Celtic captain Callum McGregor pointed out “it’s in our hands” after Sunday’s “huge win” over their city rivals.<\/p>\n
Only defeat by Motherwell on Wednesday, combined with a Hearts win, will prevent a final-day showdown.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless O’Neill believes Celtic still have “two mountains to climb” if he is to lead them to the Scottish title for a fourth time – and his first in 22 years.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never been confident,” the 74-year-old Northern Irishman said. “People have said to me about momentum and momentum can get shifted at any given moment.<\/p>\n
“We have to win because I would expect Hearts to win. We’ve a really difficult match at Motherwell, but I think the run that we’re on gives us confidence to compete.”<\/p>\n
O’Neill would not be drawn on whether it would be his final Old Firm derby when asked if a league and cup double might persuade him to stay on at Celtic. <\/p>\n
However, Lennon thinks giving the veteran a winning send-off will be another motivating factor for the players.<\/p>\n
Hearts are unbeaten against Celtic this season, winning two of the three meetings, but Motherwell midfielder Andy Halliday also pointed to the O’Neill factor as potentially crucial.<\/p>\n
“Of Celtic’s January signings, none are in the starting line-up,” the former Hearts and Rangers player said. “So what he’s done is make all the players Celtic already had at their disposal better.<\/p>\n
“Celtic are on a five-game winning run. You talk about mentality and playing your best level at the right time and Celtic have hit theirs now.<\/p>\n
“But Hearts, for 30 weeks in a row now, are just finding ways to win, so it’s going to be a very interesting finish.<\/p>\n
“We were salivating for these post-split fixtures and they’ve been everything we hoped for. I don’t think that’s going to change.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celtic captain Callum McGregor pointed out “it’s in our hands” after Sunday’s “huge win” over their city rivals.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-577028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577028","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=577028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}