'Celtic don't look a well-run club'

“Celtic just don’t look like a well-run club just now.”

That claim comes from former Rangers player Andy Halliday, but does he have a point?

Nine days on from Martin O’Neill’s appointment as permanent manager, his backroom staff is yet to be confirmed, with Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham reportedly having been offered pay cuts to stay on.

And that’s before O’Neill begins rebuilding the squad he dragged to a league and Scottish Cup double last season.

Speaking on BBC Sportsound, Halliday said: “I question why it took so long to appoint Martin O’Neill.

“When you saw the three candidates – O’Neill, Robbie Keane and Craig Bellamy – I just thought straight away he was the outstanding candidate.

“And then when the club appointed O’Neill, for Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham not be named alongside him was really strange.

“Over the past four or five transfer windows for Celtic that have been heavily criticised, a big part of that has been how long it takes to actually do business. It comes to the last week of the window and they’re potentially haggling over over-paying for a player, or it’s a loan signing.

“That’s exactly what happened in January and last summer. They had 18 months to replace Kyogo [Furuhashi] and didn’t do it. They signed Kelechi Iheanacho a day after the window closed.

“Appointing a manager that seemed a no-brainer, that’s taken a while. They can’t continue that into their summer recruitment like they’ve done in previous seasons.”

Halliday, who retired this summer after two-and-a-half years with Motherwell, expects O’Neill to improve Celtic and believes Hearts will find it difficult to replicate last season’s title challenge in the new campaign.

The Tynecastle club have lost manager Derek McInnes and striker Lawrence Shankland to Rangers.

“I think it’s almost impossible for Celtic to be as bad as they were last season. It’s remarkable O’Neill managed to win the league with Celtic given the state of play on the pitch, the injuries they had, the friction between board and fans,” he said.

“Rangers will improve under Derek McInnes and I think there will be question marks over how much Hearts can improve given what’s happened so far.”