Celtic: Martin O’Neill is a safe bet when the Premiership champions pick a gamble.

Celtic have got their own way in the transfer market. All of this is painful for O’Neill. He definitely raised it as a big issue in his negotiations to stay on it.

Under O’Neill, Celtic have signed five players on loan – Benjamin Arthur, Joel Mvuka, Junior Adamu, Thomas Kavankara and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Oxlade-Chamberlain didn’t start many games but contributed a couple of winners so you can rate him as a success. The other four failed.

You can add to the list of other recent failures – Shin Yamada, Michel-Ange Baliquisha, Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, Hayato Inmura. Celtic can expect a lot from Sebastian Tonecki.

Much of the sadness around the Celtics starts with their recruiting. There are significant achievements, but it has become the last minute and scattered gun. O’Neill wants it to be better. It needs to improve rather than stagnate.

Nine of the players who played time for Hearts on the final day of the league season came under Brendan Rodgers and three were Postcoglou’s recruits.

O’Neill knows a player when he sees one, but during his second and third Celtic arrivals last season, he didn’t give the impression of someone looking for these men. It’s not really his job.

It’s hard to see under Celtic’s recruiting operation. Good players are lining up but deals are getting bitten at the top? That’s the feeling among some, to be sure.

Finish with Adamu and Mvuka in January and Baliwisha and others should be a line in the sand for Celtic before then. If they don’t heed the lessons they’ve learned recently, there should be some fear in their fans that these mistakes will be repeated.

O’Neill is on the move again, so maybe he’s got the validation he needs.

They roll the dice with Nancy and make a terrible mistake. Now, instead of gambling on an outsider, they turn to safe bets again.