When the Celtic board bowed to the inevitable and sacked manager Wilfried Nancy and head of football operations Paul Tisdale they instantly lifted some of the gloom that had gathered over the troubled club.
Putting the bat signal up for Martin O’Neill to come to the rescue for the second time in this craziest of seasons was another move that met public approval and pleased the masses.
O’Neill is more than a manager, he is an avatar that reminds Celtic supporters of a better time. A time of Larsson and Sutton… domestic and sometimes even European success.
Bringing him back may amount to nothing more than smoke and mirrors when Johnny Kenny is leading the line instead of the King of Kings but it will buy the board time nonetheless.
The problem for Celtic and O’Neill is that, in a transfer window where they should have hit the ground running, they are now scrambling about starting the process of identifying the players they need to bolster their team for the title fight ahead.
Nancy and Tisdale had their own targets, Columbus Crew defender Steven Moreira even sat in the stand during Saturday’s Old Firm defeat, but you would be astonished if the club now act on the wish list drawn up by a man labelled their worst ever manager.
Any potential signings that met Tisdale’s approval will now also be looked upon with suspicion.
Wilfried Nancy had identified transfer targets for the January window before he was sacked
Paul Tisdale was also let go by Celtic, having been a key man in terms of recruitment
Martin O’Neill must now identify targets and move quickly in the January window
O’Neill admitted on Tuesday that he will ask assistant manager Shaun Maloney and fellow coach Mark Fotheringham to draft up a list of potential signings.
‘We need to supplement the squad, no doubt,’ said O’Neill. ‘And I think that Shaun Maloney, for instance, who has been working in the background on certain things, I think he would get to know some players.
‘I will rely on Shaun, Mark (Fotheringham) and Stephen (McManus) for their opinion on players but, eventually, it’ll be down to me as much as anything else.’
The best team O’Neill can put out at the moment has some glaring deficiencies. There is not a department of the team you can examine that doesn’t require quality reinforcements. Every matchday, the starting XI has three or four players that make you wonder how the standards at Celtic have fallen so far, so quickly.
January business will dictate whether they can be roused and cajoled to compete with Hearts and Rangers for the title. It is a damning indictment on the club and its infrastructure that the task is now falling to three men with minimal experience of recruitment in this era of football.
When O’Neill arrived for his first spell at Celtic, Chris Sutton, John Hartson, Alan Thompson and Neil Lennon soon followed him north from the English Premier League.
The 73-year-old will not need to be told he would be wasting his time studying the team sheets of Chelsea, Aston Villa or even Leicester for any potential new recruits this time around.
You would be surprised if O’Neill knows the ins and outs of the Norwegian, Belgian or Greek leagues where Celtic can expect to entice players with a bumper wage and the prospect of Champions League football further down the line.
Maloney may be ‘working on things in the background’ but as recently as Monday his title was professional player pathway manager at Parkhead, about as removed from transfer business you can get without selling pies on matchday.
O’Neill will rely on Shaun Maloney to help him bring in players to improve the squad
The 42-year-old has experience as head coach of Hibernian and Wigan, and also as assistant to Roberto Martinez at Belgium, but nothing that indicates he has the skill or knowledge to identify and sign players that can drag up the standard of the current Celtic first team.
With data and analytics now playing a huge part in recruitment at most well-run clubs, the idea of O’Neill, Maloney and Fotheringham sitting down in more analogue fashion to discuss players is incredible.
Even if players are identified, how can Celtic sell the club to any potential new recruit when O’Neill’s tenure can be counted in weeks rather than years?
Even in sunnier times at Celtic, transfer business has been chaotic and unsatisfactory, and that is with a full-time manager and Tisdale or an equivalent in place. This time last year they sold Kyogo Furuhashi to Rennes for £10million but didn’t replace the talismanic Japanese striker. Adam Idah departed in the summer but was only replaced by free agent Kelechi Iheanacho after the window shut.
Are we really expecting things to go any better with a new coaching team picking up the pieces a week into January?
