James McClean's comments on Martin O'Neill are not a real surprise to anyone who knows how the veteran boss operates.
O'Neill has managed to be successful at Celtic, while he has also spent plenty of time down South, also managing the Republic of Ireland, who he guided to the World Cup qualifying playoff final, ultimately losing to Denmark.
Former Ireland winger McClean wrote about that particular campaign in his autobiography, The Walls, and he spoke about O'Neill's managerial approach.
He said: "The problem was the new profile of the squad. The Euro 2016 team had an old-school core. It was a team of men.
"Martin wasn't big on tactics. He would say the game hadn't changed as much as people thought. It was still 11 versus 11, and he trusted good footballers to sort problems out on the pitch.
"But we had an influx of mainly Championship players into the group. Younger lads who had come through in an environment where they were heavily coached and had everything mapped out for them. Tactics, tactics, tactics.
"They couldn't understand Martin's way of doing things. It was like: 'What's this? Why aren't we doing more?' They also weren't as capable of handling criticism either."
Nothing new learned about O'Neill
Some will discuss the claims about O'Neill as something new learned and a potential explanation for any possible Celtic struggles, but it's nothing new.
O'Neill has never been a coach as such, usually focusing on the managerial side of the game. He works with players to get the best out of them by using his man-management experience, and that has always been his approach.
It's old-school, but it's the generation O'Neill came up in, and it's why he relies heavily on the likes of Shaun Maloney at Celtic to run sessions and take care of the nitty-gritty when it comes to tactics.
As other former players have discussed, O'Neill will sit down and do opposition analysis, but he has gotten the best out of players by managing the group, finding ways to motivate individuals and the collective, and hammering home the basics, such as physicality, winning second balls and that kind of thing.
That's nothing that wasn't already known about the veteran boss, and it certainly hasn't stopped him from being successful at Celtic, both in his first spell many moons ago and his current stint, which has already yielded a league and cup double.
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