged Celtic to another title from a position where many supporters had already given up hope.
