Martin O’Neill has revived Celtic but Rangers return prompts a bigger question

And then there were two. In the season and title race that keeps on giving, a story for the ages is developing. No, no, it’s not that one, as historic it would be for Hearts to break the dominance of the Old Firm and win the league for the first time since 1960 .

That’s because Martin O’Neill returning to Celtic , at the age of 74, and winning a fourth title, 21 years after his last in Scotland, would be a pretty decent tale in itself. Consider where he was a few months ago. When Celtic came calling and O’Neill’s phone rang in late October, the Northern Irishman was sat in the TalkSport studio singing the praises of Hearts , the league leaders, after their excellent start to the season.

At that point it was largely assumed O’Neill was retired. The previous month saw the release of his book, The Changing Game , where he appeared rather unimpressed by some of football’s emerging trends - sporting directors and data analytics among them. In an interview with the Guardian , O’Neill called the measurement of expected goals (xG) “total nonsense” and a "clueless development”.

Evidently, O’Neill had not attempted to reinvent himself in the six years spent between his last position in management at Nottingham Forest and returning to Celtic following the acrimonious departure of Brendan Rodgers . O’Neill was raised as a player by Brian Clough, and he is objectively an elder man, so any attempts to be anything other than old school would have been futile. But the call O’Neill first received was to steady a club lurching into crisis while the search for a new permanent manager began.