The interim Hoops boss will look to steer his side to the Hampden showpiece with victory on derby day<\/p>\n
14:56, 31 Oct 2025Updated 15:23, 31 Oct 2025<\/p>\n
Celtic interim boss Martin O\u2019Neill moved to clarify scathing comments about rivals Rangers ahead of facing them on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Irishman said \u201cRangers are no threat whatsoever\u201d<\/a> and that \u201cthey are so far adrift, it\u2019s untrue\u201d in the context of the Premiership title race in his role as talkSPORT pundit.<\/p>\n And just 24 hours after making those comments he was appointed as Parkhead caretaker gaffer<\/a> following the shock exit of Brendan Rodgers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rangers<\/a> are five points behind the Hoops in the league table and a whopping 11 behind leaders Hearts – and O\u2019Neill insists that\u2019s the point he was making.<\/p>\n Speaking back in August, after Rangers drew 1-1 with St Mirren in Paisley, O\u2019Neill also said: \u201cThe Rangers side I was up against then would beat this Rangers side 12-0.”<\/p>\n Now the 73-year-old is up against the Light Blues in the Premier Sports Cup semi final and was asked at his pre-match press conference if, given his view on them, that it would be a big shock if he doesn\u2019t lead Celtic<\/a> to victory.<\/p>\n But O\u2019Neill took umbrage and said: \u201cSo far adrift in the league, I was talking about. I know I’ve been used to having my words tangled around here for 20-odd years ago, so yeah, don’t try that young man.<\/p>\n \u201cFar adrift in terms of, when you say this here, Hearts were eight points clear of us, and then a number of points clear then. That’s a deficit. I didn’t say about a deficit catching up with us at the time. So let me make that clear. Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill also talked up new Rangers boss Danny Rohl and said: \u201cWell, I’ve heard a lot of good things, and I think I said this even before I got this job, a lot of good things about the manager.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the players at Sheffield Wednesday were very complimentary about him. So he will have gone in there now, that was a big win for them there at Easter Road, a really big win. So they’ll be going to the game with plenty of confidence themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Kieran Tierney sat out Celtic\u2019s midweek win over Falkirk with Marcelo Sarrachi starting instead – but the Uruguayan missed training, although O\u2019Neill expects both to be okay while Daizen Maeda will be assessed after he returned to action in midweek off the bench.<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill said of Sarrachi: \u201cI think he will be okay. He’ll be okay. I thought he did really, really well for us. He did really well.\u201d<\/p>\n Tune in to Hotline Live<\/a> every Sunday to Thursday and have your say on the biggest issues in Scottish football and listen to Record Sport’s newest podcast, Game On<\/a>, every Friday for your sporting fix, all in bitesize chunks.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The interim Hoops boss will look to steer his side to the Hampden showpiece with victory on derby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[2628,76431,94,79673,21839,1946,1638,7081,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-540096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-celtic-fc","9":"tag-danny-rohl","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-martin-oneill","12":"tag-premier-sports-cup","13":"tag-rangers-fc","14":"tag-scottish-premiership","15":"tag-scottish-professional-football-league","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115469506730370324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}