The 73-year-old former Hoops manager was installed along with ex-Celtic player Shaun Maloney as the interim management team following the stunning resignation of Brendan Rodgers on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Irish striker Johnny Kenny scored twice in the first half before goals after the break from midfielder Benjamin Nygren and wide-man Sebastian Tounekti took the Hoops to within six points of William Hill Premiership leaders Hearts, who drew 2-2 at St Mirren.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill, who was Hoops boss between 2000 and 2005, said: \u201cI know the confidence\u2019s been a bit low. That\u2019s the most natural thing in the world, even the very, very best sides if you\u2019re not getting a result.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlayers then stop doing things that they almost like naturally would do.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some of the lads in the dressing room that would have no idea who I was but they\u2019re only about 10 years old and some of the other lads, I said we have quite a number of winners in the dressing room. That\u2019s really important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose lads have experienced some lows during the course of the season and then fight back and the captain (Callum McGregor), he\u2019s a real quality player.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there was great performances all around this evening and just to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, they becalmed my dreadful insecurity problems. Naturally, delighted to win the game. But there wasn\u2019t a thought about anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill joked about being nervous before the game.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWell, first of all, I jokingly said \u2013 maybe true \u2013 I have not been as nervous since I sat my 11-plus but, again, I think I passed that when I was 48.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Celtic’s Johnny Kenny (left) scores their side’s second goal<\/p>\n
\u201cBut honestly, really concerned about the game, naturally.<\/p>\n
\u201cConcerned about the usual thing about letting myself down, which is I\u2019ve done so many times it\u2019s untrue, and letting other people down here at the football club.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust coming in a bit of a whirlwind and to play in the manner which we did when I thought was great and obviously most important thing was winning the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cNaturally, I couldn\u2019t be more pleased. I thought the players did really brilliantly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Falkirk boss John McGlynn accepted Celtic were simply too good for his men \u2013 who lost 4-1 in the Premier Sports Cup earlier in the season \u2013 but will \u201cbin it\u201d and move on.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe have to move on. Saturday is more important than this game. It was always going to be hard. We stayed in the game for 30 minutes till the goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cLosing the third goal killed us. Celtic have that sharpness and we\u2019re not at that level when they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe bin it. We won\u2019t be competing for the top two positions in the league.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt (Celtic\u2019s change of manager) didn\u2019t affect us at all. They had a short period to turn it around. That was basically the same style we played against in the League Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re too quick with their ability and that\u2019s what happens when you pay the big bucks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 73-year-old former Hoops manager was installed along with ex-Celtic player Shaun Maloney as the interim management team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,23,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-153271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-latest-news-ticker","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115463050208235397","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}