Martin O'Neill's response to Cameron Carter-Vickers criticism is 'child-like'
Martin O'Neill hasn't proven Cameron Carter-Vickers' comments wrong in the way he thinks he has. The Celtic boss did an interview with Sky Sports ahead of Sunday's win over Motherwell in an apparant bid to explain what has gone on over the last few weeks.
O'Neill addressed his reflection period after seeing his side lose three straight games, and he also answered questions about the fan protests of Dermot Desmond and the criticism from Carter-Vickers after Celtic's defeat to Rangers.
Carter-Vickers said Celtic needed a 'script' they could stick to after playing 'random' football during their three-game wobble. The defender came in for serious criticism himself after those comments, with many believing the issues should have been kept in-house.
O'Neill, meanwhile, has said: "I don’t accept that point at all,” he told Sky Sports.
“And the reason I don’t is because we, last season, in the most vital game of the season, which we won at home, we were behind against Hearts. And we got an equaliser in the last 20 minutes.
“So we have to go. You have to risk things. So we went three at the back, which we’ve never practised before. And we won. So this is the point. So we came off script to win the title.”
O'Neill's criticism doesn't make sense
O'Neill may not accept the criticism, which is fine, but his explanation of why it is not true is just poor. He is effectively saying that because Celtic went off-script in one game and it worked, that is a good enough reason to regularly play without one.
That's not the case. Teams need a structure to work off and yes, out of desperation when nothing is working, they should be able to go off-script and pull off a result.
But Carter-Vickers is saying that the team is regularly playing without a script, and that's a genuine concern. To explain that by saying 'we once went off script and it worked' so there!' is almost child-like.
Disagree with Carter-Vickers, fine, but if you are going to fail to protect your player by answering like that, then you'd better have a better explanation than that.
Just as Carter-Vickers was called out of line for not keeping it in-house, O'Neill should be here for not simply answering by saying something along the lines of 'Carter-Vickers was frustrated after the game and we've had a chat, the content of which we will keep to ourselves'.
That's a simple way to answer the question while protecting his player, but instead, he calls him out and gives a terrible explanation for why he is wrong.
