Q: There’s been a lot made in the last couple of days, especially over the last month or so, about the club’s transfer policy and everything that goes around that. Is part of the interim appointment of the two of yourselves a little bit of player evaluation, as well as maybe assisting the club with any recruitment that is going on in the background since the summer window closed?
Shaun Maloney: “From my point of view, no. I think the last 24 hours have been a bit of a whirlwind. It was literally, after speaking with Martin about what he wanted from me, which was really, really easy to say yes to, for what this man’s done for me and my family. In terms of the other parts of the club, no. I think that’s maybe for another day.”
Q: Obviously, there’s no time; tomorrow is a match straight away. Shaun, you’ve been very, very close to the team and the club in recent months. Martin, maybe a bit further away. The main thing we’ve been missing is creating chances and scoring goals. Can we expect tomorrow night to see any sort of tweak or change to the approach from what we’ve seen in recent weeks, or will tomorrow just be a matter of steadying the ship first and foremost, do you think?
Shaun Maloney and Martin O’Neill at Celtic Park on October 28, 2025 (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Martin O’Neill: “I think that’s a very good point. I will obviously rely on this young man beside me here, as much as anything else. He would know the players far better than I. It’s alright watching players from a distance, and you make up your mind about something, and you find that when you arrive at a football club, and I’ve done this before, I’ve got a totally different viewpoint from a player. So I will be relying on this young man, but I think that the very natural things that you want, you want to have possession, you want to be able to try and create chances. It’s up to us to try and do that and just try and enforce our presence and our personality on the game itself, which will not be easy for us.”
Q: Hi Martin, Shaun. Welcome back to Celtic. Will you have any involvement in the process of recommending the next manager to Dermot and the rest of the board?
Martin O’Neill: “Years ago, you know, with such a big ego that I would have said, yeah, you need to recommend this (candidate). I wouldn’t. It would be an interesting one, I suppose. One of the questions you might think of is that if there’s going to be recruitment on in January time, which you, you know, I imagine that something like that would take place, then who knows what would happen. But I assume that you’d want, if you’re going to have a manager in, maybe by that time, then he himself, whoever that may be, would have an input into who would be coming to the football club, on a permanent basis, in terms of players.”
Invincible by Matt Corr. The story of Brendan Rodgers’ first season as Celtic manager. Click on cover to order …
Think MoN role is going to be trying to act as a peace keeping role more than anything else at present.
Trying to get through to the next international break with positive results, will be there first target imo.
Personally believe that Maloney will call the shots moreso upon selection, and formation, tactics etc etc. Think MoN will be more about installing belief and confidence into the ground, with maybe creating a better all round working environment.
Also don’t believe that all of this got resolved in a few hours yesterday either, by the sounds of things.
Of course it will be interesting to see just how the players react to the changes?
Could work, even if not totally inspiring as a first thought.
Don’t think it can be any worse than what the season has been to date.
But in football you never quite know if change is actually going to work out.
Still believe that the initial plan is trying to see if this new management structure, could get us through the remainder of this season.
As a supporter, I will continue to give them full backing, until circumstances should change.