It is imperative that the board deliver on their promise after mounting unrest between fans and club threatened to somewhat derail last season.<\/p>\n
It also cannot be taken for granted that O’Neill has now shown he can lead Celtic to honours with a squad light on both numbers and quality. He too will be demanding that the squad is strengthened.<\/p>\n
Failure to do so would only risk a repeat of last year’s humiliation against Kairat and, therefore, their place at Europe’s top table.<\/p>\n
It was Europa League football for Celtic last term, with elimination to Stuttgart in the first knockout round after a 4-1 home defeat was followed by a 1-0 win in Germany.<\/p>\n
Although it counted for nothing in terms of progression, that away victory in Stuttgart reaffirmed O’Neill’s European credentials – as did an earlier win at Feyenoord and a draw at Bologna with 10 men.<\/p>\n
However, the tracksuit-wearing veteran will want to be doing his dugout air jumps in Uefa’s premier club competition this season.<\/p>\n
No Champions League money for a second campaign running could severely impact summer spending towards the end of the window.<\/p>\n
Plus, with Maeda gone and Arne Engels linked with a move away, the lure of top-level European football can prove crucial in persuading star players to stay.<\/p>\n
It has been more than 20 years since O’Neill managed a Champions League match, or even a qualifier. A two-time European Cup winner with Nottingham Forest, his record as a manager in the competition stands at six wins from 18 matches.<\/p>\n
In three qualification attempts for the Champions League, he has been successful twice. There was also a Uefa Cup final appearance in 2003 and he made it to the quarters the following year.<\/p>\n
A two-legged play-off, set for 18-19 August and 25-26 August, stands between an older and wiser O’Neill and a return to the pinnacle of club football, where he could flex that European pedigree.<\/p>\n
Before then, an intriguing Premiership defence starts with a Monday night encounter at home to Dundee on 3 August and a trip to Kilmarnock the following Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is imperative that the board deliver on their promise after mounting unrest between fans and club threatened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-724903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724903","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=724903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}