Kasper Schmeichel Celtic announcement caught a key man by surprise

O’Neill had stated last Friday that Schmeichel was closing in on a return to fitness, but then the 39-year-old announced live on CBS’s Champions League coverage on Wednesday that he faced double shoulder surgery and up to a year of rehabilitation.

While O’Neill was aware of Schmeichel’s long-standing shoulder issue that dates back to a Denmark match a year ago, he did not know that an operation is required to fix it. The former Leicester keeper, who was at Celtic training on Friday ahead of Sunday’s match away at Dundee United, is expected to go under the knife next week.

“I must admit I was surprised at the severity of it,” said O’Neill. “I know that he was having injections to play some of the games and, while that’s not a great remedy, I didn’t realise how bad it was. So, disappointed to hear the news.

“I didn’t think that Kasper was going to announce it. Tim (Williamson), our physio, was aware that the scan had shown up much worse than we thought. But I wasn’t expecting to hear that. I didn’t hear it first hand, but I heard it second hand. Obviously I would have preferred to have heard it myself.”

O’Neill added: “It happened rather quickly. Believe it or not, sometimes I can be incommunicado.”

Some of Schmeichel’s performances have come under criticism since first suffering the injury, notably when he scored an own goal in Celtic’s Scottish Cup final defeat by Aberdeen. Fans continued to question whether the shoulder issue was hampering him.

“We’ve all played with injuries,” former Nottingham Forest midfielder O’Neill said. “I’ve been guilty of that myself, a hundred-odd years ago, trying to play through an injury to play in a European Cup final. I thought he was really terrific in my first spell here. He made some big, big saves in games.

“While I knew that there was a problem with his shoulder, which he had had for some considerable time, again, I didn’t think it was as severe as it’s turned out to be. He seemed to get through the games and, while you don’t want to flog someone to death, he was doing fine and he didn’t think it was a major problem at that time.”