The nightmare spell in charge for the Frenchman allowed table-topping Hearts to surge ahead at the Premiership summit
Celtic’s head coach Martin O’Neill gives instructions to his players(Image: )
Martin O’Neil admits he wishes he had never been forced to step away from Celtic’ s title fight to let Wilfried Nancy take over the reigns.
The veteran boss heads to Tynecastle on Sunday knowing a defeat against the league leaders could torpedo his hopes of repairing the damage done by Nancy during the Frenchman’s ill-fated short stint in charge. Victory would see Hearts open up a nine point gap over the champions and O’Neill admits, that with only another 15 games remaining, Celtic’s league defence would be in all manner of trouble heading towards the final stretch.
Which is why he now regrets ever having to leave his position as interim manager when Nancy was appointed to oversee a disastrous December. O’Neill said: “You can’t change the course of the season but in hindsight I maybe wouldn’t have minded staying on.
“But that was always going to be the case. When Wilfried was coming in I was to step aside and I willingly did that.
“Now, when you think of the situation I think it would have been nice to have stayed on but that wasn’t to be. I’m holding absolutely no-one to account.
“In fact. Sometimes maybe there might have been a bit of relief that you’re going and handing it on. But now you are back again so first of all you have to claw things back.”
Wilfried Nancy (left) talks to the Celtic players(Image: PA)
O’Neill, though, admits he’s relishing the prospect of a ‘must-not-lose’ trip to Tynecastle. He added: “There’s an excitement about it but naturally you want to try to win it.
“But for us, on Sunday, as I think Callum McGregor has said in an interview, if we can’t win it it would be a long way back for us if we lost it.”
And O’Neill insists the pressure of being placed in charge for the entirety of the run-in is no different from the strain he felt at being asked to hold the fort initially, after Brendan Rodgers was forced out of the door by principal shareholder Dermot Desmond.
He said: “I felt in my first little spell here – at the end of October, beginning of November – that it was a bit more about stabilising. It was actually trying to win some football matches to get ourselves back on track again. We did that but then we lost a bit of ground.
“So coming back again it feels as if it’s almost like the same thing again, having to fight and coming back on track.The only difference is that this spell would be longer.
“I wasn’t sure how long the other would be. I think Mr Desmond said it was either going to be two weeks or perhaps maybe two months, it was probably somewhere in between. But this time it seems to be till the end of the season.
“You just pick up the position that you’re in and you try and improve, that’s really what I’m trying to do.”
O’Neill confirmed that new striker Tomas Cvancara could be in line for a starting place and a baptism of fire in the table top clash.
And he hopes further reinforcements will follow the Czech who has joined on loan until the end of the season from Borussia Monchengladbach.
He said: “I suppose anything is possible. We would hope to be bringing in some extra people because we’ve talked about the long term injuries and I would not expect to see Jota and Carter-Vickers at all this season.
“Alistair Johnston is making good enough progress but we won’t see him until some time in March at the best.
“Therefore we definitely would need some people in, absolutely.”