25th October 2026; Easter Road Stadium, Edinburgh, Scotland; Scottish Premiership Football, Hibernian versus Celtic; Haissem Hassan of Celtic
Martin O’Neill’s baffling approach to recruitment and tactics can be summed up in Haissem Hassan.
Today the Egyptian World Cup player failed to make the matchday squad for the narrow win over Kilmarnock.
Whether he cost £6m or £9m that is an incredible amount of money for Celtic to have no use for.
Hassan sat today’s match out alongside the five outfield signings made following Celtic’s Champions League defeat from LASK Linz.
During Monday’s visit to the Greenock CSC O’Neill is reported to have taken full responsibility for recruitment in January. None of the five loan signings were retained.
Presumably it was the manager that was the driving force behind the summer signings as well. Surely O’Neill wasn’t using his own popularity to deflect away from whatever passes for the club’s Recruitment strategy?
@aboutceltic Forest isn’t the answer, but I’d take him over hassan anytime
What we’re seeing here is celtic’s awful recruitment strategy coming back to haunt them
Sell anyone who shows a bit of form, bank half the profit and try to replace them with inferior players
— mmabhoy (@mmabhoy1888) November 8, 2026
QUESTION: Haissem Hassan wasn’t in the squad today, how is he?
O’Neill:
We’re trying to do, as much as possible, we’re trying to do a bit of manoeuvring at this minute. I just think it’ll be great for places. If there’s proper competition for places, it can only make us better.
WHERE DOES HASSAN FIT IN AT CELTIC?
At the age of 24 Hassan is largely the player that he is going to be. The details are widely known.
Almost effortlessly he can run 40/50 yards up the park with defenders afraid to challenge him because he will dribble past. And that’s about it.
He brings virtually no goals or assists. He doesn’t track back to help out the right-back.
Celtic knew what they were signing.
You can do some work to improve areas of a players performance but you can’t transform them.
For whatever system O’Neill is trying to play Hassan doesn’t fit in. He isn’t Nicolas Kuhn or Liel Abada, you won’t get 20 plus goals and assists from the former Real Oviedo winger.
It seems that despite two seasons in La Liga there was no interest from Spanish clubs in Hassan. Even after the World Cup.
O’Neill claimed that Celtic had been watching Hassan closely since January. He is better than Joel Mveuka but that is a very low bar to compare with.
Now that Jota and Yang Hyun-jun are both available Celtic have plenty of options on the wing.
As O’Neill strives to come up with a successful side and formation today’s 20 man matchday squad suggests that Hassan won’t be seeing much in the way of meaningful playing time.
@AGCeltic_ I’m now starting to believe MON just wants to be everyone’s pal, giving them all minutes to keep them sweet. Nothing about actually who can win football matches.
— K (@iamkayeemm) November 8, 2026
Let’s all be honest.
There’s a complete lack of talent from back to front.
MON is juggling things around looking for a formula that works.
He won’t find one.
Not with what he has at his disposal, regardless of who brought them in.
It really is the weakest I have seen the squad in over a decade.
We used to find the odd diamond or three and maybe even be lucky enough to have them all playing in the same team.
Not now though, either agents have cottoned on to us shopping for bargains looking to double our money inside 18 months or those scouting have white canes and labradors.
I used to think it was managed decline, but I think I’ve been too generous usingbthe word managed.
There’s nothing managed about it.
It’s just decline.
The result of the wrong people in the wrong jobs for the wrong reasons.
It’s horrible to watch but the lifelong fan in me gives me no respite.
And that’s what the bastards in the suits use against us all.
EMPTY SEATS.
Nothing else will have the power.
Nothing.
That’s a fair point bhoy4 but even with the so-called dross and decline ,we should still be beating the likes of Falkirk and Dundee utd,if our players are shite ,what does that make other teams players look like.I think for the cost of 1 of our players,you could buy the whole Falkirk team.Our board are terrible but I still think our coaching and tactics or non tactics leaves a lot to be desired.