Peter Grant was speaking about Martin O’Neill strengthening the Celtic squad and has inadvertently put pressure on the Parkhead board.
Grant believes that the Celtic board made promises to O’Neill to persuade him to become the permanent manager back in June.
The former Celtic midfielder told The Sunday Post, “Martin is a wily old fox. He has been around the block. He will know more than anyone that Celtic got away with it last season.
“It was a remarkable campaign and what he achieved to guide the team to a double was remarkable. But you don’t get away with it twice.
“He will know that this is a squad that needs to be strengthened and he will have had that conversation before accepting the job.
“He isn’t a young, relatively inexperienced manager coming in with no knowledge of how it works between the boardroom and the dressing room. He is well versed in all of this.
“He will have had a few guarantees about what he was getting in terms of being able to go and mould this squad into the kind of team he wants. He will be more than aware of where the deficiencies were last season.”
If Grant is right, the next question becomes whether one signing is enough to deliver on those promises.
👀 Is Paul Lambert right?
Will Martin O'Neill be demanding of the board behind the scenes?
If Celtic made Martin O’Neill guarantees, is one signing enough?
Any manager taking the Celtic job will expect assurances over recruitment.
So if O’Neill was guaranteed to be backed, which he was because Celtic chairman Brian Wilson promised he would be, where are the new players.
The transfer window opened on 1 June and, while Camilo Duran is now expected to become Celtic’s first summer signing, Martin O’Neill is still waiting for the wider rebuild many supporters expected.
Why the Parkhead club have yet to spend a penny this summer will baffle supporters, particularly if Grant is correct that recruitment assurances formed part of O’Neill’s discussions before taking the job.
Transfer pressure now falls on the Celtic board
The most telling part of what Grant says is that Celtic ‘got away’ with winning the league and the Scottish Cup last season.
Not many Celtic supporters will argue against that. Winning the double was an outstanding achievement considering there were obvious weaknesses in the Hoops squad.
O’Neill clearly can see where Celtic need to be strengthened. There are only 27 days until the Scottish Premiership season kicks off.
Even more worrying is that Celtic have 42 days until the Champions League qualifiers begin. And yet, the squad is weaker than the one that won the double.
Duran may become the first arrival, but one transfer was never likely to satisfy a manager tasked with improving a squad Peter Grant believes needed significant strengthening.
If Grant is right about the promises made before O’Neill took the job, Duran should be viewed as the beginning of the board’s response rather than the end of it.
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