Wycombe win GM Vauxhall Conference title to achieve promotion to the Football League and clinch another FA Trophy success. My work was ‘fine arty abstract collage’ at that point, I hadn’t ever illustrated anything. I didn’t really know if I’d be able to make great collages with specific subject matter at short notice – with my relatively small archive of material, (and no internet at that time of course) but it all started there. I launched into commercial art and in a few months started calling myself an ‘Illustrator’. It took a while to learn how to successfully answer a brief though. So how was Martin O’Neill to begin to turnaround the whole club? Some thought that it was equivalent to turning the Titanic around in light of Rangers’ then hegemony. His first task was to rebuild the squad, and after losing Mark Viduka (the highest profile loss) he brought in players such as Sutton, Thompson and Agathe, and later Lennon (in Dec 2000) to change both the dynamic and atmosphere surrounding the whole squad. Add in the recovery of Henrik Larsson, after his horrendous injury the previous year, and he had the nucleus of a great team, a blessing for any manager. May: Celtic lose 2-1 at Motherwell and O’Neill’s hopes of a fourth title in five years disappear as Rangers win 1-0 at Hibernian. 25May: Club announce O’Neill will step down after Scottish Cup final to look after his wife. 28May: Ends career at Celtic with 1-0 win over Dundee United in Scottish Cup final.

I am leaving Celtic purely for personal reasons and I am extremely sorry to be departing in such circumstances.” One theory that has been spun about Martin O’Neill on why he was such a good manager is because he was an avid legal eagle, having done a law degree and that it was in the family and so on. There is some truth in it but it has been way over-blown.

February: Reaches his first final with Villa, in the Carling Cup against Manchester United, but they lose 2-1. 10April: Villa lose 3-0 to Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final. May: Villa finish sixth for a third successive year. 9August: Villa announce O’Neill has resigned as manager with immediate effect. What sort of state do I leave Celtic in? Certainly a better state than I found them, and certainly a better state than you’re in.’ What kind of visuals do you find work best for limited edition prints or originals? Does this differ from commissioned Illustration?

Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth The changes at Ibrox don’t affect our job one jot, certainly nothing that happens over there will influence what I do.”

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Makes international debut as a substitute against USSR. Joins Nottingham Forest from Distillery in October. He has worked as an illustrator and artist for two decades and regularly exhibits his personal collages, sketchbooks, and prints. He is also a visiting lecturer across the UK. Martin lives and works on England’s South East coast with his wife and two daughters.

April: Celtic secure the Scottish Premier League title. May: Celtic are beaten in the Scottish Cup final by Rangers.

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Billy Bingham made O’Neill the first Catholic captain of Northern Ireland, which represented a seriously bold move in the early 1980s. “Billy said: ‘We get the results, everything will take care of itself,”” O’Neill recalls. “As it did. From 2001-2004, Celtic remained undefeated at home until Aberdeen won in Apr 2004. A remarkable record under Martin O’Neill. Understandably his priority was his family, and with hindsight the club should have managed things differently to work as best as possible in the circumstances but then again who wanted to lose Martin O’Neill? The club tried to accommodate him as best as anyone could. O’Neill also helped to give some good young players their first steps. Kennedy and Marshall outstanding at the Nou Camp, Liam Miller’s (ultimately brief) purple patch, before he got snatched by old purple nose, McManus and McGeady both made debuts, while the likes of Jamie Smith, Ross Wallace and Craig Beattie all looked like they had something to offer. However, over time, excluding McGeady none of them have hit the major heights, but they mostly all had good solid careers at a decent level.

The highlight of the season for many though was surprisingly not the Barca win, the league victory or the Scottish cup final double. The best moment was the whitewash of five wins out of five against Rangers. The finale of this came from Martin O’Neill’s best signing, Chris Sutton, who in injury time scored a long range goal to win us the final game of the season against Rangers. The torment for the Rangers fans was unmeasurable, and the joy for all Celtic fans was sky-high. Martin O’Neill simply had the upper hand in all the encounters, and his charges did all the good work for him. An important incident from this season showed the greatest aspect of Martin O’Neill. This was when at the end of a game v Rangers ( link), he took midfielder Neil Lennon over to the Celtic fans and proudly paraded him shoulder-to-shoulder after Lennon was racially & verbally abused for the 90mins by the Rangers fans. I’ve never met O’Neill, but was once told an illuminating story about him. He was sitting before some assembled press, one of whom raised the point that O’Neill never worked with his players in training during the week. Don’t you think, the journalist continued, that you could go one step further and improve the players’ technical skills if you were to work with them more? Early on, I would have taken a bit of criticism but not nearly as much as Billy for making the choice. He never told me about it, he never said it bothered him. He was prepared to go for it when for an easier life he could have bypassed me.” Double European Cup winner as a player with Nottingham Forest, playing under legendary Brian Clough.

From then on, Martin O’Neill’s teams had to battle and overcome Celta Vigo (violent players and incompetent referees), the highly rated Stuttgart (Germans) and then the big one, Liverpool, the biggest name to date. Client led briefs often lead to very interesting work anyway, or at least the offcuts and offshoot work which derives from it. Personal work & commissioned work feed each other & there’s no real difference for me regarding what kind of visuals I use.