Martin O’Neill was back at the City Ground a couple of weeks ago.
The 73-year-old took his seat for what was billed as Nottingham Forest’s big night – a return to European football, a stage they had conquered during his glittering playing career.
But by half-time of the Europa League game against Danish club Midtjylland, O’Neill found himself shaking his head in disbelief.
“It was this fantastic occasion, the mood was great and the atmosphere was brilliant, so for them to be calling for Ange [Postecoglou’s] head by half-time, you think, ‘something’s not right here,'” O’Neill tells The i Paper.
“Ridiculous. We all know short-termism is so prevalent in football now but six games [as it was at the time] is no time at all. No manager in the world would expect that to happen.”
On Postecoglou’s struggles
There is no denying Postecoglou is a man under pressure to deliver results (Photo: Getty)O’Neill has been thinking a lot about the state of the modern game recently.
His new book The Changing Game, which traces the evolution of the sport from the time when he played through to the present day, is peppered with insight and brilliant stories from a career spent shoulder to shoulder with some of football’s biggest names.
But the narrative that underpins it is just how rapid the change in English football culture has been over the last decade. “Unrecognisable” is the word O’Neill uses during our engaging half-hour chat.
“There seems to be this quest now for immediate results,” he says of Postecoglou’s struggles.
“We’ve all got used to the ubiquity of statistics in football but I think it gets wearing when you see these stats after two or three games that are supposed to tell you a story. People have to have a bit of time.
“We’re all so determined to jump to conclusions but sometimes it is just a bit of good fortune. I was at Leicester in 1995 and we couldn’t win a game early on. The crowd were very restless but we got a bit of luck, a couple of away wins that kept us in the mix and we went on to have a great old time. I think maybe we’ve lost sight of some of that.”
‘Football managers don’t exist anymore’
Roy Keane was part of O’Neill’s backroom staff at Nottingham Forest (Photo: Getty)O’Neill, of course, knows the Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis and how ruthless he can be.
Back in 2019, in what has turned out to be his final managerial role, he was dismissed by him after just 19 games in a call that came as a shock. He admits he is “not his favourite person”.
“But I preface everything by saying if Mr Marinakis had not put his money into the football club and bought the players then Forest would still be in the Championship,” he says diplomatically.
Marinakis is likely one of the owners he is talking about when he reflects that “the managerial role of yesteryear has been obliterated”.
“At 73 I’d be considered too old to do it now,” he says.
“But the role of the manager in the sense of Sir Alex Ferguson where you were in charge of a football club, that role doesn’t exist anymore. You’re a coach now.
“It’s almost committee meetings where the manager has a say – maybe not the final say – about who might come to the football club or might not. The role is condensed to coaching on the pitch, with the chief executive or chairman saying ‘You concentrate on the pitch, we’ll bring you the players.’”
His love for Sunderland
O’Neill parted ways with Sunderland after just 16 months in charge in 2013 (Photo: Getty)He sensed the shift towards the end of his managerial career. I ask him about his time at Sunderland and there is more than a tinge of regret that he wasn’t listened to when he pleaded for reinforcements to “kick on” in his second season.
The then-owner Ellis Short had believed the club’s academy would provide players, something O’Neill felt wasn’t borne out by the reality of what they were producing.
“I will always love Sunderland, it was my club as a kid growing up so it was a big disappointment to get sacked,” he says.
“We would have stayed up, we had 31 points from 31 games and 36 points kept you up, although we didn’t know it at the time. Then in comes [Paolo] Di Canio.
“A very, very fine player, not a very fine manager I must say. I’ve never seen a manager blame a team for his own inadequacies like he did.”
O’Neill does a great line in put-downs and there is no love lost with former boss Short.
“He was a strange character, no question about it,” he says.
“Not somebody you would be bothered about getting to know and that’s not something I could say about other owners I’ve worked with.
“I think sometimes when people have a lot of money they think they know better than other people on every single subject.”
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O’Neill admits he misses the “buzz” of 3pm on a Saturday but is hardly short of work.
On Sunday he speaks at the Harrogate Literature Festival, an assignment that will allow him to tick off a visit to a place he has always wanted to explore. “I’m on the graveyard shift,” he jokes of his 11.30am slot.
He says he is open to offers for the 2026 World Cup but a part of him hopes he won’t be sharing a studio with Roy Keane, who accompanied him as assistant manager at the Republic of Ireland.
“I hoped Roy might get into management again,” O’Neill says. Perhaps thinking back to that night in Nottingham earlier this month, he adds: “Given the way management is now, I could understand if it’s something he’s less interested in now.”
O’Neill is speaking at the Harrogate Literature Festival on Sunday, 19 October. You can find details and buy tickets here
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