Shaun Maloney says Martin O'Neill made up his mind over whether to stay at the club following three straight defeats pretty quickly. Celtic were left reeling after three straight defeats before the international break, including two derby defeats to Rangers and a home Europa League defeat to Ferencvaros.
After those games, O'Neill questioned whether he would stay on in the job, explaining that he would assess what the issues were, and if he didn't feel he could fix them, he would step aside.
Fans were left to wait the entirety of the international break without any confirmation of whether O'Neill was staying on, left assuming he was staying by the lack of announcement suggesting otherwise.
But O'Neill's assistant, Maloney, says there was no real stress behind the scenes because the decision was actually made pretty quickly.
"It was fine," Maloney said ahead of Thursday night's clash with Celta Vigo. "I think Martin made a decision pretty quickly and then started speaking about how we wanted to improve the sides in games like tomorrow, in games like Benfica, in obviously big games and domestically, how he saw the team and how he thought we could be better. That happened really quickly.
"For us as staff, it was fine. That was within a couple of days. It's our job to take his vision of how he sees the team and try and coach the team in that vision. Pretty quickly, you have to get on with that.
"It was a really tough week before the international break, really difficult. It probably came at a really good time for us to reset. You could figure out what the first nine or ten games looked like.
"Obviously, there were some things we had to improve quickly, particularly without the ball. We're still trying to improve on those things. With the boss, it was fine. It was a couple of days and then straight to it."
That might surprise some fans, and some may have appreciated a little more communication, given it was O'Neill who cast doubt on his own position in the first place. O'Neill would have seen the speculation surrounding his future and could quite easily have put it to bed with a quick TV or radio soundbite.
Whether it was his decision or the club's to keep things quiet, it wasn't a particularly wise one when you consider the frustration the fans already have with the club.
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