Somehow, things became even more manic once Martin O’Neill left Celtic over a fortnight ago.
Celtic’s legendary coach had brought back that winning feeling to Glasgow, including beating Rangers and Feyenoord.
But Wilfried Nancy’s era at Celtic took a turn for the absolute worse, losing his first four matches, including the League Cup final to St Mirren.
Not long after, Peter Lawwell resigned as chairman, and supporters got one part of their wish, and that’s a board member out of the door.
The Celtic fans won’t change their stance on the board, but the viewpoint of O’Neill probably won’t sit well with the supporters.
- READ MORE: Tom English shares what he told ‘senior’ people at Rangers about Peter Lawwell amid Celtic exit
How will you remember Peter Lawwell’s time at Celtic?
Martin O’Neill reacts to Peter Lawwell’s exit from Celtic
O’Neill was present when Celtic’s chaotic AGM was cancelled last month, so he got to see firsthand the broken relationship between fans and the board.
Speaking on talkSPORT, O’Neill was asked by Jim White about Lawwell leaving, and the suggestion that he was driven out because of the ‘abuse and threats.’
O’Neill was critical of how Lawwell has been treated, and urged it all to ‘really stop.’
Jim White: “Celtic chairman Peter Lawwell announced that he was stepping down at the end of this year, citing intolerable abuse and threats. I looked on social media, and I saw a lot of fans saying, ‘What abuse? What threats?’
“Do you recognise the fact, and in the eyes of some of those fans, it isn’t a fact. It’s allegations. There has been no abuse, according to them. Do you recognise some of the fans for what they have done, and do you accept, yeah, they are frustrated, and it has driven them to do that?”
O’Neill: “No, I don’t accept that at all. You can be frustrated as a football fan. You can. But please, taking this out in the manner in which they have done, as Peter mentions, the abuse is intolerable. And it is strong.
“When it gets to your family. You have got to stop. Really, really stop and think about this here.
“I don’t want to be an apologist, although Dermot Desmond brought me to the football club in the first place. Way back. When there were bigger names than me in contention for that job. I got an unbelievable opportunity to come back. Circumstances taken into consideration. Again, it was an absolute privilege to do it.
“But then I witnessed this, and it’s more than discord. It’s like mayhem. It was personalised really at the AGM.”
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O’Neill is going to ‘really upset’ Celtic fans…
Celtic domination in Scotland is there for all to see. Titles galore. Trophies for fun, and more Trebles than Rangers have league titles in the last ten years.
But O’Neill stated that he might ‘really upset’ the Celtic Park faithful because they have had ‘great success’ in the last 20 years.
“I thought about this a few weeks ago,” added O’Neill. “I thought, ‘Does this discord step onto the pitch?’ I thought to myself, ‘Well, it doesn’t really. You have got a couple of different players of different cultures, maybe it doesn’t affect them.’
“But it does eventually. It is very, very wary. Something has to give. All I will say is, and this might really upset a lot of Celtic fans in this sense, that there has been great success over the last 20-odd years. Like 38 trophies.
“Sometimes, you can have a dip. You can have a dip. It’s happened to Celtic before in the 90s. I think they won three trophies in ten years or whatever the case might be.
“Celtic will come again, but they will come more quickly if there is a spirit there and a togetherness.”
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