O’Neill’s memories of a “mesmeric” Clough remain vivid, from the moment of their initial meeting in the winter of 1975. Clough instantly promoted O’Neill to the first team but was not of a mind to fawn. “Hey, you: Stop putting your mate in the shit. You look like a boy who would put your mate in the shit,” was the message in an early training session. He gives a decent and open view of his sporting life that sheds light on a truly remarkable career at the very top of the game. O’Neill is effusive in his praise of Keane, who has not managed since departing Ipswich in 2011. Bert Johnson, O’Neill’s youth coach at Forest, imparted advice which he believes applies to Keane. “You get a reputation in life for being an early riser and you can lie in bed all day,” he says. There are some nice stories in here, but I would have liked to hear more about what Clough was like or what life was like in Glasgow, but he focuses on what happened on the pitch, which is fine.

Martin O’Neill speaks honestly about the decision to retire as a player, and making the transition to manager. He recalls finding early success with Wycombe Wanderers, and the move to the Premier League with Leicester City. He talks about his years with Celtic, where the team won seven trophies and reached the UEFA Cup Final in 2003, and at Aston Villa, where he achieved three consecutive top six Premier League finishes. He also speaks about managing the Republic of Ireland, and working alongside his mercurial assistant, Roy Keane. Written with O’Neill’s trademark honesty and humour,

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Nottingham Forest made history at home and abroad without those involved ever knowing how fabled their run was. “You were on this ride,” O’Neill says. “You are going to West Ham and expecting to win, whereas the previous year trying to beat Bristol Rovers was a struggle. I don’t think we realised it was special until it was over. The night we lost to the Bulgarians [CSKA Sofia in 1980] in the European Cup, you thought: ‘Wow, that’s it.’

An enjoyable autobiography, covering a very full and eventful footballing career. It was much better than the run of the mill footballing biography, usually ghost written. Not surprisingly for a man of Martin O'Neill's intelligence, this one was written by the man himself. This is a tidy little book, it charts the progress of a man who I am sure will be fondly remembered as a football genius by my generation. What jars in relation to Andrews is his position within O’Neill’s profession. “If Roy Keane was doing punditry work and said I’d made a mess of something, I might disagree but I would accept it from someone who has played at that level, has managed himself and knows the pressures you are under,” O’Neill says. “I have a level of earned respect for that opinion but not a lower-leaguer who wouldn’t know what it is like to win a medal. And who is now finding how difficult it is to win football matches. He takes as much care telling the story of his period as manager of Wycombe Wanderers as he does his much more heralded spells in charge of Leicester City and Aston Villa.Now, for the first time, Martin O’Neill reflects on one of the most varied and interesting football careers in the British Isles. As a manager, his legendary time in charge of Celtic saw them win seven trophies including three Scottish Premier League titles and the UEFA Cup, and he successfully led both Leicester City and Aston Villa to League Cups in England. With Roy Keane as his assistant manager, he oversaw Ireland reaching the Euros for only the third time in their history. The relationship between O’Neill and the Irish football media during a five-year international tenure remains a source of fascination. We shall return to that later. It would be unfair, as some have suggested, to depict O’Neill’s memoir as a score-settling exercise. Yes, there is occasionally acerbic comment – one would surely expect no less – but an extraordinary career which scaled playing heights under Brian Clough before touching managerial greatness at Celtic and Leicester is depicted with an entertaining tone. There is self-deprecation throughout. What makes this offering extra special and all the more admirable in a world of ghost writers for sporting stars and celebrities is that the charismatic O’Neill penned it himself and when I say penned it, I mean it because Northern Ireland’s 1982 World Cup captain started writing his autobiography in long hand on pieces of paper before family helped transcribe his wonderful wit and wisdom on to a laptop. O’Neill’s autobiography ‘On Days Like These’ is an entertaining read filled with fascinating stories, biting humour and searing honesty on the author’s wonderful football life.

O’Neill remains youthful in body and mind. If his days in the dugout are indeed over, he quite rightly refuses to fully concede as much. “Could I manage at the top level? I don’t think those things leave you. The spirit, the determination, the passion and drive … My last breath on this earth is when those things will leave me.”Martin O’Neill’s On Days Like These is a fascinating, witty and searingly honest look at a life in football Mr. O’Neil takes us on a journey that includes his childhood, his professional football career and then his professional management history. There are already murmurings in the Republic of Ireland about Martin O’Neill’s autobiography. On Days Like These, which charts five decades in football, signs off with a withering take-down of Keith Andrews, Stephen Kenny’s assistant with Ireland. “Stephen’s lieutenant finds himself in a hotter seat in the dugout than the one he occupied in a TV studio when he was an excoriating critic of mine,” O’Neill writes. Martin O'Neill: Forget the hardman persona, Roy Keane is articulate, self-deprecating and knows his football

Martin O’Neill has had one of the most incredible careers in football – winning European Cups, captaining his country at a world cup, and decades as a hugely successful manager. On Days Like These tells his fascinating story in his own words for the first time.

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.” As he takes you through this momentous journey, it’s not difficult to be impressed with everything that he has achieved and it seems that he has done it with minimal collateral damage. So often you see public figures climb to the top of the mountain stepping on people as they go but O’Neils generous and warm personality makes for a winning account of triumph over adversity when facing very difficult odds. However, at times it felt a little rushed - for example, both his early professional career and how he felt when he won the league with Nottingham Forest seem to be covered very briefly. I wonder whether it would've been better for the great man to divide this book into two tomes: one dealing with his playing career and a sequel with his managerial one. That way, he could've dealt with his many successes and occasional failures in more detail. For a complicated man, he played a very simple game. He was as good at tactics as anybody but that’s not how he is considered. He is considered a motivator, a shouter or a charmer. He knew the game inside out. He told us things tactically during games that stood the test of time. He would say something to you on a Monday, contradict himself on a Friday and you would believe both.”