Callum McGregor<\/a> and experienced heads James Forrest and Kasper Schmeichel to help get his message across after a whirlwind few days..<\/p>\nIn his five years as boss at the start of the Century the 73-year-old had sides littered with leaders. He admits there\u2019s less \u201cboisterous\u201d characters in the squad now. But O\u2019Neill is confident there\u2019s still a core group of winners who know what it takes to come through high-pressure moments.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWhen I first came in I said to them that they have disturbed my coffee in London and why should I be coming all this way up to tell them what they should know, that they are actually very, very talented players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m not saying they are all winners, they are not. There is a group of young lads in the side. They’ve got a winning captain, Forrest has been around a long time as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese boys should know how to win. It’s just a matter of reinforcing that and getting back to winning .<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery side has had dips. They’ve had dips during the course of the season, you just have to try and come out of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning the game against Falkirk was the most important thing. Just getting back to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cCallum\u2019s a really good player. The back room staff were saying that is a normal thing for him. I thought he was terrific against Falkirk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think outside Callum and the goalkeeper you wouldn’t have that many really boisterous characters.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut my dressing room with the likes of Neil Lennon and all that group – outside a couple of fights with Balde and Stilyan Petrov when he had him by the neck – they were good, they were terrific.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daizen Maeda is back in contention for a start after climbing off the bench against Falkirk. And O\u2019Neill said: \u201cHe is a big player for us, especially at this minute considering some of the players that are out.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is absolutely the talisman, there is no question about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got maybe the last 20-25 minutes of the game against Falkirk because that\u2019s the time the physios were saying he was going to get, which was fine.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0_JS386320288.jpg\")
Daizen Maeda (L) and Celtic Interim Manager Martin O’Neill <\/p>\n
\u201cBut he\u2019s a big player for us and he\u2019s been a really good player as I\u2019ve watched the games from afar.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill says he received good luck messages from fellow ex-Celtic bosses Neil Lennon and Gordon Strachan after returning to Parkhead.<\/p>\n
And he admits whichever side emerges victorious today will receive a much-needed boost after a false start to the campaign.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThat would give the whole dressing room an enormous lift.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, Rangers will think exactly the same in the state of their season. But for us, that would be terrific.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had good moments at Hampden and I\u2019ve had bad moments. In fact, Rangers beat us there one day in the Scottish Cup Final, Lovenkrands scored.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve tried to find out where he\u2019s living for a number of years so I can shout \u2018boo\u2019 at him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"O’Neill will sensationally step back into the derby fire at the age of 73 on Sunday as Celtic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2817,12430,49,18670,48015,30905,53218,50,35685,2714,8058,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-239098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-celtic-fc","tag-gordon-strachan","tag-headlines","tag-james-forrest","tag-league-cup","tag-martin-oneill","tag-neil-lennon","tag-news","tag-premier-sports-cup","tag-rangers-fc","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0_21510735.jpg\")
Martin O’Neill(Image: SNS Group)<\/p>\n