Graham Spiers destroys the Martin O’Neill cover story

Graham Spiers and Martin O’Neill appear to have very different takes on the strength of the relationship between Dermot Desmond and the interim Celtic manager

Spiers has published an account of recent events explaining how the two Irishmen are in regular contact. Discussing Ireland, business and Celtic.

TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY, AT LEAST

The report details a coffee date between the two men just two weeks ago. Spiers does need an audience on his Patreon subscriber site. Recently he shared his outrage at Brendan Rodgers giving his son a game for Celtic in a pre-season trip. In 2017!

Poor Graham, how traumatised. Or he had nothing else to attack Rodgers about in the hope of returning to the Celtic news loop.

The events of Monday October 27 will never fully come to light but some details are emerging.

What wasn’t said at Celtic’s Tuesday media conference is more noteworthy than the charming version presented by O’Neill. Those present all laughed along to the tales.

On his patreon website Spiers writes:

The remarkable events which have unfolded about Martin O’Neill’s return to Celtic have been brewing for some weeks – and not just on the pitch where Celtic have been painfully toiling.

A number of episodes and conversations have taken place recently which made it obvious that, should Brendan Rodgers either resign or be sacked, O’Neill was the man to step back into the breach.

O’Neill has had to make a very difficult decision, with a number of personal factors to weigh up, not least about his family life in London.

I thought nothing of it when O’Neill and Dermot Desmond, Celtic’s most significant shareholder and powerbroker, were scheduled to have a coffee in London two weeks ago.

The two men have kept in contact over all these years, and their conversations are invariably about events in Ireland – or sometimes business stories which intrigue them both – as much as about Celtic…

Strangely, or maybe not, O’Neill had a very different take on his relationship with Desmond with The Celtic Way covering yesterday’s thigh slapping media conference.

QUESTION: You obviously know Dermot, and you know Brendan. From a personal point of view, has it been sad or disappointing to see how publicly their relationship seems to have just collapsed?

MON:

Yeah, it is. I must admit that’s true. It is really sad to see that. I wasn’t expecting it.

I don’t know what’s been going on because, despite the fact that Dermot brought me here to the football club 25 years ago, since I left, I have not had that many conversations with him. I’ve never been asked back again in my younger days.

O’Neill apparently has the senior role in his partnership with Maloney.

THE DREAM TEAM?

While O’Neill was tidying up his media commitments in London Maloney reported to Lennoxtown first thing on Tuesday with his coaching team including Mark Fotheringham. O’Neill wasn’t involved in the appointment of Fozzy.

No one at the media conference asked O’Neill for his thoughts on Falkirk, who their key players are or his take on their back-to-back wins over Motherwell and Dundee.

Fans won’t have to pay an entrance fee to hear O’Neill’s witty stories from the past, they are now free on You Tube with every Celtic media conference.

Soon he’ll be back in London keeping company with Jim White, Simon Jordan and Graeme Souness. Refreshed on football management six years on from his 19 match stint in charge of Nottingham Forest.