Martin O’Neill kept returning to one line during his first Celtic pre-season interview, and supporters will find it difficult to ignore.
After everything that happened last season, many Celtic fans will have expected a stronger transfer message from the new manager before a huge Champions League qualifier.
Instead, O’Neill kept coming back to ‘a couple of players’. Whether that proves to be the full plan or not, it was a surprisingly modest message at the start of such an important summer.
Should Celtic fans be worried about O’Neill’s transfer comments?
Celtic transfer expectations were lowered by one repeated phrase
O’Neill’s update was meant to look ahead to the new season, but one part of it stood out above everything else.
Speaking in his first pre-season interview, O’Neill said: “We’ll get preseason, try and get a couple of players in to augment the squad and try and get going.”
To be fair to O’Neill, managers rarely reveal transfer plans in public. But this did not sound like a throwaway comment.
It sounded like a manager preparing supporters for a careful window rather than the level of work many believe Celtic need.
Celtic’s Champions League push needs more than careful words
O’Neill then explained why pre-season matters so much for Celtic this summer.
He said: “Vital really if we’re going to do it. First of all, we talk about trying to augment the squad. Secondly, it’s getting players prepared both physically and mentally for those games.
“And yeah, that becomes very very important. As you say, the disappointment of last season, I think that not making it into the Champions League because of having a good run the previous year, I think that carried over to to league performances.
“I think it carried over just to a, malaise is far too strong a word, but disappointment and just concern about everything, it just didn’t happen and as a consequence I think we fell down a little bit.
“But we raised it at the end and now this [Champions League] tie that we are in, whoever it may be, becomes very important.”
That is the part Celtic fans cannot gloss over. O’Neill believes missing out on the Champions League affected league performances and left a mark on the squad.
If that lesson has been learned, Celtic should not be entering another qualifier hoping that a ‘couple’ additions are enough.
Celtic supporters will judge the transfer window, not the interview
O’Neill’s final transfer message sounded more like a boardroom explanation than a manager demanding reinforcements.
He said: “I know times have changed greatly and there’s just not the money, but isn’t that part of the fun of trying to get players in at the football club who can go and express themselves and be really good players and then eventually maybe because moving on to pastures, richer pastures, in that sense.”
For a club with over £70m in the bank, how does Celtic ‘not have the money’?
There is nothing new about Celtic buying well, developing players and eventually selling them on. The interview carried more caution than ambition before one of Celtic’s biggest months in years.
If ‘a couple of players’ turns out to be the extent of Celtic’s summer business, those words will come back to haunt this interview.
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