Martin O’Neill ultimately overcame his concerns that Celtic could not make up their points deficit to Hearts by winning the Scottish Premiership.
Celtic trailed leaders Hearts by a point before Saturday’s meeting of the two sides in Glasgow and won with two late goals to finish as champions.
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It was the club’s fifth league title in a row and a fourth for O’Neill as Celtic manager.
He returned to the club briefly in the autumn following Brendan Rodgers’ departure and was back in January after Wilfried Nancy’s reign ended abruptly following six defeats in eight games.
Prior to his first game in charge of Celtic in 2026, O’Neill’s side were six points off Hearts.
“I wasn’t worried about what had happened 20-odd years ago with Celtic and me as manager,” O’Neill said of his first interim spell on TalkSPORT.
“I was worried in case I was just too old to do it and if I failed then people would say, ‘well there you are, he’s a dinosaur, he doesn’t belong in the modern game’.
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“Having won the matches that we did do, I kind of felt an alleviation as much as anything. I felt pretty good about it but I knew that was going to be a short spell.
“Second time coming back in January, knowing that I was there till the end of the season, that presented, to me, a lot of more difficulties for me in the sense that I’m no longer an interim, I’m going to be here right till the end of the season and that was worrying because we had dropped a lot of points in that time.
“I was worried in case we couldn’t make it up.
“We’ve finally chased Hearts down, which was terrific and really great to win in exhilarating fashion, which was terrific.”
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