Martin O'Neill: The Biography

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Won Coca-Cola Cup final, beating Middlesbrough in a replay at Hillsborough to clinch a place in Europe for the first time in 35 years. During the five years we [Celtic] played everyone to be perfectly honest – and many a time we played referees an’ all.” From then on, Martin O’Neill’s teams had to battle and overcome Celta Vigo (violent players and incompetent referees), the highly rated Stuttgart (Germans) and then the big one, Liverpool, the biggest name to date.

An important incident from this season showed the greatest aspect of Martin O’Neill. This was when at the end of a game v Rangers ( link), he took midfielder Neil Lennon over to the Celtic fans and proudly paraded him shoulder-to-shoulder after Lennon was racially & verbally abused for the 90mins by the Rangers fans.

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Your work is nostalgic in style and very ‘hands on’ in the creating process, do you think there is a resurgence in this type of work given the predominant digital age we are in? The relationship between O’Neill and the Irish football media during a five-year international tenure remains a source of fascination. We shall return to that later. It would be unfair, as some have suggested, to depict O’Neill’s memoir as a score-settling exercise. Yes, there is occasionally acerbic comment – one would surely expect no less – but an extraordinary career which scaled playing heights under Brian Clough before touching managerial greatness at Celtic and Leicester is depicted with an entertaining tone. There is self-deprecation throughout. Double European Cup winner as a player with Nottingham Forest, playing under legendary Brian Clough. September – O’Neill gives his support to club chairman John Elsom in the wake of the Filbert Street power struggle. Martin O’Neill has reduced the number of nutters at Celtic because he has given them less to be nuts about. ”

April: Celtic secure the Scottish Premier League title. May: Celtic are beaten in the Scottish Cup final by Rangers. His international clients encompass advertising, design, editorial, publishing, as well as regular contributions to the UK and US press including Sony Playstation, Faber Faber, Capital One, EMI Music, Wired USA, Camel & GQ India. One of my jobs at the start – and you can write this as a headline – was trying to find out why exactly we had spent some of our money on Rafael Sheidt.” How things were to turn out differently. Nobody could ever be said to believe what was to happen over the next few years, and the following only covers the true emotion of Martin O’Neill’s reign in brief for the whole Celtic support. O’Neill’s memories of a “mesmeric” Clough remain vivid, from the moment of their initial meeting in the winter of 1975. Clough instantly promoted O’Neill to the first team but was not of a mind to fawn. “Hey, you: Stop putting your mate in the shit. You look like a boy who would put your mate in the shit,” was the message in an early training session.The prior season to his arrival can be best described as amongst the worst the club had endured post-takeover with the John Barnes/Kenny Dalglish managerial reign falling as low as can be. Rangers were in the ascendency and were arrogantly believing that this was a season where they were going to push up in Europe and have Celtic by the jugular under their spiky shoes (as per the writings of one of their more prominent fanzine writers).

His last season was the most difficult, and in many ways should not be seen in any way as being representative of his reign. March – O’Neill’s long-term future remains unresolved after the club denied reports he is set to sign new contract. Understandably his priority was his family, and with hindsight the club should have managed things differently to work as best as possible in the circumstances but then again who wanted to lose Martin O’Neill? The club tried to accommodate him as best as anyone could. I find editing the past therapeutic and like to reassemble my own versions of moments,imaginary or real. O’Neill also helped to give some good young players their first steps. Kennedy and Marshall outstanding at the Nou Camp, Liam Miller’s (ultimately brief) purple patch, before he got snatched by old purple nose, McManus and McGeady both made debuts, while the likes of Jamie Smith, Ross Wallace and Craig Beattie all looked like they had something to offer. However, over time, excluding McGeady none of them have hit the major heights, but they mostly all had good solid careers at a decent level.Martin O’Neill’s inspired team completed an exceptional Treble that season (league, Scottish cup & league cup), something that even the most optimistic Celtic fan at the start of the season could not believe would happen. I was obsessed with graffiti & art when I was at school, mates in my class said I should ‘be an artist’, I went through all the hoops and found myself on a graphic design & printmaking BA in 1992. I had a collage epiphany in a paper recycling centre in Germany in ‘93 which fed 2 years of experimental collage and printmaking. Then I kind of fell off the end of the course with no direction or training on how to make a living in the art/design world, but I was making a lot of work everyone on my course seemed to love. Do you know what, that has never occurred to me,” O’Neill replied. “It’s such a great idea I am going to start that next week. The only problem is I’ve been so busy winning matches I haven’t had time to do it!” O’Neill was making the point that managers are judged by the matches they win and not necessarily for the team’s style. He is a clever man but even he could not have anticipated the success achieved during his short time in charge. ”