In a world where sporting figures of any import seem bent on turning blandness into an art form, Martin O'Neill is rapidly emerging as a priceless maverick. While others parade their inoffensiveness like a badge of honour, the Celtic manager seemingly has no qualms about laying all the complexities of his character out for all the world to see. It makes for fascinating viewing.

O'Neill is shot through with contradictions. His reputation as a motivator supreme grows with every under-performing player whose career he effortlessly turns around. But at the same time, he can make public appearances that are downbeat to the point of outright depression.

Clearly he craves success and achievement in his professional life, but when it arrived with the securing of the Scottish Premier League title last Saturday in Glasgow his presence during the post-match celebrations seemed almost an after-thought. Torn between gravitating towards the limelight and then avoiding its glare, O'Neill seems happiest in the half-shadows.

But he surpassed himself during the press conference underneath the main stand at Celtic Park. It began with O'Neill less than euphoric but apparently well-satisfied with his season's work. Reared on a diet of hyperbole and "we're ready to conquer Europe" rhetoric, this was not what the Scottish press pack had in mind. This made little difference to O'Neill, who continued to plough his idiosyncratic furrow.

By now he was in full, navel-gazing flow and making some of the most low-key pronouncements ever recorded in a league-winning press conference. Responding to an innocuous query about whether Celtic could hope to have a season where everything went their way again, the manager surpassed himself.

"Maybe it's my upbringing," he mused, "but you always think if you get a bag of sweets one day then you're going to get knocked down by a bus the next."

As a piece of straight-down-the-line melancholia this takes some beating. As the utterance of a manager who has turned a club around from the grubbiness of last season's embarrassments to a league title in less than a year it is jaw-dropping and hilarious all at the same time. If Martin O'Neill had not been born, it is difficult to see how anyone could have thought of inventing him.

The contrast with the raucous street party that was getting started outside in the East End of Glasgow as Saturday afternoon melted into a long Saturday night could not have been more pointed. But of the two approaches it was hard to escape the conclusion that it was the manager who was striking the more appropriate tone.

It has only been three years since Celtic's last title, but this championship was greeted with the same fervour as if the gap had been 33 years. The complicating factor was that expectations had reached such a low ebb since the departure of Wim Jansen and through the increasingly disastrous Venglos, Barnes and Dalglish eras. The possibility of even competing with Rangers, never mind cruising contemptuously past them, was barely entertained. That all that and more has been achieved seems to have been an excuse for an outbreak of mass euphoria.

But O'Neill has been around enough footballing corners to know the truth about Celtic's current standing is more prosaic. More than anyone, he will know that anything which could have gone right for Celtic since last August did so. Henrik Larsson's epic goal-scoring season, Rangers' self-implosion and the seamless grafting of a succession of well-thought out signings all combined to give Celtic a formidable momentum.

And when the early sparkle started to fade, O'Neill's team showed an admirable facility for grinding out 1-0 wins even when they weren't performing well.

None of these factors, however, suggest that Celtic are anywhere near good enough to mount and sustain a serious challenge in the Champions League, and deep down O'Neill is aware of this. He has strengthened the squad, but it is still paper-thin in a number of important areas, most notably goalkeeper, midfield and up front.

Adding to the squad will become an urgent close season priority, and it will be interesting to see how the dynamics of the relationship between the manager and his chairman, Dermot Desmond, develop. Desmond has shown few signs of incurable romanticism when it comes to running Celtic, and any decisions will be based on the imperatives of hard-nosed business sense.

The willingness to go with O'Neill's instincts when it came to expensive purchases like Chris Sutton and Neil Lennon bodes well, but Desmond will come under increasing pressure from fans and manager alike to free up funds at least two or three times before the start of next season.

And as that happens, it could well prove that O'Neill and Desmond are singing from the same hymn sheet. Pragmatism would tend to suggest that the club would be better taking care of business at home and consolidating their position domestically without hitching their wagon to any unrealistic notions of European success.

Maybe it does come back to notion of upbringing. It is not the Derry or the Northern way to shout your odds from the rooftops, and O'Neill's playing and managerial careers to date have been testimony to the virtues and rewards of plain, old-fashioned graft.

After years when the club was crawling along on its belly, O'Neill has shown Celtic how to stand tall again and has restored some dignity and self-respect in the process. Just now he appears to be there for the long haul.