O'Neill opens door to the long goodbye

[BBC] [BBC] Just when I thought not much else could surprise me in Scottish football, Martin O'Neill casually threw in his post-match press conference quip about whether it's time for him to "wrap things up" at Celtic. It's as yet unclear how serious the comments were. Was he really considering his future? Were they just the musings of a wily operator who knew how to take the focus away from his players? Was it just a knee-jerk reaction to a third bad result, and performance, on the bounce? It's quite possibly all of the above. What's clear, however, is he has made a rod for his own back unless he returns to winning ways immediately. If there was a feeding frenzy on his utterances after the 1-0 home derby defeat, just wait until his next loss. If it comes at Fir Park a week on Sunday, Celtic will have lost four in a row and may well cede Premiership top spot. That number of consecutive defeats was as bad as it was allowed to get for Wilfried Nancy last season. O'Neill has a lot more credit in the bank, of course. Except he's spent some of that money by questioning whether he's still the right captain for the good ship Celtic. It appears there is an element of the support that thinks he is not. Who didn't want him to take the job beyond May. His reputation reached messianic levels among the Parkhead faithful with the miracles he worked to turn a disaster into a double last term. I wrote at the time the allure of staying on would be one last crack at the Champions League. Look how that ended. It's quite remarkable how flat things have fallen since that calamitous second half in Linz which has taken a wrecking ball to the first part of Celtic's season. If O'Neill does return for duty after this international break - and we have to assume he will as there has been no indication to the contrary - he'll run headfirst into two very difficult fixtures. Motherwell away followed by Benfica away. While few in the Celtic support would hold out much hope of avoiding defeat in the Estadio da Luz, what if that followed a failure to pick anything up at Fir Park? If the manager was openly, if perhaps tongue in cheek, speculating about his own future after three straight defeats, what if that turns into five? Hearts come to Celtic Park after the trip to Portugal. Would no wins in six be survivable? Until now, O'Neill has been the answer to Celtic's problems. His words in the wake of those losses to Rangers may just have created some new ones. [BBC]