🎤 Exclusive Interview with Martin O'Neill

We’re joined by legendary player and manager Martin O’Neill to reflect on his career, management style, and today’s football world.

What is that one moment that you remember so fondly from your career?

Well, I think as a player, growing up, you wanted to play football in England.

I grew up in Northern Ireland and obviously when Match of the Day came around, that was it.

George Best travelled over to England, became an absolute legend and everybody in Northern Ireland wanted to follow suit. But just to play in England was terrific, then to end up winning something…

If you told me that at the start of my professional career, that by the end of that decade in the 70s, that we'd won the European Cup, that's got to be the ultimate at club level. No question about that.

And then at the international level, as a player to lead Northern Ireland into the quarterfinals of the World Cup in 1982.

In those days, with the European Cup, you had to enter it by winning the league. So the previous year, Nottingham Forest winning the league was absolutely terrific.

Of course, we had a magnificent manager at the time as well, that did help. So the winning of the European Cup on both occasions, but the second one, when I actually played in the game, I was injured for the 1979 one so myself and Archie Gemmill scrambled onto the bench and didn't actually get on the field of play.

In 1980, winning the European Cup against Hamburg in, of all places, Real Madrid Stadium.

Brilliant.

On Celtic, what do you think Dermot Desmond and the Celtic board can do to ease the tensions with the fans after the transfer window?

Well, I think there are meetings taking place now as we speak.

I think that there's natural disillusionment from the Celtic fans. And I think that this is all stemmed really from the terrific run in the Champions League last year. And at this minute, because Rangers are posing no threat whatsoever or haven't done for quite some considerable years, then I suppose Celtic fans are looking beyond domestic football.

And they're looking now at emulating last season in the Champions League, where I was even at the game in Munich where they went so, so close to knocking Munich out and getting into the knockout stages of the competition. So that's the recent benchmark for Celtic.

And of course it was massive disappointment when they didn't even make it into the Champions League this season. And the UEFA Cup, although it’s a great competition, seems very much like second best.

So there is natural disappointment and I think because it seemed the team wasn't strengthened from that, I think that they thought that was the case.

I don't know whether there was a feeling that regardless of whether you strengthen the side or not, you should still have been able to qualify considering the opposition in the final qualifying game.

But that's amidst the mediocrity coming from your biggest challenges, which are Rangers. So there's an element of domestic football. We've been so dominant in quite a number of years that we're just leaving that aside. And really, it's Champions League or nothing at this minute for Celtic.

You say Rangers aren't posing any challenge. Do you think Hearts could mount a title challenge to Celtic this season?

Hearts remind me of this time last year about Aberdeen.

Aberdeen get off to this fantastic start and people thought, I think it was 10 or 11 games before they actually got beaten. And people were thinking, could this be it?

Never for one moment did I think that Aberdeen could sustain the course. They just wouldn't have had the squad. That's the point. And I feel exactly the same about Hearts.

It's great to see them doing well because, outside of Ibrox, I used to feel that when I was manager of Celtic that Hearts was the most intimidating ground to go to. The crowd are right on top of you and we had some major battles there.

But overall, I can't see them sustaining it, although I think that they might stay around longer than Aberdeen did.

Back to Rangers. Do you think if they get the appointment right, they can turn their season around and potentially challenge Celtic?

I'm obviously gonna take a managerial viewpoint here because sometimes just changing the Rangers manager doesn't necessarily mean that progress will be made immediately.

You might have that new-manager-coming-in-effect for a game or two. What you have to do is look at this here and think ‘this is the problem’.

You have to look at Rangers, you have to look at the squad, you have to look at recruitment. You have to look at the sort of players they're bringing into the football club.

The truth is this here, from a distance, the team is definitely not strong enough. There's no question about that. They're not strong enough to sustain a challenge. By that I mean against Celtic, which they played earlier on in the season and the draw. Yes, you can compete in that particular game, but then can you go away from home on a Wednesday evening and win?

Can you travel north? Can you go and win at Easter Road? Can you win at Tynecastle? Can you win up Aberdeen on a cold, blowy night? Things like this.

That side that Rangers have had now definitely do not. They can't sustain the course. A couple of years ago, under the other manager, they had a great chance because Celtic had dropped a few points, Rangers had gained momentum and they were in charge. It was theirs to lose.

I think they travelled up to Ross County, lost, then they lost momentum, lost the matches and threw it away. They've never really recovered from that. And the side when it takes to the field, it's simply not good enough on a week-to-week basis.

Yeah, looking back at your Celtic time, what were your best signings or potentially worst signings when you were at the club?

Well, do you know what? Best signings, I signed a lot of really good players.

Mark Viduka left the football club in the year 2000. Didn't want to play for Celtic anymore. I think it was the backlash to them losing to Caledonian Thistle a couple of months earlier. And I think he just downed tools at the end of it all. Mark Vaduka was a really good player. So it was hard to replace him.

But I was able to get Chris Sutton to the football club at the time. So we rolled over the money from Mark Viduka to Chris Sutton. Chris was a really good player. Had a tough time at Chelsea, but rejuvenated himself at Celtic, and had this great partnership with Henrik Larsson. So Chris Sutton was terrific.

And Chris Sutton coming to the football club at the time he did was really important for me.

Because if he had arrived six weeks later, we might not have had the start to the season that we did. So by the time that we played Rangers, maybe fifth or sixth game into the season, we'd won the previous matches. I'm not so sure that we might have won all those games without Chris.

I signed Joos Valgaeren, really good player, Belgian, very, very quick.

I signed Alan Thompson. Strange enough, for 50,000 pounds - 50,000!

I signed Didier Agathe, who was fantastic for me, absolutely fantastic.

So if you're talking about pound-for-pound signing, that was enormous, really.

But a lot of good players came. Neil Lennon came at around Christmas time. So with a very strong side, allied to a couple of really good players that I inherited at the football club, you know, young Stillian Petrov, and Paul Lambert, really great captain, and also Henrik Larsson himself, plus Johan Mjällby.

So I had the nucleus of a side, I definitely needed strengthening, but they'd lost all confidence from the previous year because they'd lost the league to a brilliant Rangers side by about 20 odd points.

So getting confidence back into the team was the main aim.

In terms of worst signings, actually funnily enough, I actually signed a Brazilian player, Juninho, who had been wonderful for Middlesbrough, really terrific footballer for Middlesbrough.

In fact, I had to man-mark him in the 1997 League Cup final for Middlesbrough versus Leicester because he had destroyed us a couple of weeks earlier in a league game at Filbert Street.

So he was a really good player. But by the time that I'd signed him, he had been at Middlesbrough, I think three times, you know, back and forward. So he had lost the edge. He was no longer the player he was.

And I suppose maybe I thought that for periods we could actually rejuvenate him, but it never really materialised. But we didn't pay any money for him at the end of the day. He came on a free transfer. And in truth, I think that his great days had certainly passed by that time.

In terms of their performance on the training pitch, are there any that you look back at and think they were the best at training or potentially the worst?

Well, I had a lot of great trainers and I always think to myself with great trainers, usually, if you train strongly, then the chances are you will take that onto the field - though there is an exception.

At Celtic - and I say this fondly - I inherited another phenomenal footballer called Ľubomír Moravčík - definitely the best two-footed player I've ever, ever worked with. No question about it.

Fantastic footballer. We should be talking about him as one of the great players of European football.

By the time I got him, he was about 34/35 years of age. It was one of those where you had to treat him as nicely as possible. He just sat at the back in training sessions, didn't move too much, you know.

He used to control the ball with his backside. Wonderful trickster, magnificent footballer, but hardly expended any energy in the training ground because we needed to save that energy for him for little spurts. If he had been 27, it would have been a different issue.

Wonderful footballer, saved it all for the matches and he never disappointed. Outside Henrik Larsen, I think in latter days, I think that Lubo is as popular with the Celtic fans as anybody.

I don't think he'll mind me saying that about him just sitting at the back in training sessions, but we didn't mind at all because we needed to preserve his energy!

Quick question on another former club, Leicester. What do you think their promotion prospects are this season? Do think they can bounce straight back up?

They should be able to, yes. That league is demanding. It's very, very demanding. There's no question about that. But I don't think it is stacked with magnificent ability at this moment.

Now, I might be wrong. I've watched the championship intermittently this particular season, and I'm a great lover of it, I must admit. I enjoy players putting heart and soul into games and things like this here.

I just think that… what happens when you get relegated? There is a feeling around the football club of sort of futility, the previous season had been so bad, what can we do?

It sometimes takes players who have been part of that relegation and who have stayed at the football club for the Championship run, I think it takes them some weeks to adjust again to this sort of football, to be going to different grounds, not to be heading to Anfield or Old Trafford or White Hart Lane or whatever the case may be, but to be going to different grounds.

So once you've overcome that, maybe it might take 8 to 10 games to do so. As long as you've not lost too much ground, then that's fine. But as we speak at this minute, you see the condensing of the league. Coventry have seemingly got over the disappointment of last season. That was a major disappointment in the playoffs and now they are doing wonderfully well. But there's no reason for Leicester not to be able to bounce back again.

At Aston Villa, is there a fear that potentially they've hit a ceiling that they just can't break through?

Tough start for them. I actually covered their live game, against Brentford a number of weeks ago and they were rock bottom. Really, really poor. Very poor indeed.

Even Rodgers was struggling and he's a very, very fine footballer. A really good player. No question about that. They could hardly mount an attack. Even when they got the ball into the box, didn't look as if they could score a goal. They look frail at the back. So all the elements of his side in trouble.

However, I've got great faith in the manager. I've been saying this for some time. He's an excellent manager. His record has proved that there in European football. And I think that all the things that have happened pre-season, the frustration of the sort of rules that are attached and not getting as many players in as they wanted, maybe even losing young Ramsey to Newcastle.

All of those have some sort of an effect for a while and then when you don't immediately hit the ground running, people start to compare or contrast it to the previous season or the previous couple of seasons.

I don’t doubt that they will get back on track. Do I think that they're the same force as last season? I'm not so sure about that. But in terms of just improving from early results, absolutely.

You mentioned Morgan Rodgers was potentially their best player last season, though he hasn't quite started as well this season. Is there a school of thought that they could cash in on him with their PSR struggles and help to rebuild their squad?

If I was the manager, I would be saying to the powers that be - no, we can't let them go.

There might be a stage because of the PSR rules, that might come into being, let's say, in the next season. As a manager, I wouldn't agree with it. And I don't think Emery would either.

However, I don't know their structure at this moment and how badly they are affected by things.

So never say never in that sense, but if I was the manager, I would be asking the powers that be, please, we need to hold on to them because I might lose a very, very talented player who hasn't hit the heights this particular season, but he's got unquestioned ability and can turn games for a team.

You said you're a big fan of Unai Emery, what would you be doing if you were in his shoes to try this slow start to the season around?

Well, he's getting going now, just at this moment. All managers, the great managers, have difficult times. It's how you come through.

Guardiola has been sailing along serenely there for years and years. Great manager, but suddenly loses a couple of major players. Rodri to injury, but certainly De Bruyne is leaving the football club, and you're trying to rebuild again.

Now, Sir Alex Ferguson was a master at being able to rebuild quickly. This idea of getting the younger players into the side and getting them gelled. Sometimes that doesn't happen even to great managers. They take a little bit of time again to get going.

So I would think it really should be okay. You'll get it going again. You'll get it going because you've got confidence in yourself because of what you've done in the game and you've got confidence in your team.

On to Nottingham Forest. How do you think Brian Clough would have got on with an owner like Evangelos Marinakis?

That would be the most exciting news in Christendom to me. I think that would be amazing.

Imagine bringing them back again here. Brian Clough and Marinakis, it would be wonderful to behold. It makes me smile to think to myself.

I know we're in the modern day now for you don't really want to be upsetting the person who's employing you, but I don't think that Mr Marinakis would have had the spat he had with Nuno with someone like Brian Clough. I think the rules would have been set out long before that.

I'm saying this, the game has changed. There's no question about it. Then, Brian Clough ruled Nottingham Forest. He would go into board meetings and essentially come out the winner because we were winning on the pitch and that gave him great power.

Now, but the game has changed. We've got chief executives, we've got directors of football and the manager is essentially probably a coach now. He is answerable to a number of people.

But again, I get back to the point that we started with, that would have been some fun. I think that both Mr Marinakis and Brian Clough would have thrown the rule book right out the window and continued their spat all over the place.

Forest have waited a long time for European football to return to the City Ground. On a big European night, do you think the atmosphere can sort of rival the likes of Anfield on a big European night?

Well, it's ironic you should ask me this question because I was there the other evening when they played Midtjylland and the atmosphere to begin with was very, very good.

Obviously, first time back since I think 1996, so you've been waiting a long time. Younger fans had never seen this before. The older fans may be harking back to our day, way back under Brian Clough, with European Cups in the reckoning.

So there was a collection of younger fans who had not seen European football and the older fans. And the atmosphere, to begin with, was really terrific. But by halftime, the atmosphere had changed greatly. And unfortunately, the manager, Ange, was getting some abuse.

Again, I'm looking at this here from a managerial viewpoint because quite some years ago, in 1996, in fact, I went to Leicester City and couldn't win a game early on. There was lots of criticism which you had to accept and lots of booing and things like this here. So you have to try and turn it around.

Now, I think all of this here stems from the fact that Nuno became very popular as a manager. He replaced a popular manager in Steve Cooper and then became popular himself by winning. And that last season, I know they dropped off at the end to a major disappointment, but overall to qualify for European football was terrific. And the fans had taken to him.

Now all of that has changed and now Ange has to win them over. So when I saw that, it was really unfortunate and disappointing for a crowd to come with all expectation and then because Midtjylland were doing so well in the game, the manager gets it in the ear.

So difficult, but at the end of it all, as managers we know this, we're in the business of winning football matches and it's just a matter of fighting through. And Ange, whatever you say, he won the competition last year with Tottenham Hotspur, so that's in his favour.

You're regarded as one of Ireland's greatest ever managers. What are your thoughts when you watch this current side?

I'll preface everything again by saying, what you already know, but it's worth reminding of - it doesn't matter how young you are, it's about winning. Managers know you have to win. You have to win football games.

We in 2015/16, qualified for the European competition. Now, that was important. It's important in many aspects. It didn't matter whether a lot of players came from the Championship. We didn't have that many players playing in the big league, but it's a case of getting players to believe in themselves, even if it's only for the one game.

How on earth could we beat the world champions, Germany in Dublin, if you didn't get some belief into players who weren't playing at that sort of level? But the players responded magnificently.

The big thing about it all is that the Irish support, want to travel, they want to be involved in a competition in the summertime. Whether it's the Euros (and 15/16 was the last time that Ireland have qualified for a competition) or it's the World Cup, which has now spread to so many so many countries that you think you've got to have a chance.

So the results so far have been a bit disappointing and in that aspect the next two games coming up are absolutely vital for them.

You had Roy Keane as your number two. Some saw that move as a masterstroke, some thought it might have been a disaster waiting to happen. What did he bring to the Ireland team that maybe people didn't see from the outside?

Well, what he brought was his personality to the team and to the country.

Now I know that Roy, way back in 2002, he had that famous walkout of the Irish squad in Saipan when the manager was Mick McCarthy. In fact, I believe they're actually making a film of it nowadays and it'll soon be on our screens…

And Roy at that particular time probably divided opinion in Ireland. Lots of people who were big Roy fans thought he should have stayed with Ireland, regardless of his spat with the manager.

Personally speaking, I thought he should have stayed and I said that to him. Of course, he responded in the negative, but I thought that he should have done.

How many times would a country like the Republic of Ireland get to the World Cup or get to the Euros. It doesn't happen that often. And if you've got a world-class player going to it, how many times will he get there? If he had been born in another country, maybe all the time. But I think he should have made the most of that there and gone.

However, I wasn't there. I didn't know how great or how grave the spat between himself and Mick was. And really, that's up to Roy. So that's the point.

So getting back then, so he comes back into the fold, I bring him in, although having said this, when Mick McCarthy left, Roy came back to play for the Republic of Ireland as a player. So he was doing some punditry work at the time. I was doing a little bit of myself and it was a chance for us to work together. At the international level, we wouldn't have been seeing each other every single day, probably a good thing from both our viewpoints. But he was an absolute treat to work with.

The hardest thing for Roy would have been because he was a manager himself and used to making the big decisions, then he would have had to relent. And if I was disagreeing with the team selection, he would fall into place. He would say, this is my team, this is the one I would have picked, but if you're picking a different one, I'll go with you. And you would have never found Roy coming back to say, listen, or you'd find out a conversation he had with somebody, I'd have picked a different side. He had been right with you.

He was great and also the players, he was only a generation apart from a number of the players. So from that viewpoint, they grew up knowing Roy and knowing Roy's exploits with Manchester United and what he could do. So he was excellent for me and had to, as I say, curtail himself at times when the team selection was made.

Can you see you or Roy ever managing again? And is there a situation where you would ever work together again?

I would doubt it very much. However, as I'm getting older and he is enjoying himself in life, seems to be, know, he's doing all his punditry work and getting adverts on TV and things like this here.

So I'm quite sure he's probably not thinking about going into management. But if he did and asked me along as the assistant, you know, to have a little cigarette mainly… or as a chief scout for him living down in southern Italy. Yes, I'll take that.

I'll take that all day long.

As a European Cup winner yourself, who is your favourite player playing in the Champions League right now?

I suppose this wouldn't be too difficult. I'd say Yamal is a wonderful footballer, absolutely wonderful player. Can Barcelona win the Champions League? Not if they continue to play the high line that they do at this minute. Such a high line. I find that extraordinary because it's not as if to say that they're the quickest at the back. So I watched their game against Paris Saint-Germain just recently there and they’re wide open at times.

But Yamal is a wonderful footballer, in fact reached the 100 game mark before Messi, so that in itself is something. He is probably the next Messi, although his father's comments when he didn't win the Ballon d'Or are saying this was almost like a mortal sin to humanity because his son didn't win it.

There's plenty of time for Yamal to win the Ballon d'Or. I mean, he's only 12 at the minute, isn't he?

So I think he'll win it. Just keep relations out of the business. Just go and do it on your own and then invite your father along.

What is it that you love so much about him?

His ability to just go past players. He's got the Messi touch when he passes as well too, either with the outside of his left foot or just that caressing of the ball.

When he steps inside, he can score a goal. If he stays clear of serious injury, I would reckon he'll be remembered as one of the greats. He should be. But Messi has been doing it for a long period of time.

There are a number of really great players playing in European football today and a number of great players playing in the Premier League. But at this minute, it’s Yamal. He's an absolute joy to watch.

You spoke recently about XG being a clueless development in football. What is it about XG that you dislike?

Well, what does it mean? Yes, of course, expected goals. What does that mean? I mean, seriously, it is nonsensical. It's expected goals. And why does it come into a chart on my screen? Well, it doesn't mean anything. And I don't know, it's just an invention, an invention for some sort of data. It doesn't mean anything.

Please don't think that I'm going back to yesteryear. But I cannot imagine myself going into a dressing room with Brian Clough, just having missed a sitter of a goal at half time, and then saying to him, by the way, you know, it was very, very close. It was an expected goal. He would have thrown you out of the dressing room. It's just what on earth are you talking about? Now, I understand that there's a different language today about a number of things.

Transition, which essentially means, you know, having won the ball back quickly and getting forward as quickly as possible, high line, low block, all that type of stuff. It doesn't matter. It's the same sort of language that was used 50-odd years ago. That's fine. It's okay. It's different. And in another 10 or 15 years time, there'll be another set of words coming in and I'm okay. That's all right with that there. Just please don't someone tell me that it's something new. It's not.

But expected goals, I think that will be soon done away with and it will leave our screens mercifully and never heard of again and just thrown out to the wind.

I don't understand it, I don't think it's got any relevance whatsoever in the game about the match. It’s about winning and losing you know.

So can you imagine trying to save your job? You know, you've just lost five in a row, but your expected goal ratio is so, so high. Is it supposed to be higher? Is it supposed to be low? I don't know.

How much would a prime Martin O'Neill cost in today's game?

About 30 bob, I think…

Let me put it this way, forget about me. I had the privilege to play with John Robertson, he's a wonderful footballer, Clough's favourite player as well too at Nottingham Forest and quite rightly so because John was the fulcrum of the team.

What would he be worth today? Immeasurable. Honestly. Seriously. A lot of money. A great creator and could score goals, stepped up to take penalty kicks. John, considering he wasn't the quickest, he had two wonderful feet, very intelligent player, worth a lot.

Trevor Francis, who unfortunately, who died a couple of years ago, the first million-pound player, what would he be worth now? Trevor was lightning quick and could score goals. Yeah, these players would be worth a lot of money now.

What would the Liverpool players be like? Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Alan Hansen, players like this here. Even Mark Lawrenson, a defender!

You know what? It doesn't really matter. But if they were playing today, these boys would be great players in this era also.