Martin O’Neill has finally cleared up the story about Rangers throwing his wife out of a hotel, and Dick Advocaat was blamed for something he never did.
The incident happened before O’Neill’s first Glasgow Derby as Celtic manager. His family were staying at the hotel Rangers planned to use before their trip to Celtic Park.
O’Neill’s wife was told on the Saturday morning that she had to leave before Rangers arrived that afternoon. She initially refused, but the hotel insisted.
O’Neill has now cleared Advocaat of personally ordering her out. The hotel made the call before Rangers arrived.
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Martin O’Neill clears Advocaat over Celtic hotel story
Asked about the incident again, O’Neill said: “Dick didn’t actually throw my wife out. It was the hotel people.
“Dick wouldn’t have recognised my wife and her likewise. Rangers were going to that hotel all the time and that’s fine.
“If they’d said to us during the course of the week ‘by the way, Rangers are here’ then fine. But not in the morning when they were arriving in the afternoon.
“It was the Sunday game. It was the first match I had. So Rangers would arrive on the Saturday afternoon and my missus was told to leave.
“She said ‘I’m not leaving’ but she had to leave. I think it was the hotel making the plans.
“I’m quite sure, honestly, if they’d asked Dick, he would have said, ‘no problem’.
“She wouldn’t have actually been running around behind the door to see what sort of system he was playing or if Arthur Numan is going to play on the left.
“It wasn’t going to be like that. She wouldn’t have known. Actually, my wife might not even have known that we were playing Rangers the next day!”
O’Neill has no issue with Advocaat over it. His anger was aimed at the hotel for waiting until the Saturday morning to tell Geraldine she had to go.
Hotel drama counted for nothing against O’Neill’s Celtic
The Arthur Numan line is classic O’Neill. Geraldine O’Neill was hardly going to crack Rangers’ tactics from behind a hotel door.
Despite the hotel getting her out before Rangers arrived, it did them absolutely no good at Celtic Park.
Celtic hammered Rangers 6-2, with Henrik Larsson and Chris Sutton scoring twice alongside goals from Stiliyan Petrov and Paul Lambert.
Celtic finished the season with the domestic treble. Advocaat has now been cleared, but emptying the hotel room did Rangers absolutely no good.
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