The Celtic Board Got An Ominous Warning Last Night As The Coefficient Took Another Hit.

Last night, two of our Scottish clubs, Kilmarnock and Hearts, faced tough battles in Europe. Both lost, Kilmarnock to Copenhagen via a late penalty and a goal deep into injury time, and Hearts fell victim to a last-minute own goal.

These results, while disappointing, were still credible, leaving both teams with a fighting chance to turn things around at home. And as much as we’d like to shrug it off, we should all hope they do because the stakes are higher than just national pride.

European football is becoming more stratified every year. Our position in the top competitions is increasingly under threat, and us being there is no longer a given. If the Scottish coefficient continues to plummet, we could find ourselves locked out of the top table altogether. And the frustrating truth? We’ve played a part in our own downfall.

Celtic has had some catastrophic European results over the years. Matches we should have won comfortably have slipped away, and the horror shows against teams like Sparta Prague—two humiliating losses—are just the tip of the iceberg.

Heading into the Champions League this season, there’s a cloud of uncertainty hanging over us. The squad doesn’t look much different from the one that let us down last time around, and I can’t say I’m optimistic about us improving it to any significant degree.

We’ve wasted precious time, and it feels like we’re sleepwalking into disaster, with little to no meaningful reinforcements. That’s not how you take European football seriously.

For clubs like Kilmarnock and Hearts, European football is a cash cow. The money they could make from group stage football dwarfs what they’d earn from winning the Scottish Premiership. It’s a grim reality, and it highlights just how much is at stake for them.

We set our sights a little higher, on being taken seriously on the big stage, at accumulating cash, yes, but also those crucial coefficient points. If all of our teams don’t start putting points on the board, all the things we take for granted could be gone in just a couple of years.

Now, some folks like to joke about our rivals being “coefficient monkeys,” carrying the load in Europe. Sure, it’s satisfying to see them get some national points which we take advantage of, and even more satisfying to see them crash and burn.

And it would be easy to look at the performances of the Hearts and the Kilmarnock’s and those kinds of clubs and blame them for the state we’re in as a nation and with our national coefficient.

And it would be easy to look across at the Ibrox shambles and their exit to Dynamo Kyiv this year and the slaughtering they got at the hands of PSV last year and the Champions League disaster when they did get there the year before and lost all six games.

It would be easy to look across the city and say you guys aren’t much better and have a good laugh and believe me, I know it’s easy because I laughed my ass off all the way through those games and all the way through those disasters and I will laugh my ass off all the way through this campaign if the same thing happens to them.

This is really on us. Underprepared and under resourced year after year after year after year, with this year already looking as if it’s going by no exception; this is on us.

And people can say what they like about us being dreadfully unlucky with the draws and what not but that doesn’t wash at all. We should be capable of taking more than a handful of points from some of these games. We should be shooting for a 3rd place finish at worst instead of going out before the Christmas lights come on. This is on us.

We might be playing at a higher level, but when we were in the Europa League, our results were far from brilliant.

And let’s be honest, even Ibrox has had its fair share of fortunate runs and ugly football. That seven wins out of twenty-one games on the road to their final isn’t something I’ll ever tire reminding people of and nor will I soon let a single one of their fans forget the results the last time they were in the top competition. I wouldn’t trade places with them, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore our own shortcomings.

It’s frustrating because the consequences of these continued failures ripple across Scottish football. The coefficient takes a hit, and it impacts everyone.

But really, the coefficient and what happens to it next will be down to us to some extent and what we do and also on what that rag bag mob across the road do in their competition.

And I’m going to be perfectly blunt about it. I hope they fall flat on their face and finish with zero points in utter humiliation, and I say that knowing full well that the consequences of that for Scottish football and even for us will be severe.

But you know what? I don’t want coefficient monkeys.

They’ve given our board a free pass in that they’ve done sufficiently well that we’ve had automatic qualification several years in a row now.

We haven’t had to work hard for that by playing qualifying games. We haven’t had to prepare better and work harder or earlier in the transfer market, and so this board has been able to drag its feet through entire summers like it has here.

Scottish football isn’t going to lose the Champions League place, but the road to get there will be harder. Less secure. There won’t be a guaranteed parachute any longer into the group stages of a lesser competition if you flop in the first set of qualifiers.

So, our club is going to have to work that little bit harder and do that little bit more and be that little bit better prepared. The business will start sooner and the business will be tougher and the prize at the end will be more lucrative and so the consequences of not being there ever more severe, and we better have our act together when that day comes.

And that day is most definitely on its way. Automatic qualification is over with next season and playing a single qualifying game to get there will probably be gone the following year, along with that second Champions League place … and one of our national European places too. Which is a disaster for every time in the league.

So, as the transfer window draws to a close, I hope Kilmarnock and Hearts can turn things around. I hope they make it to the group stages and earn a ton of money because, frankly, we need a stronger domestic league to keep us sharp.

But more than that, I hope our board wakes up and gets serious about European football. We’re playing with fire, not just in the present, but for our future. The days of coasting through summers and winging it in Europe have to end.

Because if they don’t, the price we pay could be far greater than any short-term money we save in the nickel and dime section of the transfer market.

This one is too big to get wrong.