There is a really great old spirit about this Celtic team – Martin O’Neill

Perhaps this will be Martin O’Neill’s final post match media conference at Celtic Park and if it is what a way to go out after leading Celtic to the Scottish Premiership title on Saturday afternoon with a 3-1 win over Hearts.

Derek McInnes’ side who came to waste time, play for a draw and employ all the dark arts going, instead of trying to win the title in style…

It certainly didn’t work for McInnes with Celtic goals for Arne Engels, Daizen Maeda and Callum Osmand bettering the Lawrence Shankland’s opener. As the dust settles the main thing that will be remembered is that Celtic are the Champions again!…

Here’s everything that was said by Martin O’Neill to the mainstream media after Celtic won the league on Saturday afternoon at Paradise….

Q: How are you feeling after that?

Martin O’Neill: “I’m naturally delighted that we’ve won. Really, I said to the lads the other day, it’s really surreal. I think it was last year I came along and I think it was a pundit. And then, so a year later, to be here as the manager of the football club is just, it’s really, really incredible. I genuinely can’t believe it. It’s like a dream.”

Q: Was there a point that you thought, right, Celtic will do this?

Martin O’Neill: “Yes, there was a point. It was when Callum Osmand was racing away and sticking this into an empty net. It was the only moment in my whole time! Of course, if you’ve felt it in your head, you can do it. Never give up on the team. You had asked me before, Rangers games, could we take it into the final day of the season? This was last week. I’d have taken that all day long. And so we’ve come from behind in all three games. But the players, I know I’ve said this before to the lads here, I’m not sure they believe me, but there is a really great old spirit about them. We make a lot of mistakes in the games, but they always felt as if they could do it, which was great.”

Q: Why does this rank for you, Martin?

Martin O’Neill: “I’ve just done an interview with Chris Sutton, who’s obviously a very, very poor judge, but a great player, a great player for me. And that was a really fine side, a really terrific side. I think this year, lots of differences coming in, probably not knowing the players. So for us to go and win, it’s up alongside any of those. But I, please, I don’t want to sound self-effacing, it’s never been my nature, but honestly, the players have done fantastically and the coaching staff have been great. I’m just an old man wandering around. Sometimes they think, in the training ground, they think that I’m a vagrant, you know? So it is genuinely really lovely to win. I thought I’d never experience that feeling ever again.”

Q: And is this 100 per cent your final game in the league?

Martin O’Neill:  “Well, I’ve just spoken to Dermot Desmond there and he didn’t indicate otherwise, you know? So, genuinely, I would imagine so, yeah.”

Q: You had to throw caution to the wind there but you were rewarded for that?

Martin O’Neill: “Yeah, so we went three at the back. The gamble was that we had to get a goal. And Osmand might get in behind the Hearts defence, but you’re all leaving yourself open. There’s only Scales on our side, who would’ve been able to head it, you know? So we’ve got Marcelo Saracchi, who’s the same size as me. In fact, he’s smaller than me. And then you had Alistair Johnston. But you had to take the gamble. Once we got the goal, you saw that we had to put Dane straight on. He headed a couple of clear, which was great for us. So you just knew that Hearts were just going to go forward with it. So the changes eventually did great for us, but sometimes they don’t work at all.”

Q: Daizen Maeda’s performance today?

Martin O’Neill: “Daizen’s been really special, really special. Considering he doesn’t know one single thing I’m saying to him. He just nods in agreement. He’s special, he’s had a phenomenal run here in recent weeks. He’s been a major reason why we’re there.”

Q: What’s your views, Martin, on the scenes after the third goal?

Martin O’Neill:  “Yeah, well, I’ve just done an interview there. Honestly, as I’ve said, I’m not pleading the Fifth Amendment. I don’t know at the end of the day what if there are. If some players have been accosted, Hearts players, then that’s just not right at all.”

Q: Martin, just a word on the Callum McGregor comments afterwards. On the field, he was saying just how many times this club have been hit over this year and how much the players have had to deal with. From the whole club, just how much of an effort has this taken to get this over the line?

Martin O’Neill:  “It really is a massive, massive effort because when you step into the football club, Brendan resigns, so I go and I realise that there’s a lot of disharmony in the club for all sorts of reasons, which there’s no point in going into today. You come on and you think you’ve put whatever games I had in charge, kind of steadying the ship, and Wilfried comes in, which is fine, just didn’t get to grips early enough with it. And then I come back again and then again, disharmony, throwing the tennis balls onto the field. And the most important thing to me in recent weeks was this coming together and to me, Celtic Park, in the last couple of games that we’ve been here, is reminiscent of the Celtic Park I always knew.”

Q: Can you put it into words? How much strain it’s maybe put on you, but now that you’re sitting here with a winner’s medal, the euphoria?

Martin O’Neill:  “Yeah, I’m ecstatic. I’m absolutely ecstatic. Really, I’m ecstatic. And the great thing about it is that I’m getting a lot of credit for things I didn’t do. But I’m not going to disavow them of that. I’ll just stay with it.”

Q: There’s now a chance you could win a double this season. Is that just beyond your wildest dreams?

Martin O’Neill: “Of course. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I never thought that I would ever get an opportunity, never stand on a podium again and win something for this club. Never. Not in a million years.”

Q: What was going through your head when you were lifting that trophy?

Martin O’Neill:  “Oh, just the best feeling in the world. Seriously. The best feeling in the world. There’s nothing like it. Nothing like it. Absolutely. And I think that we’ve been in front in the season for about eight or nine minutes.

Q: These players, Martin, they’ve been written off countless times. They’ve been wrote about, spoken about in not the greatest of terms this season. Where does this group of players now sit within the history books of this football club?

Martin O’Neill: “Listen, I’ve never wanted to give players excuses during my time as a manager years ago. But this group here have been through a lot. They’ve had a resignation early on. They’ve had me coming in. Wouldn’t have had a clue who I was. And then leaving, another fellow coming in. Then leaving, somebody else, me coming back again. And so that’s kind of disturbing for a team. So we’ve got lots of things that we need to put right. There’s no question about that.

“But honestly, I said the fighting spirit that they have within the group I think is epitomised by the captain. I think that those things are special. And eventually, when it boils down to it, for all the tactics in the world, it is really about heart. It is, honestly. It is about heart. The great, great players can pick the pass. They can do this and they can play that there. And it’s all nice. It looks as if tactics are working a treat. And we might not have that. So you have to show some heart. And they’ve done that.”

Q: Can this be the thing that helps, in the summer, the club go to that next level that we’ve been talking about throughout this season?

Martin O’Neill:  “Again, I’ve just said that that’s definitely a reload. Hearts have been brilliant this year. It’s a wake-up call, an absolute wake-up call to Celtic and Rangers for a start. I think Hearts have been the story of the year as well too because they’ve been brilliant, absolutely brilliant. They’ve been six or seven minutes away from winning it. And if they’d won it, they would have deserved it. There’s no question about it. As I said to you, it’s easy to be patronising now at this stage. Derek McInnes won the Manager of the Year and he’s deserved it. He’s deserved it for what he’s done for that football club. And they’ve been terrific.”

Q: The celebration is likely to differ from what you did last time you won a title at Celtic?

Martin O’Neill:  “I was a lot younger then, so the wine will have a bigger effect on me now this time. But, yeah, I’m going to. I’ve got two grandchildren there now, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve just seen them for a moment or two. And, yeah, they’ve never seen their grandfather in a bad state, but they will see it tonight. And I’ll be fine tomorrow.

Q: Does that mean a lot to you that you’re able to share that with your grandkids now? Is that something you thought you’d never be able to do?

Martin O’Neill:  “Yeah, I was always the one that felt… You know the way that the players parade their children after the game? I was really against that most of the time, because generally speaking, in a year or two, most of them were not even married to the same person. So I never really thought that that was a good idea. But, funnily enough, Wycombe Wanderers in 1991, and we won the Vauxhall Conference and beat Kidderminster, and I had my two girls, who were nine and six, parading after me in Wembley Stadium, the old Wembley. And it was a picture I really treasure. Now I wanted to do the same with the two grandchildren, and that’s what I’m going to do. So for all the stick I was giving those boys, and most of them will be divorced later on, I’m going to do it. I’m going to take the children now.”

Q: If not here, has this reignited your desire and willingness to manage anywhere?

Martin O’Neill: “Me? That’s a good point. I really don’t. Honestly, it’s taken its toll. We have another week to go. I’ll meet the fellow that I owe a great deal to in football, because he pulled me out of the quagmire when I signed him at Leicester. Yeah, and I was in the quagmire.”

Q: So you haven’t seen the scenes at the end, then?

Martin O’Neill: “No, I have not seen the scenes.

Q: You must have seen…?

Martin O’Neill:  “Well, if I say I didn’t see the scenes, you can’t tell me I must have seen them. I genuinely didn’t see the scenes at the end, because I’m there. I thought the game wasn’t over, so I’m trying to push some of our fans off the pitch again to play whatever is left. Obviously, I think at 3-1, I think that the fourth official had said to me there was like a minute to go when we scored the goal. So with the best will in the world, they’re not going to get two goals in that time. So I didn’t see the incidents. Obviously, there’s a lot of commotion in the tunnel, so I don’t know. But getting back to the point that Robert said, if Hearts players have been accosted by some of our fans, that’s pretty serious.”

Q: So you haven’t had that chance to even speak to Derek McInnes?

Martin O’Neill:  “No, I haven’t had a chance to speak to him. But whoever was going to win, whoever was going to win the game, I would imagine that the same scenario would have happened. I think that Derek would have been on the pitch with his team and I would have been sitting in a room with a towel over my head.

Q: Martin, did the referee tell you the game was finished?

Martin O’Neill: “No, I was asking the fourth official or one of the linesmen in the tunnel and he said it’s over. But you’re right, I didn’t know that. No, Derek came over to me and shook my hand and he said, well done. Then it was probably the moment I thought, well, the game must be over. But I didn’t know. And honestly, I’m not pushing it to the side. It’ll be something that the officials or people have to look at. I just didn’t know.”

Q: How much are you looking forward to next Saturday?

Martin O’Neill: “I’m really, really looking forward to it now, absolutely. It’s a chance for us to try and win and a chance for Neil Lennon. I watched them last night as well too. It’s very difficult for the side in the Championship to try and get through, isn’t it? A lot of matches, isn’t it? But he’s done wonders, wonders at them. I just don’t want him to do wonders next week. But we’ll go as strong as we possibly can.”

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