Martin O’Neill leaving Celtic would not surprise Paul Lambert, but the former club captain would be “shocked and disappointed” if the manager was to be sacked.<\/p>\n
The 74-year-old said he would use the international break to take stock following back-to-back defeats by Rangers.<\/p>\n
Those Old Firm setbacks came either side of a home loss to Ferencvaros in the Europa League, while there was a shock Champions League collapse to LASK in August, with a 4-0 aggregate lead surrendered.<\/p>\n
“I will reflect on the games,” said O’Neill, who was made permanent manager for a second time in the summer after two stints as interim boss last season resulted in a league and Scottish Cup double.<\/p>\n
O’Neill, who won another seven trophies with Celtic from 2000-05, when Lambert was playing, added: “I’m not immune from criticism. Absolutely and utterly far from it.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s every reason to ask ‘can you turn this round? Can you change the whole thing?’ I have to kind of look at the bigger picture at this minute.”<\/p>\n
Lambert insists O’Neill is Celtic’s best manager since the great Jock Stein, but the 57-year-old added: “It wouldn’t surprise me if he left. I don’t think he needs it.<\/p>\n
“I’d be shocked and disappointed if Celtic sacked him.<\/p>\n
“I think they give him the option, if that’s what’s on his mind, if he did want to walk away.<\/p>\n
“He’s got enough credit in the bank. It wasn’t that long ago people were shouting for a statue for him, so I don’t think you can go from one extreme to the other.<\/p>\n
“If he wants to go, then he goes himself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin O’Neill leaving Celtic would not surprise Paul Lambert, but the former club captain would be “shocked and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-623010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}