Martin O'Neill: The Biography

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March – O’Neill’s long-term future remains unresolved after the club denied reports he is set to sign new contract.

How was Martin O’Neill to advance Celtic from the previous season’s stellar campaign? Celtic were way ahead of where all expected the club to be (helped admittedly by Rangers imploding), so season 2001-02 was to see the next stage by testing European waters. Martin did have one thing going for him when he arrived up there in Glasgow – he didn’t need to work too hard to get fans to come to the ground. All he had to do was tell them it was a Saturday! What a luxury, massive home crowds virtually guaranteed.’The highlight of the season for many though was surprisingly not the Barca win, the league victory or the Scottish cup final double. The best moment was the whitewash of five wins out of five against Rangers. The finale of this came from Martin O’Neill’s best signing, Chris Sutton, who in injury time scored a long range goal to win us the final game of the season against Rangers. The torment for the Rangers fans was unmeasurable, and the joy for all Celtic fans was sky-high. Martin O’Neill simply had the upper hand in all the encounters, and his charges did all the good work for him.

Martin O’Neill was born in London. The Graphic illustrator Artist creates collages for a wide range of International clients through publishing, advertising, design, and installation work. What kind of visuals do you find work best for limited edition prints or originals? Does this differ from commissioned Illustration? One of my jobs at the start – and you can write this as a headline – was trying to find out why exactly we had spent some of our money on Rafael Sheidt.”

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September – O’Neill gives his support to club chairman John Elsom in the wake of the Filbert Street power struggle. What is special is the atmosphere created by the 60,000 people who gather here every second weekend. It’s almost like a shrine.” Makes international debut as a substitute against USSR. Joins Nottingham Forest from Distillery in October. His international clients encompass advertising, design, editorial, publishing, as well as regular contributions to the UK and US press including Sony Playstation, Faber Faber, Capital One, EMI Music, Wired USA, Camel & GQ India.

I find editing the past therapeutic and like to reassemble my own versions of moments,imaginary or real. O’Neill is effusive in his praise of Keane, who has not managed since departing Ipswich in 2011. Bert Johnson, O’Neill’s youth coach at Forest, imparted advice which he believes applies to Keane. “You get a reputation in life for being an early riser and you can lie in bed all day,” he says. Rumours abounded about his personal family circumstances, and at the year it was made publicly know that his wife was suffering from lymphoma. In effect, he was hardly around and it showed. Didn’t help that this was Celtic’s first season without Larsson (as he’d left for Barcelona), but Celtic really should still have won the league and disturbingly lost with only a few minutes left of the last game of the season, allowing a poor Rangers side to gloat forever more (albeit the title is now tainted and should be scrubbed due to the EBT scandal revelations). I was obsessed with graffiti & art when I was at school, mates in my class said I should ‘be an artist’, I went through all the hoops and found myself on a graphic design & printmaking BA in 1992. I had a collage epiphany in a paper recycling centre in Germany in ‘93 which fed 2 years of experimental collage and printmaking. Then I kind of fell off the end of the course with no direction or training on how to make a living in the art/design world, but I was making a lot of work everyone on my course seemed to love.In 2019, he moved to Nottingham Forrest for the managerial role again along with Roy Keane, but the stint was short, just five months, in what was a no-win situation at a faltering club. Martin O’Neill’s inspired team completed an exceptional Treble that season (league, Scottish cup & league cup), something that even the most optimistic Celtic fan at the start of the season could not believe would happen. May: Celtic lose 2-1 at Motherwell and O’Neill’s hopes of a fourth title in five years disappear as Rangers win 1-0 at Hibernian. 25May: Club announce O’Neill will step down after Scottish Cup final to look after his wife. 28May: Ends career at Celtic with 1-0 win over Dundee United in Scottish Cup final.