O’Neill turns new leaf and plays it cool at Emirates

MARTIN O’NEILL has changed.

There was a time when the effusive Ulsterman would have celebrated a goal and an unlikely point at Arsenal by leaping from the dug-out and performing an impromptu lap of honour around the stadium.

Instead, O’Neill has returned to football after a 15-month hiatus a mellower, less agitated soul. The celebrations were restrained, his post-match mood philosophical. Then again, if there is one Premiership manager who should retain a healthy perspective on the game’s peaks and troughs, it is O’Neill. The 54-year-old has spent his time away from the game caring for his wife Geraldine, who is battling lymphoma.

Jobs have been refused and a comeback delayed until O’Neill was sure she and the couple’s two daughters did not need his unflinching attention.

Aston Villa eventually offered him a route back into the sport he loves, but they are getting a very different manager to the touchline Jack-in-the-Box of Leicester and Celtic. “I have got a broader perspective on life, and that’s the biggest change in me personally since I was last in the game,” he said. “I’m going to have to disagree with Bill Shankly: football’s important but it’s not a matter of life and death.

“There are other things that matter too. That doesn’t mean I don’t retain the same enthusiasm I always had because that’s what people usually mean when they have a broader perspective. I’m always nervous before games and I had exactly the same feelings this time, even though I’d been away for 15 months.

“The stomach was churning just as much as it ever did and I still felt the linesmen got decisions wrong. But it’s lovely to be back.

“For the last 15 months, I’ve spent my Saturday afternoons watching games at grounds and on television, just trying to keep abreast of things. Now I’m back into it, all the old feelings are returning.”

O’Neill decision to relaunch his career at Villa, not so much a sleeping giant as a comatose one, raised eyebrows, with the sceptics wondering just how this famously combative coach could ever peacefully co-exist with the club’s spiky chairman Doug Ellis. But O’Neill is nothing if not cute, and Villa’s proposed takeover by the American billionaire Randy Lerner will release funds for a spending spree, even if it will come too late for the current transfer window.

A move for Celtic’s Stilian Petrov is therefore likely to be postponed until January. In the mean time, O’Neill is stuck with what he has, but on this evidence that might be enough to cause a surprise or too. Villa pooped Arsenal’s housewarming party at the gleaming new Emirates stadium with a display brimming with courage and commitment, even if they did leave the home goalkeeper Jens Lehmann a largely disinterested spectator.

One of the German’s few tasks was to pick the ball out of his net after Olof Mellberg had headed in Steven Davis’ 53rd-minute corner, but Arsene Wenger was spared a nightmarish start to Arsenal’s post-Highbury era by the intervention of English football’s most talked-about, but least-seen, teenager Theo Walcott. The 17-year-old, who had failed to kick a ball in anger during England’s ill-fated World Cup campaign, vented two months of frustration with a sparky performance as a late substitute, setting up Gilberto Silva for Arsenal’s 83rd-minute equaliser and continually prompted and probed the left flank.

His display smacked of a player determined to prove a point, although the man himself was maintaining an admirably diplomatic front. “The World Cup was a brilliant experience for me, training with world class players,” he said.

“Dealing with the pressure and watching how players prepared for big games helped me develop as a player. I didn’t feel pressure after being selected but then you shouldn’t at 17.”

Walcott admitted to having made an urgent call of nature just before being unleashed against Villa, but generally he appears blessed with an unflappable temperament. The question now for Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, is whether to give Walcott his first start in Wednesday’s Champions League qualifier against Dinamo Zagreb. “That is an issue I will address,” Wenger confirmed. “I am happy for Theo. He was a little bit happy for having been to the World Cup but also frustrated for not having played. But he’s the sort of player who will always bring something to the team when he plays. It’s a lot of pressure for a very young man to deal with but people want him to be a star in England.”

OPTA FACT: Arsenal have played at home on the opening day 10 times in 14 Premiership seasons.

This was Villa’s first point away at Arsenal in nine games Villa have gone 16 Premiership games without winning against Arsenal.