Scottish Premiership champions Celtic are interested in Alex Neil, who has done a fine job in the Championship with Preston North End.
Maybe Alex Neil is the right man for Celtic after all.
There a few attributes every perspective Celtic boss needs to have. He must be able to trust in youth, hone the talents of promising hopefuls in order to sell them on for profit, and be tactically astute enough to play attractive, possession-based football while showing a willingness to alter his style if required.
With that in mind, comments made by Preston North End boss Neil to the Lancashire Evening Post today suggests that he fits the bill more than most.
“The matches (in the Championship) are all very different, some of the teams are quality football teams and others are more direct,” the former Hamilton boss said.
“You have to be capable of winning different games in a variety of ways. That is the challenge.”
With this in mind, it seems that Neil possesses something that his potential predecessor Brendan Rodgers did not.
While the Northern Irishman will go down in Celtic folklore after leading The Hoops to successive domestic trebles for the first time in their history, one underlying criticism of his trophy-laden reign surrounded upon a refusal to adapt his free-flowing, swashbuckling approach against tougher opposition.
This naive, almost arrogant, approach cost Celtic time and again in Europe in particular. Maybe Neil, who has turned Preston into a team far greater than the sun of their parts and was linked with The Hoops via The Mail, wouldn’t make the same mistakes.
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