Celtic will have a major decision to make this summer regardless of how the season pans out with the club currently involved in a three-way title battle with Hearts and theRangers. Interest in the Scottish Cup remains and the club is participating in the Europa League play-offs with Bundesliga high-flyers VfB Stuttgart.
Yet it has been a turbulent season for the Scottish Champions on and off the park. After taking Bayern Munich to the closing seconds of the second leg play-off in the Champions League last season, Celtic failed to push on much to the frustration of the then Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers.
His warning to the Celtic Board fell on deaf ears regarding the need to bring in quality additions especially a striker, to replace Kyogo Furuhashi who was sold to French side Rennes in January 2025. And that proved very costly indeed when Kazakhstan Premier League champions Kairat Almaty shocked Celtic in the Champions League play-off. The cost of this folly reached £40m.
By late October Rodgers was at the end of the road with the Board clearly looking to ’empty’ him which duly happened after back-to-back league defeats at Dens Park and Tynecastle. The Monday after the defeat to Hearts all hell broke loose at Celtic Park, Rodgers was gone and Dermot Desmond, the Irish billionaire who controls Celtic with a 34% shareholding, releasing a long and aggressive rant against a manager who had won 11 domestic trophies out of 13 contested as Celtic manager.
Martin O’Neill came back on an interim basis after two decades away to steady the ship yet a search for a permanent replacement was to lead Celtic down a very dark road. Frenchman Wilfried Nancy had made a name for himself in the MSL with a gunho approach to football where everyone bar the keeper was meant to throw themselves forward.
It was an unmitigated 33 day disaster with a dozen points dropped in the Scottish Premiership, a Premier Sports Cup final lost to St Mirren and an embarrassing Europa League mauling by Roma at Celtic Park with the Italian side later observing that the Celtic players didn’t seem to know what they were doing.
After a New Year defeat to theRangers at Celtic Park it was Nancy’s turn to be emptied. What a mess the Celtic Board were making of the season and the question was who would Celtic would go to next and the answer was to bring back Martin O’Neill for a third stint as Celtic manager and thank heavens for that every Celtic supporter said because they never wanted him to leave five weeks before.
Martin next month will turn 74 and while he hasn’t completely ruled out taking the job on a permanent basis it seems more likely that Celtic will have to look for a new manager once again.
Yet Brendan Rodgers had two stints as Celtic manager, as did Neil Lennon and so did Billy McNeill a generation before. Martin O’Neill ended up beating them all by doing the job on three separate occasions so the question many Celtic supporters are asking is whether Celtic will look for someone new, like the impressive Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou or will they once again look to their former manager list and go back in for someone like Ange Postecoglou.
Bringing Ange back would certainly tick plenty of boxes as he was loved at Celtic, the football was brilliant to watch and his transfer activity changed Celtic’s fortunes long after his two years were over and he headed to Tottenham to fulfil his lifetime ambition of managing in the top flight of English football.
Unfortunately there is no chance that Ange Postecoglou will be coming back to Celtic but it would certainly be worth taking a punt on Danish coach Jens Berthel Askou getting the job.
Ange was asked about a possible Celtic return on the Stick to Football podcast. While he spoke about how much he loved his time at Celtic he stated the obvious that you can see on his highly interesting CV, that Ange never goes back.
“I love Celtic, mate. What a football club. If I was younger, I probably would’ve stayed there longer. I probably would’ve stayed there three, four years. I think I could’ve made progress with them in Europe.”
“In terms of going back, I don’t go back. I just don’t think that’s kind of been my career. Whatever the next step is, it’ll be something new, something I can make an impact on, somewhere I can win things.
“It was a great experience. To be within a community that’s just so passionate, it’s crazy how passionate they are about their football club. I was fortunate we had success, it’s a positive experience. But I loved every minute of it. I look back on it fondly.
“I won’t go back, I don’t think that’s, kind of, how my career’s played out.”
So the next Celtic manager will not be Ange Postecoglou, it might be Martin O’Neill but that’s a long shot but the smart money should be going on Jens Berthel Askou.
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