Martin O’Neill has spoken about Maik Nawrocki’s Celtic future and the message the manager sent the Polish defender looks bleak.
Nawrocki has struggled to force his way into Celtic’s starting XI since his arrival at the club in 2023.
Two loans spells and plenty of first team football later, O’Neill has delivered his verdict on the big defender and it seems that Nawrocki’s Parkhead future is all but over.
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Martin O’Neill admits Maik Nawrocki’s Celtic fight will be ‘difficult’
Nawrocki might have returned to Celtic this summer thinking that he might have got a chance under O’Neill. That looks unlikely now.
O’Neill told the Daily Record, “In many aspects, you could say it’s a clean slate for everyone, but just taking him. We have Cameron Carter-Vickers back, big Dane Murray whom I’ve got a lot of time for.
“Then you’ve got Liam Scales and Auston Trusty. We’ve got four, so it’s going to be hard for him to battle through from there.
“I have had a word with him. He’s doing really well. There are teams that want to take him on loan, there’s teams that want to buy him – and that’s great.
“You don’t want to stop his momentum. I think he would want to stay and fight for his place here, but that’s going to be difficult.”
How Martin O’Neill will decide Maik Nawrocki’s Celtic future
The Celtic boss then goes on to explain how he is going to make a decision on Nawrocki’s Celtic future and it seems that game time is going to be limited, even in pre-season.
O’Neill continues, “But what I said to him is that I’m going to have a look at some of the matches that he played while he was out on loan. That’s the best way for me to make some sort of judgment in real games.
“Then that’s a conversation he would have. But really, while his career’s going now, he doesn’t want to get stalled here by sitting and being third or fourth-choice centre half.
“But I think he’s done really well here in the training. He’s been an impressive young man as well and really, really well-mannered.”
O’Neill has stopped short of directly telling Nawrocki to leave Celtic, but the message could hardly be clearer.
With four centre-backs ahead of him and clubs already prepared to offer him an escape route, staying at Parkhead risks stalling the momentum he worked so hard to rebuild on loan.
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