Celtic boss Martin O'Neill has shown his man management skills again by issuing well-timed comments on a player who needs to seize his opportunity on Wednesday night.
The Bhoys are in Premiership action against St Johnstone as they look to maintain their 100% record following a big win over St Mirren over the weekend. But they will be without starting left-winger Yang Hyun-jun, who has seemingly improved with every appearance this season, most recently putting in a superb display and scoring the winner against St Mirren.
Yang is now away for the Asian Games until the end of the normal international break, which is at the start of October, and O'Neill needs to find a replacement.
The obvious candidate is Sebastian Tounekti, who is the natural replacement for Yang, although it's true that O'Neill may go with a front line of Kasper Hogh, Camilo Duran and Haissem Hassan when the former is fully fit and ready to start.
But all the more reason for Tounekti to take his opportunity, which he is likely to get on Wednesday night. The winger has shown some quality, but he has been really inconsistent, especially around the box, where he seems just as likely to produce something brilliant as put in a poor cross.
“Seb's good, he's got really good ability around the edge of the penalty box," said O'Neill. "The thing I like about him is that he can go both ways.
"Sometimes there's a bit of frustration, but there'll always be a bit of frustration with wide players who might lose the ball once or twice. The most important thing to tell wide players is if they can go past people, just keep doing it.
“That's an easy comment for a manager to make, but it's different when you've lost it two times in the trot, and the crowd then start to get really anxious and you think, ‘well the next time I think I'll just lay it off.'
"I don't want that, I want to still encourage people to go past them. And when he comes inside he can do that. When he's in and around the edge of the box, he can actually check outside and put it across.
"So it's a matter of keep encouraging him, and while he probably sees at the moment that Yang has done exceptionally well and does great work for us as well when we don't have the ball.
“Those are the things that I think Seb can pick up on and can learn. Can he emulate Yang? That should be his aim.
"I think Seb has natural talent. I think it's the other parts of the game that I think he's got to have a wider picture, but hopefully that will come.”
The intentionality of veteran bosses is to be admired
We see a lot of young managers shy away from topics and individual players these days. We see a lot of surface-level or basic comments on individuals because managers don't want to get themselves into trouble with said players.
What you have to admire about veteran bosses like O'Neill is that they always seem to have an intentional set of comments to drop in a bid to fire up certain players, and at just the right time.
In this case, it is Tounekti, but we have certainly seen O'Neill do it before, and that kind of public man management is a dying art. It's not about being critical or digging someone out, in fact, it usually comes with praise and a caveat of what they can do better, but if you read between the lines, you know when it's there, and the player he is talking about certainly does.
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