The interim manager received sustained applause and cheers as he was introduced to shareholders but the rest of the meeting was characterised by hostility between directors and fans.<\/p>\n
The meeting was temporarily adjourned less than five minutes in amid chants of \u201csack the board\u201d.<\/p>\n
And it was ultimately closed early as shareholders reacted to a statement from director Ross Desmond, son of the club\u2019s biggest shareholder Dermot, which accused a section of fans of being \u201cbullies\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, O\u2019Neill is convinced the disconnect can be repaired with the help of a new manager, whose appointment he hinted might not be far off.<\/p>\n
The 73-year-old said: \u201cI thought it was a really sad, sad morning, really sad morning. I just wonder what the great Jock Stein would have thought of it all, who preached unity at the football club, said that a club not united would never be successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s as sad a morning as I\u2019ve seen. I mean I\u2019ve been to a few of these AGMs before and I suppose because we\u2019ve been doing well at the time that it was nice. Not even sure I was ever asked a question in them at the time. But that was rather raucous.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were people who would have wanted to ask questions and the board have said that they\u2019ve made mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s only so many times that you can apologise and then you have to get on with things again. So we\u2019ll start again and hopefully that will start when the new manager comes in.<\/p>\n
\u201cA united Celtic will be far better equipped to compete and try and win again.\u201d<\/p>\n
We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity.<\/p>\n
Please review your details and accept them to load the content<\/p>\n
Fans have been campaigning for change following difficulties in the summer transfer window and the failure to qualify for the Champions League.<\/p>\n
And the Desmond statement has arguably taken relations to the lowest point since O\u2019Neill\u2019s initial arrival in 2000 kicked off a period of sustained success for the club.<\/p>\n
But the Northern Irishman believes unity is achievable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be impossible, really it should not be impossible,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s got to be a coming together again from this. There\u2019s an obvious disconnect at this minute, but that surely can be rectified.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou asked me a question, would my interim period fuse things together? I don\u2019t think that was ever going to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019ve got to now realise that that has happened, mistakes have been made, and they can be rectified and hopefully rectified quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019d got an opportunity, I would probably be saying what I\u2019m saying here, so I wish now I had said a few words.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill and Maloney will take charge of a fifth game when Celtic face St Mirren in Paisley on Saturday despite consistent reports the club are pushing towards the appointment of Columbus Crew manager Wilfried Nancy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m probably a bit surprised that I am (still here), I thought maybe something might have got sorted out in the international break,\u201d O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think that there is definitely progress being made in that field.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The interim manager received sustained applause and cheers as he was introduced to shareholders but the rest of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,898,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-153156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153156","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=153156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}