FALKIRK, SCOTLAND - JANUARY 14: Celtic's Callum McGregor (L) and Benjamin Nygren at full time during a William Hill Premiership match between Falkirk and Celtic at The Falkirk Stadium, on January 14, 2026, in Falkirk, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images)
When you have a title rival that shows a kind of spooky resilience, the sort of team that believes it wants to be champions and believes it can be champions, you have to show the same qualities yourself. Tonight was awful. But it produced the only outcome that mattered: three points.
A win.
Awful football under O’Neill still means Celtic winning ugly. Awful football under the previous manager meant exactly what it said on the tin.
I have said it before, and I will say it again. That was the footballing equivalent of 11:58 at last orders. You spend the entire night trying to catch the attention of someone worthwhile, and by the time the bell rings your standards have collapsed to the point where anything will do.
Everything about this club right now reeks of that 11:58 desperation. None of that sits at the feet of the football department professionals. We all know exactly where the blame lies.
The one thing those amateurs have done right this season is the signing of Benjamin Nygren. Not because Nygren is a startlingly good footballer or a guaranteed starter in a strong Celtic side, because he is not.
But he has the priceless quality of putting the ball in the net when it matters. Tonight, it mattered a hell of a lot. He gets a pass for that, even if his overall performance fell short. Others in the side performed well below even that level.
Sometimes winning a title means riding your luck. We rode ours tonight. Hearts went down to ten men. St Mirren had the ball in the net twice and saw it ruled out. They still took three points. I have not changed my mind about Hearts, and I will not change it unless maroon ribbons appear on the trophy. But even my unshakeable confidence took a knock tonight.
We go there in a week and a half. We have to win that game. Right now, this desiccated, emaciated version of Celtic is not capable of doing it.
O’Neill has a gift for turning loaves and fishes into something edible.
At times, he has even coaxed water into wine from players like Yang. Plenty of Celtic supporters believe he walks on water. He does not because he is not a miracle worker. He would need to be one to turn this squad into title winners. The capacity simply does not exist. No manager could do it without help. Even Rodgers would not have dragged this group over the line unaided.
Everyone is watching this. Everyone sees what is happening. Within minutes of the final whistle, Chris Sutton tweeted a message that amounted to an accusation that the board is taking O’Neill for granted. They are doing far worse than that. Right now, they are hanging him out to dry. They use him as a human shield while they cower behind him.
That will not wash.
If they damage his reputation, even slightly, through their actions or their inaction, they will pay a price for it. They should not imagine he will absorb the blow for them. He will not.
When you look back at almost every Celtic side that has gone on to win a title over the last fifteen years, you can usually spot moments of destiny. Individual games where something clicks and you realise the team has what it takes. You feel it in your bones. You hear it ring in your ears.
I feel none of that with this group.
Everything feels flat. Ordinary. This team looks flat and ordinary.
Everywhere I turn, I see Celtic supporters not relishing the challenge but bracing themselves for pain.
Preparing for disappointment.
Dreading a summer of endless agony played out against the backdrop of confrontation between supporters and the club. Nobody wants that confrontation, but it has its own gravitational pull now. It feels unavoidable.
Tonight puts the cork back in the bottle for another week. That is all. If this time next week there are still no signings through the door, if we head to Bologna with this squad and expect it to recover and then go again days later against the league leaders, that will rank among the deepest disgraces in this club’s history.
It will represent one of the most shameful abdications of leadership and responsibility any of us has ever witnessed.
You can see it plainly. This squad will not get us there.
That leaves only one explanation. If the club fails to strengthen, then those running it do not want to win this title. Either they have already written it off for reasons that defy comprehension, or they never intended to win it in the first place. As perverse as that sounds, it explains everything. It makes sense of behaviour that currently looks senseless.
And it will also make the task facing Celtic supporters brutally clear when those season-ticket renewal forms land on doormats.
Nobody wants to talk this way. But ask yourself this: how many of us would ever have voluntarily paid to watch Scottish football again if the Ibrox club had been parachuted straight back into the top flight after crawling out of the grave of Rangers? How many of us would have paid to watch a rigged contest, a con played out in plain sight?
If the Celtic board has stopped caring about winning, if it has decided to sacrifice a season, then that is exactly what we are watching now. A tilted table. A rigged game. Only this time, the people slanting it sit inside our own club.
As I said earlier in Enemy Within, you do not need to believe intent is malicious to describe these people as enemies. You only need to believe their conduct is harmful. As long as they remain in place, that harm will continue.
This situation is untenable.
You cannot watch tonight and believe this can continue.
Even a top-class manager in the dugout cannot fix what they have broken.
Unless they have a repair plan, this is our season.
Shocking performance. I can’t remember Scot Bain having to make ONE save. Imagine that! It was like a BR bad dream, passing backwards and sideways, nobody showing for the ball in midfield and elementary mistakes at the back. I thought MON had got rid of that accursed system? Falkirk looked like the team that was assembled at great cost as our players floundered around. Not alone did we not deserve to win, we didn’t even deserve a draw.
With a free week in the run up to the game Hearts will DEMOLISH that fuckin lot on the park tonight…
Desmond via Lucan is taunting us dissenters !
Ugly win and fortunate at times. Tho ah do think the pitch was responsible for a lot of it. Struggled tae adapt on that surface. Result tonight was the most important thing. Tho players need brought in NOW !!
Can’t blame the pitch Kevcelt59 – the surface is on a par with what we have at Lennoxtown so the players have no excuse (Rubgy Park (so well named!) and Livingstone are different stories though). But agree 3 points most important aspect. MON needs help now in the transfer window.
PJ, why were the home groundsmen watering the park before kick off during the pissing rain then?
We quite clearly need reinforcements to secure this league. However the players on the pitch tonight should have enough about them to have controlled the game better than we did. That’s not down to MON but to the individual integrity and drive of the players on the pitch.
Too many not showing for the ball. Too many reactive not proactive in how they receive the ball. Too many careless with the ball. Not enough leadership on the pitch. A strong impression that the supporting cast have been left exposed because a couple of the leading lights left the building.
Having said that, the imperative tonight was 3 points from a difficult away match. We secured that and move on, as always one game at a time.
That was sickening to watch tonight. Sometimes it’s difficult to criticise some players because certain others around them are so bad that they leave the decent ones exposed…but there’s at least half a dozen who played tonight I’d happily show the door right now…tonight,come what may. Trusty,Engels,Hatate,Kenny,Scales,Tounekti, and probably Daizen as well. I’m not convinced we would have any less chance of being champions without the . Falkirks poor finishing is the only reason we weren’t 3 down at halftime. If i was in Martin’s shoes I’d be telling them one thing: “not on my fucking watch you dont”. Is their confidence already fragile enough to do that? Fuck them…them to shape up NOW or stay at fucking home. If it breaks some of them,so what…3 points or not,that was unacceptable garbage. And if Martin hasn’t got at least 3 quality bodies in the door for the Tynecastle trip,I’d rather he walked and let th3 shit hit the fan.
Yes a win is a win, but we will not be winning anything with performances like that. If players aren,t brought in, forget it. On tonights showing, KT has lost his pace, Tounekti is a one trick pony who produces nothing, didn,t realise Yang was playing til 30 minutes in, Engels it pains me to say isn,t good enough or a non trier and I have defended him against anybody who said he was a waste of money, Nygren, goal apart is very wasteful, Daizen has chucked it, Hatate too. The triangle of Trusty, Scales and Schmeichal is a disaster waiting to happen and on top of thst we don,t have a recognised CF. Yes we have been unlucky with long term injuries to 3 1st team starters but not so long ago we had like for like quality with 2 players for every position. What this board are doing would make you sick to the stomach. I hope we get in the quality that we need but lets be honest here, it isn,t happening and there will still be board apologists out there telling anyone who,ll listen that all is well.
We have nothing in the final third. Touneki can’t cross, Meada is wasted through the middle, Kenny can’t operate at this level, Yang has been better recently but he was our 5th choice winger last year. Hatate is our only midfielder who can find a forward pass, this is grim. Every time Falkirk attacked our 3 central midfielders seemed out of position, thankfully their decision making and final ball got us out of jail. We won’t beat Hearts with this squad, we don’t have the match winning players. We need a proper striker and creative wide player now.
Some of the ‘players’ (i use that term loosely)…or rather some of the guys with contracts with Celtic,are just about as useful as our board members. Between the two groups,who is stealing the most wages? Another wee rant while I’m at it: all the wee bromance,love-in bollocks on social media makes me fucking sick. Grow the fuck up and act like men,instead of wee school lassies trying to boost their public profiles.
Boost yer profiles with yer boots ya fannies.
I was dreading this game, I expected it would be tough anyway but the pitch and conditions were a leveller. Then, after 5 minutes, it was clear Tounekti and Yang were going to have stinkers. We had no real threat but that was an important 3 points especially with Hearts winning quite impressively with 10 men. There’s no point expecting reinforcements, the board are fucking useless, but we won’t play like that against Hearts. We’ll have to risk a complete B team in the cup to give the guys a chance because they’ll have to play away in Europe then away at Hearts. What a joke and I still think we might sell players and further weaken the squad.
Yes, we did win ugly…pot ugly to be honest. It’s happened before and it will happen many times again no doubt.
We were jammy as fk to get away with it this time, but I’m still glad of the three points.
Tax , if its rigged its for tax . Cant be anything else. Run a tax loss instead of paying like the plc has for the last 2 years?
I’m as unimpressed by tonight’s showing as most others here seem to be but happy with the 3 points as anything less would have made winning the league a much tougher task than it already seems to be. That aside, I still think if Rodgers remained in place and the whole Nancy-gate affair was just a bad dream that never happened we’d be sitting top of the league 5 or 6 points clear of whoever was 2nd, most likely Hearts. And we’d have bagged the League Cup. All ifs, buts and maybes but O’Neill has half a season without any Nancy-gate nonsense stripping a dozen points from the total Celtic gain in that period. Hearts have become a better team no doubt but they’re heavily reliant on Shankland and Braga staying injury and suspension free. I believe Braga is out of the match v us after the red card he picked up at the weekend, is that right? Whatever the case is with that I don’t think they’ve improved enough to see out the rest of the season as impressively as they did in the first half of it, some of which we gifted to them, something O’Neill won’t be repeating.
The currant buns will not win this league any time soon. Celtic under Rodgers, as sub-par as some performances and results were, were 9 points clear of them and no sign of them climbing up the table from 8th place when Rodgers departed. They’d be 4th placed at best without Nancy being the gift that kept on giving to almost all who faced us. They – and others in the league who claimed 3 points against Nancy’s XI without breaking a sweat – will never enjoy such good fortune in the 2nd half of the season. Out of the 12 points we gifted teams in the SPFL under Nancy I believe both Rodgers and now O’Neill would have dropped no more than 5. That would make the league table look very different. And that’s not all ifs, buts and maybes for O’Neill going forward. He has a full 50% of the season as manager of Celtic with no rookie from the MLS able to scupper any of it. We will not lose 4 matches in the 2nd half of the season. We may not lose any but my point is we’ll do far better (and our fellow title-chasers worse as a consequence) from now until the end of the season than we did under the Rodgers-O’Neill-Nancy combo that made up the first half of it. So it might not be pretty but we’re still on course to win this title, with the caveat of O’Neill not being hamstrung by the board this transfer window and being backed to bring in anyone he wants. We have ~£80m just sitting in a bank account gaining interest every day that there’s no legitimate reason under the sun shouldn’t be made available to O’Neill, just as there wasn’t when they withheld it from Rodgers pre-season – throwing him a few scraps of the interest it had been earning instead which I think he spent well considering Nygren was one of them. I also see signs of potential in Tounetki who will improve with time on the pitch.
All the same problems and issues off the field of play would still be the same ones without Nancy-gate though and would be just as urgently in need of resolutions. Tisdale would still have his job and Lawwell might even be in his so even the dark cloud that Nancy-gate was brought a little silver lining with it I suppose. It exposed the scale of the behind the scenes mess to everyone not yet aware, that passes itself off as the Celtic board of directors. Maybe we should prefix that with “interim” too as I can’t see any of them including DD being at Celtic beyond this season and some won’t be here to see that.
ps. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but the price of Celtic plc shares has been on the rise since Nancy’s arrival. Share price has no correlation to results as the value continued on an upward trend throughout Nancy’s reign of terror and his sacking and O’Neill’s return didn’t affect that at all. The current price on the LSE is just under £200 but it fluctuates between ~£192 and £208 which is a 52-week high. A year ago a share cost only £140 when things on the face of it were going a whole lot better. I could speculate on why this jump in price has happened but rather than do that and possibly get James into trouble with the very litigious DD I think it’s safer to say that whatever the cause it has created a scenario favourable to large and very large major shareholders in the boardroom to pack up, resign and cash in their shares at a healthy profit. I think we will see that share price continue slowly upwards and so as to not spook the other shareholders maybe one director a month leave and never darken our doorstop again – until the end of the season with the major shareholder being the last to go. That would be a total clearout of the board we have been cursed with for too long now. Yes, I dare to dream!
Have you not watched the games? We are abysmal.
I stated as much in my first sentence but playing poorly once in a while – or even every match – but still picking up 3 points in every league match under MON is more than enough to win the league so why get rattled over certain performances that deliver wins regardless? I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone here that O’Neill has just bossed Celtic to 9 wins in a row this season under him and his staff. An incredible feat that no other manager in the league has come close to matching. I don’t remember or care that some of the performances in that ongoing 100% win rate were poor. I only care that under MON we’ve picked up 27 points out of a possible 27 so far.
I recognise last night’s performance and in prior games we’ve played well below our best but in terms of picking up points – which is what wins titles not how stylish a team played that season – we’ve achieved maximum points. Don’t care if we’re crap against Hearts as long as we close the gap on them with a win. I prefer great play plus a win but all that matters in the end is the win. And you’ve experienced nothing but victories watching Celtic under a manager who has achieved what would usually be impossible. Under Nancy a single win seemed almost impossible.
It’s only a few days ago we thumped Dundee Utd 4-0 with more or less the same players as last night. Was that abysmal? Would it piss you off if it had been but still finished 4-0? This is a group of players who have given us win after win for the past 9 matches under O’Neill. If that continues are you going to look back on the season and say it was abysmal or celebrate Celtic coming back from the brink to achieve what would be impossible to any other team?
9 matches is a quarter of a season. He’s not dropped a single point so far. That is title winning form. That is league all-but-over by the split form. That is what gets us into the UCL next season form and all that comes with it. I watched the same match as you last night. I watched MON’s previous 8 victories too. I have no complaints about matches we win because they’re all part of what eventually leads to games against the likes of Bayern in the UCL who we were a whisker away from beating and reaching the next round. Who gave a damn back then that we got a bit of luck in the league or scored some late winners the season prior on the way to being champions? Not a soul.
We’d have taken any win no matter how ugly when Nancy was manager. That’s all we asked and hoped for. Now we’re abysmal under MON despite his record being impeccible? I get that we didn’t play well, I’ve said it at least 3 times now. I’m not blind but if all you took away from my post which only touched on last night’s match was that I thought we played well or that we’re playing better football than I’ve ever seen maybe you are Slugger! Saying Hearts & Sevco won’t win the league because we will is based on there being half a season left to play and this half will be far better in terms of points gained for us than the first cos there’s no Nancy-gate run of defeats entering into it and so far 2 wins out of 2 for MON in 2026 which is in keeping with the 100% domestic win record he achieved in 2025. Why do so many fans foresee disaster for us under the leadership of a special kind of manager who has brought us nothing but success in all 9 domestic matches? Do you think Hearts & Sevco would knock back that kind of record in favour of what theirs is? Have you seen the crap they’ve displayed at times while still grinding out wins or suffering defeats? Hibs put the Jam Farts to the sword not long ago despite it finishing 3-2 Hibs. It was men v boys most of the game and Hearts could easily have been 4-0 or 5-0 down rather than pulling 2 goals back to end up beaten by a score that flattered them. We won last night. I’m 100% behind the manager and team so am happy with another 3 points rather than getting none but a brilliant display of sexy soccer put on for the fans entertainment.
Win first, then refine the performances, formation, team selection etc. When you’re always winning you have that luxury and under MON we have always won. You say abysmal, I say victory. I know we were poor (4th time now?) but that’s not my takeaway from a win, it’s very much gladness at the 3 points gained. I trust MON to address. the things that went wrong to the best of his abilities and his abilities speak for themselves.
My post was mostly about off the field of play matters that are truly abysmal, a threat to our club’s future and the culprits must be held to account for allowing things to deteriorate to the extent they have. They only understand one language and that’s money so while I support all legal shows of protest against the incompetent parasites in the boardroom it’s in the pocket you hurt them and hasten their exit so I very much support the “Not another penny” tactic.
Mass non-renewal of ST’s would send the signal we have had enough and the demand for their resignations/sackings aren’t going away anywhere. But cut off all funding to them from the fanbase. They wouldn’t even last to the end of the season which they don’t deserve to as they’ll commit “stolen valour” by claiming some credit for MON’s achievements when anything he achieves and has achieved so far is despite them not because of them.
This board’s transfer or business model and the fact they adhere to it like religious zealots is the real problem.
I dont get this “we need a miracle” stuff.
We have single players who get paid more than the entire Hearts team. I would guess our poorest paid player last night will get paid about the same as the entire Falkirk team. We are favourites for the title for good reason. It will be a major miracle if Hearts win the league with everything stacked against them.
I disagree with you Joe on one point. MON is a miracle worker. Only a miracle worker could replace Engels with Hatate and get away with it. That starting 11 was the best we have to offer and they looked panicked and intimidated for 80 minutes. We are really sinking in the ordure orange. Three points last night was up there with raising Lazerus.
MON needs help, the summer Transfer window was a disaster and a few injuries to key players has added to the weakness of the team. Ffs get your fingers out MN, C McK and DD, if we lose this League Title to such ordinary teams as Hearts and The Rangers [2012] then heads have got to roll in the Boardroom, and if DD has lost interest and respect for the Celtic support, then he should sell his shares at a knockdown price to the Celtic support throughout the World.
On last night’s game, aye we were rotten and our goalkeeper got us over the line.
The only thing I’d say in mitigation for the team is, Football wasn’t suppose to be played on a soaking wet carpet, pouring of rain and yet the staff at Falkirk were heavily watering the pitch before the game and at half time. Some people might say it’s the same for both teams, but it’s not, as Falkirk probably practice a lot and then play on this surface every 2nd week.
I still think if we can get a few decent players in, we’ve still got a decent chance of winning this Title, but with the recent history of this board that’s a big IF.