Celtic have got in their own way in the transfer market. All of that must have been galling to O’Neill. As part of his negotiations to stay on he surely raised it as a big issue.
Under O’Neill, Celtic signed five players on loan – Benjamin Arthur, Joel Mvuka, Junior Adamu, Tomas Cvancara and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Oxlade-Chamberlain did not start many games but he contributed two winners so you would put him down as a success. The other four did not work out.
They can be added to the list of other recent failures – Shin Yamada, Michel-Ange Balikwisha, Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, Hayato Inamura. Celtic might also have expected more from Sebastian Tounekti.
So much of the grief around Celtic begins with their recruitment. There has been notable successes but it has become last-minute and scattergun. O’Neill needs it to be better. It needs to evolve rather than stagnate.
Of all the players that had game time against Hearts on the final day of the league season, nine of them came in on Brendan Rodgers’ watch and another three were Postecoglou recruits.
O’Neill knows a player when he sees one but in his second and then third coming at Celtic last season he never gave the impression of a man who is out there sourcing these guys. It is not really his job.
It is difficult to see under the bonnet of Celtic’s recruitment operation. Are good players being lined up but deals being stymied from above? That’s the feeling among some, for sure.
Ending up with Adamu and Mvuka in January, and Balikwisha and others before that, should be a line in the sand for Celtic. If they don’t heed the lessons of the recent past then there’s got to be fear among their supporters that those mistakes will just be repeated.
O’Neill is going again, so maybe he’s received the assurances he needs.
They rolled the dice with Nancy and made a dreadful blunder. Now, instead of gambling on an outsider, they have turned once again to the safest of safe bets.
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