DUNDEE, SCOTLAND - MARCH 22: Dundee United's Emmanuel Agyei scores to make it 2-0 during a William Hill Premiership match between Dundee United and Celtic at the CalForth Construction Arena at Tannadice, on March 22, 2026, in Dundee, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Williamson/SNS Group via Getty Images)
And so that, ladies and gentlemen, brings about the end of Celtic’s league campaign for the season 25/26. And the ending is every bit as horrendous as many people feared it would be. There have been evident issues all season long, and one of the most prevalent has been that Celtic lack any kind of punch in the top half of the pitch.
Part of the problem is personnel, and there’s no question about that.
Every one of us has talked about the lack of quality personnel. Every one of us has talked about the lack of firepower in that area. But the reek of mediocrity covers this whole side, and there are players in it who shouldn’t be near it because they are nowhere near the required quality and standard that a club like ours should have.
The old saying says a team is only as good as its weakest link. Where do you even start today? Where do you start with a performance so bad as that?
But it’s not even the personnel that was the biggest problem today. The personnel were certainly part of the problem, but the issue is much bigger and much deeper than that. The problem today is that the style of football is awful.
The style of football has been awful for more than a year.
It has been cracked, figured out. It is predictable and it has been sussed by managers up and down the land, both good and bad.
For a start, it is miles too slow for the modern game. It is shriekingly boring. Watching it is like hearing nails racked down a chalkboard. It is severely limited. Because it is these things it makes a bad situation worse.
Let me tell you what stands out a mile today. Celtic had nearly 75% of the possession. We had half the shots they had, and one third of the shots on target. Most of that 75% possession was spent passing the ball between Callum McGregor, the backline and the keeper. That’s the fact of it.
That’s the horror of it.
Right there is why we lost today, and that’s why this title race is over.
Not in cold storage. Not on the brink. It is over.
And Martin O’Neill and Shaun Maloney do not get to skate on their responsibilities either, because they’ve been watching this play out for months and if they can’t see where this system is deficient, they are in the wrong game.
Yet what did we get from them, until desperation set in near the end?
Like-for-like substitutions. The same slow, pedantic shite.
That’s why it’s over. And I can say that with complete clarity and confidence now because nothing is going to change. We have too many people at the club who are not invested in its future going through the motions.
People who won’t be here in three or four months going through the motions. Everyone will try to dress it up on cup final day if we’re back at Hampden as Martin O’Neill’s big send-off, but I will boycott that sentimentalist claptrap; this season has been an absolute disaster that will be, and deserves to be, remembered for a title challenge that never got out of third gear.
Something is fundamentally wrong at Celtic Park and every part of the operation.
The evidence for it is all there, and it has been there for months. It’s screamingly obvious.
We do not create enough chances in games because we do not move the ball quickly enough. We do not get from one end of the pitch to the other at speed. You can say we don’t have the players for it. But I’ve seen Motherwell do it this season. This is the second time Dundee United have done it to us. I’ve seen other sides, with far less, able to do it. There’s nothing here to indicate we’ve figured this out.
People blame the strikers, but strikers are only as good as the delivery to them.
How many times have we said that if you’re trying to put the ball into a packed penalty area, you’re on a loser unless you’ve got players who can grind it out in that situation? The point is not to be in that position in the first place.
How do you avoid it? You don’t allow the defence time to organise itself into a tight, compact shape. You play the ball quickly whilst they are still trying … that’s the key that has always unlocked every door in the sport. And our style of play cannot do it.
After the split, we’ve got to play the five best other teams in this league.
Our record against those sides over the course of this season has been less than stellar. This is the worst Ibrox team I’ve ever watched; Celtic have not beaten them in 90 minutes in five attempts. We’ve not beaten Hearts in three times of asking.
To do it, and to win this title, we needed momentum. We needed a run of wins strong enough to keep us in the challenge until those five games were here. That’s over now. It’s a failure. The whole season is a failure.
This thing, this whole club, needs ripped up at the roots and rebuilt from scratch. Completely done over from start to finish. The problem is we don’t have the people at the top of this club to get that done.
The very same people who have got us into this mess, who have Celtic in this abject, depressing state, are very soon going to send out season ticket renewal forms. I would advise everyone to be very careful before sending those back with their money.
Right now, we don’t know what kind of manager we’re going to have. We don’t know what kind of football we’re going to play. We don’t know what the squad is going to look like.
But it cannot look like this.
And since Celtic are now almost certainly not going to finish this season as champions, the concern is that we finish it in third.
The funds for rebuilding the squad will be limited by that because they’ve shown they won’t spend even when we’re on top, even when the funds to do it are there. I suspect the next managerial appointment will be as uninspiring and dreadful as the shortlist presently suggests.
The people in charge of Celtic have put us in a very bad place. Their gross mismanagement has left us in a state of absolute turmoil and as a result of it, nothing was going to make the summer easy.
Today just made it one hell of a lot harder.
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Fucking shite, absolutely fucking shite
Everyone from the board , to the manager to every player are fucking shite and a fucking disgrace to the name of Celtic FC..
Useless cunts
Goodbye league
Goodbye getting humped and humbled in UCL
WELCOM to the mediocrity that the fuck board deserve and have delivered for years
Arseholes
Thank you, Stevie, saved me from writing it. Utter fuckin rancid shite.
We are going nowhere and will get nowhere as long as
The Moustache and his horde are in charge. We need a whole new board.
That is the long and short of it BigStevie.
Honestly think that they’ll stay and stink the place out the way they’re doing…
The only way we’ll get rid of Lucan will be if the scumbag dies…
I fuckin wish he would…
Whatever way it fuckin doesn’t matter !
I fear you may be correct, Clach.
The campaigns against the board really need to be ramped up.
We don’t deserve to win this league. A fuckin utter embarrasment.
embarrassment, not embarrasment.
Been saying it for months but the season is a write off. These frauds arent fit to play for celtic (literally) and the end of the season cant come quick enough. The icing on the cake will be when Maloney is appointed in the Hampden showers
After the semi final as there is no guarantee we will be there for the final
On a different note, that 80 odd million in the bank is fucking brilliant now isnt .
40 million lost from the ucl this year and another 40 million will not be coming out way next year because the board are all wankers .
I hope they were scared and In fear after the match because they are worse for the club than the shower of shite who nearly took us to extinction before Fergus came in.
Time for them to realise they need to fuck off. If they love the club as much as they say they do then time to go
Think it is a bit harsh to put any blame on MON, he took over a severely depleted squad with injuries to some crucial players. Rodgers seen the rot and bailed. The players left look like they are running on empty. It is all on the board.
After MON took us through v the Ibrox mob in the cup, he was a genius. Now he gets it in the neck for what was, admittedly, a disgraceful performance. When James writes like an entitled child, his pieces are a hard read.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s harsh to blame MON, he picks the team and makes the substitutions,so it’s on him. If he takes the plaudits when things go well, then he must accept the brickbats when they don’t, that’s part of being a manager. What I will say is that he doesn’t have much to work with and the team was absolutely shocking today. Let’s face it, we don’t DESERVE to be champions this year, and I’ll agree with you that the main reason for this is down to the abject failure and complacency of the Board! However, the players also have to accept their share of responsibility, most of them are a disgrace to Celtic and are not fit to wear the strip!
What a gutless performance that was, there seemed to be no motivation, no urgency, and no real effort applied. We did not look like a team that was challenging for the Title, we were supposed to be playing every game as if it was a Cup Final, but it was more like a pre-season fkn friendly. I am not willing to write off our chances just yet, I am totally scunnered, but the two teams we are now chasing are not all that great either, there will be more points won and lost by all three, that’s for sure, but right now we are third favourites and badly in need of inspiration from somewhere.
And yet we dominated against Motherwell and looked the more likely winners before they were reduced to 10. Our midfield was more dynamic and forward thinking last week. It’s not a coincidence to me that our style is more predictable and slower when McGregor plays. He demands the ball too often to then do not a lot with it and gives teams opportunity to regroup. Coupled with the pitch which was a disgrace and made it very difficult to pass through the thirds, then our performance was painful to watch.
Our lack of goals has been our concern all season. We need Iheanacho to hit a streak and some of our January loans to start showing up for work.
Just imagine if Celtic spent an easily affordable £30m last summer to back Rodgers, we could have got through the CL qualifier and got all the money back and now we wont get the £40 from next years competition. All because of a petty attempt to undermine Rodgers. If the board’s agenda is to make a profit they should all be sacked for a catastrophic loss of 2 seasons CL money. Totally unforgivable.
Very well put Dan, I agree with everything you have said.
I still expect to win the league. The opposition is absolute shite. Surely MON can get a bit more out of this lot. One of our players gets paid more than the entire Dundee Utd squad.
We just need to up our game, the opposition is going to drop points and we have them both at home.
One thing James. I think it’s 10 games since we have beat them in 90 minutes…..so its due!
The scatter gun of criticism is a waste of time, we know some players aren’t good enough but the only people to blame for this debacle of a season is Desmond and his gang of inadequates.
Mon and Maloney can only do so much, and today even they were found wanting. That team right from the start looked like a team with no belief, For too long this Celtic team have slowed the game down, every M/F player seems to want to take a touch or two before playing a pass or having a shot. It goes back to the 2nd half of last season under BR and has become endemic with these players . As a guy who rates CalMac highly, I’ve got to admit Celtic have turned into a one man team, every thing has to go through McGregor. I don’t blame him, I blame the Managers and the Board for allowing this situation to develop over the past couple of seasons. We’ve been crying out for a Broonie type grafter to play alongside CalMac for years and it hasn’t happened. We have sold Kyogo, Idah, O’Riley and Kuhn etc over the past couple of seasons without replacing them. No Celtic team will succeed without a pretty good striker, and this season has highlighted that fact.
36 goals less scored at this stage compared with last season tells its own story.
Third place in the League is looking a real possibility, Desmond doesn’t seem interested,and the yes men he’s left in charge are inadequates, who obviously are there just to do his bidding.
This summer will be very interesting, people should wait before buying any season tickets, there has to be changes on the Board. Mismanagement of this magnitude surely can’t just be shoved aside with no action taken.
I think today’s (lack of) performance, has been well and truly covered in the comments.
To a man, we were absolutely dreadful.
I’ve been keeping as positive as my nature allows me, in what has been, one of the worst all round seasons I’ve experienced for many years.
Today, just encapsulated everything that is currently wrong with our club and team.
Like so many, I’ve blamed the board for the majority of this year’s malaise, but this group of players must take accountability too.
We are down to the business end of this season and we can’t get up for the first of 8 must win games!!! That in itself is absolutely disgraceful!!!
Our lack of quality in the final third has been well documented all year, but we had nothing in any area of the team today.
I’ve not been one to jump on the criticism of McGregor bandwagon, but maybe the dynamism we saw in the Well victory, should have been retained for today. Our play was slow, turgid and predictable on a pitch that was never going to allow the passing game we prefer.
Our defeat today, would appear to be one, too many and that is sad, when you see how poor, both Sevco and the Tarts are.
Points will most definitely be dropped by both of them but as we have witnessed yet again today, there is no real confidence in our team to win their last 7 league fixtures!
What a sorry state, that those at the top of our club have allowed to unravel.
Shame on them for dragging our club down and such a shame for us, in having to watch this sh*te!!!
Its not over till Kris Boyd drops his monster munch. (It is over!!)
We will win no league titles until the absentee moustaches and his nepo puppets GTF.
Totally agree this cannot be put on the management team or even the players, most of whom are in the wrong movie. There are a lot of players who are nowhere near the quality we expect at Celtic and it’s not their fault they are there. Of course they’ll sign if given the opportunity, and the management team are makeshift. Just brought in in the hope of salvaging something. Everything that has gone on is on the board. The biggest worry is why are they regressing our club to an average SPFL set up when we have enough money to buy most of the clubs in it.
And the icing on the cake will come when tricky dicky dickson gets his gig at Celtic park when we face the huns to see over the win against us , beathun and the rest have been doing all the heavy lifting and they will need to throw the suspicion , although he could get the hearts game and award us with the win against them to let the huns sail through
Oh yes siree bob it’s all being cooked up as we speak and our board facilitated it all for them , i don’t believe we’ll see the GB again this season except if mn and co try to save their skin by allowing them back , anyways they’ll be back next season unlike that shower of cnuts who cost Celtic dearly with 80 million frittered away , have a good larf BRs a cara you saw this shit coming a mile away !!
PS so did the ould fox pl !!! haw !!! he didn’t hang around to be pushed !!