O'Neill safest of safe bets as Celtic opt against another gamble

Once Martin O'Neill indicated a desire to carry on as Celtic manager, it would have taken a brave board to say no to the guy who dug them out of the giant hole they had buried themselves in last season.

Nobody with any knowledge of O'Neill will have been taken in by his detached grandad routine this past while.

He carried on like he's a total bystander in Celtic's double-winning season, like he was an old man who wandered aimlessly into Lennoxtown and was bamboozled by what he saw.

O'Neill's schtick is well worn, but nobody has fallen for it. He might be 74, but he is an intelligent mood-setter with a big football brain and a fantastic capacity to connect with footballers and make them feel better and play better.

In reappointing him, Celtic might stand accused of short-termism and a lack of ambition.

There is no young continental coming in with modern thinking, no impressive firebrand arriving to rip things up and start again, no manager with an extensive grasp on foreign markets and the gems buried within, as was the case with Ange Postecoglou.

It seems it all came down to O'Neill and Robbie Keane. That's not a shortlist that screams 'extensive worldwide search'. Giving it to O'Neill again is the easiest option possible.

In the wake of the club's colossal, and borderline negligent, error in appointing Wilfried Nancy, ignoring a proven winner who's under your nose is the risk-averse play, the path of least resistance.

At the end of the season, O'Neill cast doubt on his ability to go back to the coalface one more time, but his words were never convincing. For all his talk of how draining the job is - and that much is beyond dispute - he clearly basks in it.

Arguably, the most difficult part of the role was not the on-field stuff at all - he knows more than anybody how to organise and motivate Celtic players and how to engage with Celtic supporters.

Dealing with the disconnect between sections of the fans and a deeply unpopular board was, obviously, a strain on him until the run-in, when the whole place finally managed to start pointing in the same direction.

The issues that caused the rancour in the first place have not gone away. This is an uneasy truce and it could be broken at any time. O'Neill will know that.

He managed his way through all of that, even when his team were putting in dreary performances. They did not lack for spirit, though. They had tons of it and the steel O'Neill instilled was the thing that got them over the line in the Premiership and the Scottish Cup.

Appointing O'Neill can only be one part of a bigger jigsaw. Creating a properly functioning and trusted recruitment department is every bit as important. Probably more important, in fact.

The club is in a rut in that regard. Hesitant and failing. O'Neill bore the brunt of that in the January window, constantly being quizzed about new recruits and constantly having to reply that the club was working hard but there's nothing much to report.

Celtic have got in their own way in the transfer market. All of that must have been galling to O'Neill. As part of his negotiations to stay on he surely raised it as a big issue.

Under O'Neill, Celtic signed five players on loan - Benjamin Arthur, Joel Mvuka, Junior Adamu, Tomas Cvancara and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Oxlade-Chamberlain did not start many games but he contributed two winners so you would put him down as a success. The other four did not work out.

They can be added to the list of other recent failures - Shin Yamada, Michel-Ange Balikwisha, Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, Hayato Inamura. Celtic might also have expected more from Sebastian Tounekti.

So much of the grief around Celtic begins with their recruitment. There has been notable successes but it has become last-minute and scattergun. O'Neill needs it to be better. It needs to evolve rather than stagnate.

Of all the players that had game time against Hearts on the final day of the league season, nine of them came in on Brendan Rodgers' watch and another three were Postecoglou recruits.

O'Neill knows a player when he sees one but in his second and then third coming at Celtic last season he never gave the impression of a man who is out there sourcing these guys. It is not really his job.

It is difficult to see under the bonnet of Celtic's recruitment operation. Are good players being lined up but deals being stymied from above? That's the feeling among some, for sure.

Ending up with Adamu and Mvuka in January, and Balikwisha and others before that, should be a line in the sand for Celtic. If they don't heed the lessons of the recent past then there's got to be fear among their supporters that those mistakes will just be repeated.

O'Neill is going again, so maybe he's received the assurances he needs.

They rolled the dice with Nancy and made a dreadful blunder. Now, instead of gambling on an outsider, they have turned once again to the safest of safe bets.