Martin O'Neill was installed yesterday as manager of Celtic, ending tortured soul-searching both by the club and their new recruit. The Ulsterman arrived in Glasgow last night preparing to step into one of the great managerial frying-pans of British football.

Days of characteristic analysis and prolonged weighing of options ended when O'Neill decided to contract the fever called Celtic. "It has been too great a lure to resist," said O'Neill. "It is a fantastic opportunity for me at a massive football club."

O'Neill was introduced to a teeming press conference at Parkhead while, in true Celtic fashion, 3,000 fans descended on the stadium for a glimpse of their latest saviour.

The new manager has signed a three-year contract reputedly worth £2.7 million sterling. After painfully protracted negotiations, Celtic confirmed they will meet Leicester's compensation demands, stipulated as being £1.25 million in a clause recently inserted in O'Neill's Filbert Street contract.

"I've had four very happy, very fulfilling seasons at Leicester," said O'Neill. "But this was a call that came very close to my heart. With the size of this club, this size of this support, I just wanted this job."

O'Neill appears to have every advantage of intelligence and ability on his side, but the task he faces at Celtic cannot be exaggerated. This big, proud club, with 50,000 season-ticket holders, has endured years of blighted potential and broken promises.

O'Neill is the club's sixth manager in six years. His first task will be to restore championship-winning mettle to Celtic next season. Rangers have just won the title by an embarrassing 21 points. Realistically, that honour had been beyond Celtic's grasp with six weeks of the season left. Worse still was that the death-knell sounded with a 4-0 drubbing by Rangers at Ibrox on March 26th.

"This club has been huge since the days of Jock Stein," said O'Neill, who, it is said, as a boy growing up in Northern Ireland had been a supporter. "I've been at games at this ground recently. Celtic have a fantastic stadium and a fantastic support. My job now is to give them a team to go with it."

One issue still to be resolved is any continuing role at Celtic, if one still exists, for Kenny Dalglish. The director of football, after a season that upped his famed stress level, has been on a golfing week in Spain but is due back today. It has been heavily hinted within and beyond Celtic that Dalglish's tenure would be abruptly ended.

"It isn't right for me to say anything about that," said O'Neill . "I haven't even had a chance to have a chat with Kenny yet. But obviously, as manager, I'd want full control of the team. That means I can take the acclaim if things go well and the blame if things go badly."

At Leicester, the chairman, John Elsom, said: "I told Martin I thought he was making a wrong move, and that his career would be better served at Leicester. I am very disappointed.

"I spent one week trying to dissuade him from going and there were times when I thought he might change his mind. In the end, the pursuit of a personal dream related to his Roman Catholic heritage seems to have won the day."

Elsom would not be drawn on speculation linking Joe Kinnear and Peter Taylor with Leicester.