The champions have had a mostly strong start to their domestic campaign despite their European struggles, winning every game except for one in the league.

That was to Rangers who, while they have dropped points elsewhere, showed their adeptness for the derby in back-to-back wins.

Despite thumping Hearts 7-1, O'Neill also feels the men from the capital will be putting pressure on his side this season.

He said: “No, I think Rangers are a big challenge this season. Also, I don't think for one minute that Hearts are out of it either. I can only try to concentrate on my own things, which is the very obvious thing.

“But in terms of having a job on your hands, yeah, you do have a job on your hands all the time. You're managing a big club like this and the expectation is to win.

“We had two separate weeks of domestic winning in the sense that every time we made an attack, we seemed to score a goal against Hearts, and then we had to fight for everything in the other game.

“There are different ways of winning football matches. During the course of a 42 game season, you’ll probably only play incredible stuff maybe 12 to 15 times.

“The rest of the time you really had to grind it out, and that shows you something about the spirit of a team.

“All of those ingredients are really important. You have to have flair players and you have the boys who do really hard work.

“Getting back to your point about a job on your hands, yeah, I've never felt anything other than that all my time."

But the 74-year-old backs himself to keep getting the best out of the Celtic players.

He added: “I think that's the one thing about man-management. I don't think that changes. You might have a slightly different approach, but effectively it's the same thing. You're trying to man-manage people and if they've not got the confidence and you believe in them, that's the most important thing.

“If you believe in them and you know that they've done something for you in the past and they can get back to that again, then you will encourage and you'll do everything to try and get them back on course.

“If you feel as if it won't matter, then obviously you would have to try and look for a replacement."