'If they had asked me': Martin O'Neill opens up on Celtic and lifts lid on 15-minute Wilfried Nancy meeting

O’Neill also opened up on his first meeting with successor Wilfried Nancy and said the 15-minute handover showed to him that the Frenchman had his own view on players and philosophies.

Nancy took over as permanent Celtic manager on December 4 but is already under mounting pressure after losing his first three matches in charge, the latest being Sunday’s Premier Sports Cup final defeat by St Mirren.

O’Neill left Celtic in a strong position following seven wins out of eight across all competitions. He was brought in as caretaker alongside coaches Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham, who are not part of Nancy’s current team.

Given Nancy’s disastrous start at Celtic Park, which includes defeats by Hearts, Roma and the Buddies, many are questioning the timing of bringing the Frenchman into the club ahead of such a demanding and crucial set of fixtures. And speaking for the first time since he left Celtic on his talkSPORT show on Monday morning, O’Neill revealed he would have continued in the dugout but was “fine” to walk away when the board told to him to, saying it was not a “driving force” to be in charge at Hampden.

"Only if asked," he said when asked by presenters Jim White and Simon Jordan if he wanted to lead Celtic out at Hampden. "That was not a driving force. I'd happily have stayed on. If they had asked me to stay on, I would've done so but the minute that they said, 'no, that's your time', that's fine by me.

"I stepped into the job, [major shareholder] Dermot [Desmond] had said to me, he said, 'you could be in it two weeks or two months, we're looking for someone', When you get into it, you really enjoy it. You enjoy winning, that's the point - this is what it's about.

"You've got to give managers chances. I think back to my own time at Leicester City, where I eventually enjoyed nice success. Can't win a game to save my life, crowd baying for blood and after 10 games. How lucky I was to win a couple of matches of real importance at a stage.

"You've just got to win, you've got to win. You've got to steady it again. There's some excellent players at the football club. There's some boys who have won big time as well. Lean on some of the senior players. Lean on them and get them on your side.

"It is recoverable, of course. You're in the football club 10 or 12 days. You cannot make a judgement on anybody over three games. The matches were difficult. You have got to give a manager some time."

O’Neill’s meeting with Nancy

O’Neill said he found Nancy “affable” when he met him after the ex-Columbus Crew chief’s appointment and believes the 48-year-old has his own viewpoint on the game and how it should be played.

“The board asked me would I stay on and speak to the incoming manager,” O’Neill continued. “So my last game was on a Wednesday night against Dundee. I would have been flying back to London anyway on the Thursday but I stayed until later on.

“I met the incoming manager. He was very affable, very nice. It was only a 15-minute conversation. What can you make of anybody in that time? He's got his own philosophy, his own viewpoint on the game and that is absolutely fine. I was not going to be coming in and giving him advice. I said very, very little. He would have seen the matches.”

Continuing his discussion with White, O’Neill continued: “I promise you it was no longer than that. What did you want me to do? Run through everything? I would have passed on anything that the incoming manager would have wanted to have heard from me. It's as simple as that. He had his own view on players and that's absolutely fine.

“What I would have given him is the thing that I thought was important, which is for him to bed in and put his own mark on the football club. That's very, very important with the January window coming up and you've lost a couple of payers to the African Cup of Nations. The squad needs supplemented.

“I’m not in charge. Like most managers I would speak to, people have different thoughts. You definitely need to supplement the squad. January is a difficult squad but the squad needs a greater depth - that is obvious.”