Martin O'Neill...

I know what you're saying but with respect I disagree mate. Yes, the SPL overall was better then - but Celtic were better also. When we won the league in those days it was by an absolute landslide, we would consistently batter teams 6-0 - infact those were the days where when I was young I genuinely thought Celtic won every game at least 3-0, I thought something must have gone wrong when we didn't. So I don't think it's accurate to say that we actually faced a big test. Then, as ever, our only real test was from the huns, and as has been said we had a far better squad than them and should have beat them all ends up every season.

The Dundee's may have had Caniggia's and that, but we had Larsson ffs.

They were far past it when they came here though man, my point is Strachan had to make do with many past it players too whilst Lenny has had too young players, MON had the perfect middle ground of top players in their peak.

Just think how good Lennon's team would be if he had been allowed/able to have Wanyama, Forster, Hooper, McGeady et al at the peak of their careers? The only two we have at their peak I would say are Commons and Broony.

I know MON deserves credit for signing these good players but i'm just saying I think the brilliant players we had in that era deserve more of the credit than the boss.

I'm not sure why you would ask that question? I didn't, and i'm guessing you didn't either, ever see any Celtic training sessions ran by MON (apparently he never took them anyway) so how are we to know?

Larsson was one of those 1 in a million players who is just genius no matter what. The Henke's, Messi's, Ronaldo's of this world just do what they want, no tactics can make them better or worse.

 

How could you not want a manager like O'Neill back?

 

In a nutshell.

O'Neill had to face up to the likes of:

Klos, Van Bronkhorst, R. de Boer, Albertz, Mols, Kanchelskis, Numan, Reyna, Tugay, Porrini etc.

Strachan had to face up to:

Oliver Bernard, Sebo, FanFan, Namouchi, Sionko, Svensson, Alex Rae, Kyrgiakos, Bob Malcolm etc.........



And lets not forget that Strachan inherited players that O'Neill brought through to the team: McGeady, Maloney, McManus and others that went on to become pivotal figures in his teams.

 

You just airbrushed history basically to make your point seem right. You chose only good players from the MON era and only * ones from Strachan's era, come on. Kenny Miller and Edu scored winners against us before, as have plenty other thoroughly dreadful players, so that's really not saying much.

And let's not forget Strachan inherited a few undesirable O'Neill players too! On very * undesirable wages as well!

 

Airbrushed? No.

It's quite clear that the standard of players at BOTH clubs and standards of the league had dropped significantly by the time Strachan and an (end of his stretch as Rangers manager) Alex McLeish.

Not many players from 2005/6 onwards would get into the teams of around 2000/01/02.

 

Could you list a few cracking players during Strachans term?

I know he had a threat in Hearts (up until Christmas) but Rangers were imploding, therefore it was an easy ride to be honest.

 

I agree with that yes, but you did airbrush it in your previous post (and this is exactly why I said overrated) because you cherrypicked all the good aspects of O'Neil's reign and gloss over the bad sides. Be fair.

You made out that O'Neill was constantly up against great players and especially great hun players whilst Stachan was up against * - that's not the case and as you said the level of us and the huns went up and down simultaneously, but we were definitely better than them on paper during the Seville era. I don't know who you would say their best player was at that time but he clearly wasn't better than Larsson, and probabaly wasn't better than Hartson, Sutton, Agathe, Petrov or Thompson either.

Infact, apart from Arteta (who I think was just on loan from Barca?), who in that Rangers team went onto anything big? Because I can't think of any. Oh maybe Van Bronckhorst, who else? I don't think you can say they were that brilliant, despite spending * loads.

Cracking opposition players?
Frankly no, because I don't watch anyone other than Celtic and opposition players very rarely have great games against us.
But can you say there were no good players in the league in WGS' time?
Whereas O'Neill was up against solid 10/10 superstars ever week?

No.

As I said, MON's Celtic were much better than the rest of Scotland then in terms of the players we had. Basically 10 out of 11 positions on the park were top draw and imo we actually underachieved in Europe. Playing so abysmally away from home, never reaching the last 16, not winning in Seville obviously most painfully.

 

Stop being so pedantic, I've already explained the players I picked. I'll put it to you in far simpler terms - the players I mentioned in the first line were significant to the the type of signings that were coming into Ibrox on the early 00's, the second line the type of player you'd see coming in during the mid to late 00's. Better?

Erm, how many of our players went on to big things after Celtic? Larsson, Petrov, McGeady and possibly Maloney.

 

Bob Malcolm

 

To be fair, they never had to go on to anything big because they had them at their peak or thereabout, like the way MON had our players (as you mentioned). Guys like Numan and Klos were at their peak. De Boer was ageing but was still a good player. Then you have Arteta and Van Bronckhorst, Mikel Mols, Lovenkrands. Konterman was in his late 20's by that time, Reyna was good and Porrini came from a cracking Juventus side and was decent. Flo had a good scoring record (although he did not merit his price tag - was probably a £5-£6m player in reality) and was at his 'peak' at Rangers.

I don't have much knowledge on them, apart from what my dad has told me, talked about and the * he keeps in the loft but still, you are looking at it the wrong way.

I still think that would have been a hard challenge for MON and he did well.

 

Will always appreciate what he did here, but he's a bit of a chequebook manager, imo. Would depend if the board would back him the way that they don't back Neil Lennon.

 

You misread me I said which huns not which Celtic players went onto big things.

I'm not gonna change your mind and you're not gonna change mine. For me Strachan is/was a better manager than MON and Lennon will go onto be a better one too.

 

O'Neill came to Celtic and had to break the domestic dominance of Rangers that threatened to take them on another 10 in a row title challenge, and also cement a return to Celtic competing at the top table in Europe. To do that, he HAD to spend big money to fight fire with fire against a free spending Rangers.

Strachan came to Celtic with a remit of lowering the wage bill at an ageing team (one which O'Neill was never properly funded to reshape after Seville) - he did so and did a fine job with many cheap signings who turned out to be cracking (and not to forget he actually spent MORE in his tenure than O'Neill did).

 

Bob MalcolmFTP to you timmy.

 

No I read you correctly, you were trying to paint a picture that not many hun players from the teams that O'Neill faced went on to bigger things, which is accurate, but as pointed out not many of O'Neill's players did so either.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, but I'm sure the stats are there to prove that O'Neill has had a better and more fruitful managerial career than Strachan to this point in time.

Will Lennon become better than O'Neill and/or Strachan? Hopefully, hopefully with Celtic.

 

The chequebook manager is another popular misconception. He never had a chequebook at Wycombe or Leicester and worked wonders for them, indeed he is still revered at Wycombe after winning successive promotions and just missed out on doing it three times in a row.

If anything (Celtic aside) having a lot of money to spend didn't work out too well for him.

 

In all fairness I think it is difficult to compare any manager at Celtic, even more so with MON, WGS and Lennon. All of them have came at different stages in the life of Celtic and had to best serve the needs of Celtic at that time.

MON - reviving an insipid Celtic, challenging a free-spending Rangers and helping promote us in Europe again.

WGS - Lowering the wage bill, bringing in a few up and coming players, dealing with a lower working budget each year and then hopefully winning things as a bonus.

Lennon - Nurturing the youth, bringing through 'gems' and selling them on for a profit, maintaining dominance in the league and anything else in Europe is a bonus.

 

I still think that the fact he spent a huge amount of money is a bit of a myth anyway.

Aye, his first season he spent a huge amount of cash (which was required to build a team that would last for several seasons), but outwith that and half of his second season, he spent little.

 

Stop being sensible and diplomatic! :smiley-laughing002:

 

I think there is a real comparison between WGS and Martin O'Neill. WGS by the time he left had spent more and had a higher wage bill, the full fact Thomas Gravesen was on more money than Henrik Larsson, as was Roy Keane under WGS, speaks volumes.