Martin O'Neill on his transfer battle with Celtic owner Dermot Desmond
Hoops favourite Martin O’Neill was speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, alongside Manchester United legends Gary Neville and Roy Keane, plus Jill Scott and Ian Wright
Former Ireland boss Martin O'Neill has revealed the 'battle' he had with Dermot Desmond to get a major Celtic signing over the line.
Hoops favourite Martin O’Neill was speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, alongside Manchester United legends Gary Neville and Roy Keane, plus Jill Scott and Ian Wright.
O’Neill was Celtic manager between 2000-2005, guiding the club to the UEFA Cup final and winning seven major trophies. But when he was first in the door significant changes were needed, and that meant coming up against major shareholder Desmond.
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He said: "Rangers were a really strong side. Celtic had lost the league by about 21 points before that. I had inherited some decent players, I had Paul Lambert, I had a young Stiliyan Petrov. I brought in Chris Sutton because Mark Viduka wanted to leave. Confidence was really low. So singing Chris Sutton was big for us."
O'Neill revealed that despite becoming a club legend over six years at the club, Sutton was not a 'sure thing' according to taskmaster Desmond.
The Nottingham Forest great explained: "He had a bad time at Chelsea, Chris. So, when we were trying to sign him, I think Dermot Desmond the major shareholder, he wasn't sure about signing Chris.
"Eventually Chris became his favourite player, but he wasn't sure about him. He said because he's not played well at Chelsea. I said, no, he's had a nightmare at Chelsea but he was a good player at Blackburn. I said that he and Alan Shearer had scored 50 goals. And I didn't tell Dermot that Shearer had scored 49 of them!”
Keane - who played for Celtic at the end of his career - asked: “That was an important marker to put down, Martin? When you've just gone in the door, you're having a little battle already to get a player in the door, yeah?"
O’Neill replied: “It was absolutely just to just to begin with, you know, the first thing. And I mean, I won that particular the battle. And we won the first couple of games, which was great. Then we beat Rangers in a big, big game. 6-2 in my first game at Celtic Park. And we were 3-0 up in 11 minutes.”
The game in question was the demolition derby from 2000 - O’Neill’s first game managing against Rangers. O'Neill added: “John Clark, who was a member of the 1967 team, I said to John 'how long's left'?
"And he said 'There's only 79 more minutes to go'! I think that game, and Celtic fans talk about it now as a seminal game. It didn't immediately think you were going to win the league but what it did do is that it set a mindset for us."
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