Martin O’Neill is a man who always wears his heart on his sleeve. At Celtic, he never help back when he was passionately defending the club or spoke about the club.
And as a pundit, he is just as good. O’Neill is a man who loves Celtic through and through. He is also a man of principles.
And when it was put to him that player power forced him out of the door at Nottingham Forrest, the former Celtic manager defended himself furiously and said that there were only three Celtic players he would have listened to during his whole career as a manager.
Martin O’Neill names three Celtic legends he would listen to
The Northern Irishman left Celtic in 2005 and eventually went on to manage Aston Villa, Sunderland and the Republic of Ireland.
But towards the end of his career, he took on his old club, Nottingham Forrest. O’Neill only lasted 19 games and led them to ninth in the English Championship.
He was sacked in June 2019 but refuted claims that his players got him dismissed.
O’Neill said [TalkSPORT], “There’s lots of players, I didn’t like and then, but you’ve got to try and get them to play for you. There was this idea that it was player power at Nottingham Forrest.
“Do me a favour. Honestly, just ridiculous. Players didn’t get me out in the end.
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“It was a nice little narrative for the local journalists. Player power?
“Seriously if Henrik Larsson or Chris Sutton or Neil Lennon, come up and said we don’t like the way you’re dealing with things, you know what, I would dismiss them but I might even think about it.
“But when you’ve got a couple of non-descripts at Nottingham Forrest come up and say we don’t like the way you’re doing it. Please give me a break. Honestly.”
This was an outstanding rant by O’Neill and was very reminiscent of his time at Celtic. Like O’Neill, I seriously can’t believe that players at a second-tier English club had enough clout to force out a man who won back-to-back European Cups and a European Super Cup.
But it was great to see Martin O’Neill deliver those killer lines like he did when he was at Celtic. Those were the days.
In other news, Five key passes, two assists… 22-year-old Celtic player’s performance vs Aberdeen went under-the-radar