{"id":111297,"date":"2025-10-30T00:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/111297\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T00:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:57:07","slug":"you-bhoys-are-winners-oneill-reveals-celtic-pep-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/111297\/","title":{"rendered":"You Bhoys are winners – O’Neill reveals Celtic pep talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin O’Neill told the Celtic players they were winners before they marked his homecoming with a comprehensive 4-0 win<\/a> over Falkirk at Parkhead.<\/p>\n

The 73-year-old former Hoops manager was installed along with ex-Celtic player Shaun Maloney as the interim management team following the stunning resignation of Brendan Rodgers on Monday night.<\/p>\n

Sligo striker Johnny Kenny scored twice in the first half before goals after the break from midfielder Benjamin Nygren and wide-man Sebastian Tounekti took the Hoops to within six points of William Hill Premiership leaders Hearts, who drew 2-2 at St Mirren.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill, who was Hoops boss between 2000 and 2005, said: “I know the confidence has been a bit low. That\u2019s the most natural thing in the world, even the very, very best sides if you\u2019re not getting a result.<\/p>\n

“Players then stop doing things that they almost naturally would do.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s some of the lads in the dressing room that would have no idea who I was, but they\u2019re only about 10 years old and some of the other lads, I said we have quite a number of winners in the dressing room. That\u2019s really important.<\/p>\n

“Those lads have experienced some lows during the course of the season and then fight back and the captain (Callum McGregor), he\u2019s a real quality player.<\/p>\n

“But there was great performances all around this evening and just to win.<\/p>\n

“So, yeah, they becalmed my dreadful insecurity problems. Naturally, delighted to win the game. But there wasn\u2019t a thought about anything else.”<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill joked about being nervous before the game.<\/p>\n

He added: “Well, first of all, I jokingly said \u2013 maybe true \u2013 I have not been as nervous since I sat my 11-plus but, again, I think I passed that when I was 48.<\/p>\n

“But honestly, really concerned about the game, naturally.<\/p>\n

“Concerned about the usual thing about letting myself down, which I\u2019ve done so many times it\u2019s untrue, and letting other people down here at the football club.<\/p>\n

“Just coming in a bit of a whirlwind and to play in the manner which we did which I thought was great and obviously, most important thing was winning the game.<\/p>\n

“Naturally, I couldn\u2019t be more pleased. I thought the players did really brilliantly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin O’Neill told the Celtic players they were winners before they marked his homecoming with a comprehensive 4-0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-111297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}