Martin O’Neill makes Nottingham Forest claim after analysing his short Celtic tenure

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Martin O’Neill remains a Nottingham Forest legend, and his 19-game spell as the club’s manager hasn’t tarnished that.

That said, the club might now be tarnished in O’Neill’s heart, given that he can’t seem to mention Forest these days without suggesting he was only given 19 games in charge.

O’Neill is a two-time European Cup winner with Forest, and for that, he will forever sit among giants as one of the club’s Miracle Men who put the football club on the map.

Recently, O’Neill embarked on another spell as the manager of Celtic – another club where he’s worshipped – before being replaced by Wilfried Nancy.

Celtic were embarrassed by St Mirren in the Scottish League Cup final on Sunday and with the new manager not yet making an impact, O’Neill has now been analysing his latest fruitful spell with the Hoops.

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What Martin O’Neill has said about his time in charge of Celtic

Once again, O’Neill has been unable to talk about anything football management-related without mentioning that he only received 19 games in charge of Forest.

It would appear that there is a real axe to grind with the club and with Evangelos Marinakis for the way in which his time at the City Ground ended, and he’s now mentioned the club when discussing his time at Celtic.

He said live on TalkSPORT: “I think you’ve always something to prove in the game and I think that if I did have some sort of motivation, it wasn’t the foremost thought in my mind, but at some stage or another I’m sure I thought about it, was all this bitterness that I had over the Nottingham Forest affair. I think ‘Do I want to leave the game in this sort of state?’

“So in essence, I got this opportunity to do it, and I wanted to try and put it right, if anything. So I feel much less bitter than I did before.

“In my mind, whether it’s vindication or whether people feel that or not, I’m not so sure, but me, I just feel less bitter, but not entirely corrected.”

Celtic job was tailor-made for O’Neill

With younger coaches such as Mark Fotheringham around him at Parkhead, it feels somewhat strange that Celtic made the decision not to stick with O’Neill a bit longer.

Nancy has endured a rotten start to life at Celtic, and ultimately, the consensus now must be whether or not O’Neill should have been given more time at the club.

Having won everything there is to win and then some in his time as Celtic manager previously, he is a hero in those parts, and at least for the remainder of this season, Celtic had nothing to lose by letting him continue.

Forest will always welcome O’Neill back to the City Ground in some capacity, given what he achieved at the club as a player, and things will be no different now he’s departed Celtic, with their fans likely to be pining for him in the coming weeks.