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One marquee acquisition - and one who has recent Champions League goalscoring experience with Qarabag - might not be too bad if it was not for the comparison being made with last season's two title rivals.
Traditional city rivals Rangers, still smarting at their late-season collapse to finish third, allowed head coach Danny Rohl to depart for Wolfsburg and then stole Derek McInnes from runners-up Hearts in his place.
They have added seven new faces to the squad inherited by the "good Rangers man", paying out money for four of them.
Among them is last season's Premiership top scorer Lawrence Shankland, who had already agreed on his switch to Ibrox before McInnes, and goalkeeper Ivor Pandur, who has just helped Hull City return to the Premier League.
Hearts, meanwhile, have brought in 11 new players, paying transfer fees for five of them, albeit the same number of first-team players were sold.
That high turnover has hardly proved successful so far given the side now under former Sint-Truiden head coach Wouter Vrancken were thumped 4-0 away to Sturm Graz in the first leg of their opening Champions League qualifier on Tuesday.
However, they will hope that the Jamestown Analytics recruitment algorithm will again have found some hidden gems that will prove their worth in the long term.
Neighbours Hibernian suffering a surprise 2-0 defeat by Malisheva in their opening Conference League qualifier opener in Kosovo, while Motherwell's 2-0 home win over Faroe Islands part-timers HB was hardly emphatic as Scotland's hangover from another lacklustre World Cup continues.
Celtic's exits have been mainly players who spent last season exiled on loan, but they have yet to replace Kasper Schmeichel, who was still a goalkeeper of international standing before the veteran Dane's season - then career - was ended by injury.
They are poised to be further weakened by the imminent of sale to Ipswich Town of Daizen Maeda for a reported price of £10m that Chris Sutton described as "a bad deal" for the Glasgow club and a player who impressed with Japan at the World Cup.
The BBC pundit and former Celtic striker reckons the 28-year-old forward will find himself relegated from the Premier League after a season.
In addition, O'Neill is expecting two midfield sales - Maeda's international teammate, Reo Hatate, and Belgium cap Arne Engels.
The 73-year-old Northern Irishman was also forced to field awkward questions about the departure of Kelechi Iheanacho.
Celtic had the option of automatically extending the 29-year-old former Leicester City striker's stay but instead offered him a new deal.
Although O'Neill stressed that "there are two sides to every story", Iheahacho's decision to instead join Bursaspor, a club just promoted to Turkey's second tier, does not look too good.
There has also been speculation that midfield stalwart and captain Callum McGregor might be tempted to end his career with a big-money move to the Middle East.
