O'Neill reveals pain of past failure

Celtic manager Martin O’Neill has revealed that he and his players are sure to enjoy their forthcoming holidays – because losing the league last season ruined their entire summer.

The Hoops will wrap up the Bank of Scotland Premier League title with victory at Kilmarnock tomorrow.

It will be their third title in four years under O’Neill, who revealed that this year’s success was inspired by the pain of being pipped by Rangers on goal difference on the final day of last season, when ironically a win at Kilmarnock was not enough.

He said: “I think the whole team made up their minds that the championship was something they wanted back again.

“It was incredibly exciting and it’s far more exciting when you’re on the right end of it. Unfortunately we weren’t.

“I didn’t really recover from it until the opening of the new season against Dunfermline. Honestly, the whole summer you think about nothing else.

“That evening after Kilmarnock we all made our minds up that we were going to avoid the feeling this season.

“But if you ask ‘did you get you over it the next day?’ then the answer is no.”

The 4-0 win was also memorable for the post-match sending-off of Chris Sutton by referee Kenny Clark and within seconds of emerging from the referee’s room the Englishman went on to make controversial comments live on television questioning the professionalism of Dunfermline, who had just lost 6-1 at Rangers.

Sutton was hit by a five-game ban and O’Neill recalled: “It was bad enough having to contend with Chris’ comments after the match.

“We found out that he had not only said something relatively rude to the linesman, he had also been suspended for half the season when he came into the dressing room.

“For the suspension that he got I thought he had killed Kenny in the referee’s room!

“I was pleased to hear that Kenny was all right. He [Sutton] got four red cards on the one day. It was obviously a record and almost as many as the number of goals he was scoring.

“We had to contend with those things and there weren’t too many light moments that day.”

The final-day disappointment had quickly followed the UEFA Cup final loss to Porto in Seville.

O’Neill said: “Both Seville and Kilmarnock were disappointing in different ways.

“If we had taken one of them it would have alleviated some of the disappointment and if you’re asking which one I would have chosen I would of course have taken the UEFA Cup.

“We were there in the final and you might as well go and try and win it.

“I would have taken that because it would have meant winning a European trophy.”