{"id":173786,"date":"2025-12-04T00:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T00:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/173786\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T00:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T00:39:07","slug":"oneill-departs-celtic-hotseat-with-victory-over-dundee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/173786\/","title":{"rendered":"O’Neill departs Celtic hotseat with victory over Dundee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin O’Neill closed the gap on William Hill Premiership leaders Hearts as he delivered one final victory for Celtic.<\/p>\n

Daizen Maeda\u2019s brave 11th-minute header proved enough to hand O\u2019Neill a 1-0 victory over Dundee in his farewell match before making way for Wilfried Nancy, whose appointment was confirmed less than an hour before kick-off.<\/a><\/p>\n

It was O\u2019Neill\u2019s seventh win in eight matches since returning to Celtic Park 20 years after his initial spell in charge ended.<\/p>\n

Celtic were eight points adrift of Hearts when O\u2019Neill and Shaun Maloney were placed in interim charge in the wake of Brendan Rodgers\u2019 sudden exit in late October.<\/p>\n

The 73-year-old leaves with Celtic now trailing the league leaders on goal difference with a game in hand.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill\u2019s players could have given their manager a less stressful swansong but could not build on their flying start and Dundee caused some nervy moments for the home support.<\/p>\n

That included a sparsely-filled standing section with the bottom six rows blocked off following the extended and indefinite ban handed to the Green Brigade on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Anti-board chants rang out along with tributes to O\u2019Neill in a reminder that Nancy inherits a disunited club despite the platform to challenge in the league and Europa League, as well as a Premier Sports Cup final to look forward to in his third match. His first two come against Hearts and Roma.<\/p>\n

Celtic were quickly on the front foot and Maeda and Reo Hatate threatened from long range before the breakthrough.<\/p>\n

\"GLASGOW,
\nDaizen Maeda scores the only goal of the game<\/p>\n

Yang Hyun-jun continued his rejuvenation under O\u2019Neill by forcing a save from Jon McCracken after a lofted pass from Hatate and Maeda headed home the rebound before being caught by the head of Luke Graham in a hefty collision.<\/p>\n

Celtic played with 10 men for several minutes before the Japan forward re-emerged from the tunnel sporting a bandage and a black eye.<\/p>\n

Celtic continued to press and Arne Engels and Yang had chances before Marcelo Saracchi forced a good save. The Uruguayan left-back soon went off with what looked like a recurrence of a hamstring injury, with Kieran Tierney a straight replacement.<\/p>\n

There was one first-half scare for Celtic when Simon Murray hit the bar after Liam Scales\u2019 short headed pass back. The offside flag went up after Kasper Schmeichel saved Cameron Congreve\u2019s follow-up.<\/p>\n

Celtic also started the second half well. Maeda could not steer a rebound on target following Luke McCowan\u2019s effort and Hatate saw a shot saved after some impressive football.<\/p>\n

Dundee began to threaten midway through the half. Substitute Ashley Hay was released by a long ball, shrugged off Scales\u2019 attempt to bring him down and tried his luck from an ambitious angle. Schmeichel blocked his weak effort.<\/p>\n

Finlay Robertson then tried his luck from 50 yards after Schmeichel came out of his box and sliced a clearance but the goalkeeper raced back to save, comfortably in the end.<\/p>\n

Dundee kept the pressure on until Maeda hit the post on a stoppage-time breakaway, before the full-time whistle prompted chants of “Martin O\u2019Neill” around Celtic Park.<\/p>\n

Watch the draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026 on Friday from 5pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin O’Neill closed the gap on William Hill Premiership leaders Hearts as he delivered one final victory for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-173786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173786","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=173786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}