One of the more astonishing sights which greeted us at full-time in Austria was Luke McCowan in tears. I know now that he has deactivated his Instagram account after it apparently became a torrent of criticism and abuse, and already we are hearing the familiar responses: supporters have disgraced themselves, people need to back off, this is no way to treat the guy and everybody should gather around him instead.
Personal abuse is one thing.
But criticism of his performance, his suitability for Celtic and the decision to give him a new contract is something entirely different, and I have very little patience for attempts to blur those two things together.
I am not someone who believes highly paid footballers cease to be human beings the minute they pull on a shirt. I am deeply sympathetic to people who are genuinely helpless or vulnerable. But the idea that a professional footballer earning thousands of pounds every week should somehow be protected from fierce criticism after producing a performance that bad on one of the biggest nights of Celtic’s season is not an argument I accept.
McCowan’s performance was of such an inept level that I do not believe he should be anywhere near Celtic’s European team again. If he cares as deeply about the club as his reaction at full-time suggested, then he should understand why supporters who paid their own money to travel to Austria are furious about what they witnessed.
Those supporters funded the whole thing. They paid for flights, hotels, tickets, food and everything else required to follow Celtic abroad.
The people sitting in the directors’ box travelled on the club’s tab, which ultimately means our tab, while the supporters in the stands dug into their own pockets to watch one of the most humiliating collapses in Celtic’s history.
So yes, McCowan was entitled to cry. His tears also showed, contrary to some of the accusations aimed at him, that he clearly cared about what happened. But I reserve considerably more sympathy for the people in the stands who had spent substantial sums travelling across Europe to watch that performance than I do for a highly paid professional devastated by his own failure to perform.
That is not cruelty. That is perspective.
I was furious when Celtic gave McCowan an improved contract, and I am even more furious about it now.
I could not understand the decision at the time beyond the obvious fact that he is association-trained in Scotland and therefore useful when Celtic construct their UEFA squad. That has value, but registration usefulness should never be confused with footballing quality.
The new deal was symbolic of something which has frustrated me about this club for years: the willingness to settle.
It represented an acceptance of mediocrity at precisely the time Celtic should have been pushing relentlessly to raise standards. Tuesday’s performance then fell so far below even mediocrity that those tears at full-time could reasonably have been tears of embarrassment as much as disappointment.
I have sympathy for public figures whose failures are broadcast to millions of people. I remember Theresa May’s infamous Conservative conference speech when she was clearly ill, struggling to speak and the lettering behind her started falling off the wall.
I didn’t like her politics, but on a human level it was difficult not to feel for somebody being publicly humiliated while desperately trying to perform a role for which the moment had completely overwhelmed her.
That distinction matters because I am perfectly capable of separating criticism from basic human sympathy. McCowan looked devastated on Tuesday and I do not doubt that what happened hurt him deeply. But I still cannot manufacture much sympathy for the footballing consequences when he is extremely well paid to perform at a standard which Celtic require and his performance fell miles below it.
Some people have said he looked as though he did not care. His reaction afterwards strongly suggests otherwise, and I do not think indifference is the charge which should be levelled at him. Others called him lazy, although there were several Celtic players against whom the same accusation could have been made at various moments during that horror show.
I thought even Callum McGregor was extraordinarily lax at times, which tells you just how widespread the collapse became. This wasn’t one footballer deliberately refusing to work. It was an entire team gradually losing its structure, confidence and composure.
But McCowan’s individual contribution was still dreadful. He came on with Celtic trying desperately to regain control of the midfield and instead reportedly lost possession 19 times during his appearance. That statistic has been widely cited in the aftermath and tells its own appalling story.
People have suggested he should have been substituted despite having come on as a substitute himself. I understand that reaction. By that stage, though, the obvious question becomes who exactly Martin O’Neill could have introduced in his place, and that takes us straight back to the wider failures in constructing this squad.
There were moments when I would almost have accepted Martin himself pulling on a strip and walking into midfield. That option was unfortunately unavailable, but it tells you something about the level of frustration surrounding what we were watching.
Losing possession 19 times after being sent onto the pitch specifically to help a team regain control is not an unfortunate evening. It is a disastrous performance. At this level, it should have consequences. That is really what this article is about.
Consequences. Football has become strangely uncomfortable with that idea whenever a player is visibly upset afterwards. We are expected to watch somebody perform terribly, watch the team suffer because of it and then immediately suspend every judgement because the player himself is devastated.
I don’t accept that. You can recognise somebody’s humanity while still concluding that he is not good enough for Celtic. Both things are possible.
McCowan’s tears do not suddenly make him a better midfielder. They do not erase what happened on the pitch. They do not transform the decision to extend his contract into a sensible one, and they do not mean Martin O’Neill should reserve a precious Europa League place for him out of sympathy.
If anything, Celtic now have to become more ruthless.
McCowan’s place in the European squad may partly be justified by his association-trained status, but that cannot become immunity from footballing judgement. Celtic have already allowed registration considerations to encourage them to retain players who would otherwise face much tougher scrutiny.
That problem cannot continue indefinitely.
If the manager looks at Tuesday night and concludes that McCowan cannot be trusted at European level, then leave him out. If that creates another registration problem, solve the registration problem. Do not solve it by weakening the football team.
That is the entire point of running a serious football operation.
The decision to extend his contract has also made moving him on more difficult. Celtic increased his wages and therefore increased the amount another club would have to pay him or persuade him to sacrifice. Nobody in professional football operates out of altruism, and I certainly do not expect McCowan to hand Celtic money back simply because supporters think his contract was a mistake.
That mistake belongs to the people who offered him the deal.
They should own it.
What I cannot accept is the mistake then becoming self-perpetuating. Celtic should not keep someone in the squad merely because they made him more expensive to move. A bad decision does not become good simply because reversing it carries a cost.
I never believed McCowan should have been relied upon at this level in the first place. The fact that he rarely starts important games, is often introduced late and does not appear to be regarded as one of the central pillars of the team made the contract extension even stranger. It also sent a poor signal throughout the squad.
There are players whose performances have genuinely justified improved terms and whose importance to Celtic is obvious.
Giving an enhanced deal to somebody who is not a regular starter and then finding ourselves dependent on him in one of the biggest European games of the season says far more about Celtic’s planning than it does about the player himself.
The locally trained argument does not rescue that thinking either. If Celtic wanted to invest in association-trained Scottish players, there were other possibilities available at various points. Josh Mulligan, David Watson and Lennon Miller are precisely the type of younger domestic players Celtic should have been monitoring and pursuing aggressively not because they were particularly brilliant but because all of them would have enhanced the options available to us in terms of those eight domestic players UEFA requires.
There are players across Scottish football who would have looked at Tuesday night as the greatest opportunity of their careers. I find it difficult to believe that the best of them could have contributed less than what Celtic got from him. There are players in our academy system who would certainly have given us more.
And this goes beyond McCowan.
It is time Celtic stopped coddling players who are nowhere near the required standard. Anthony Ralston has been around this squad for years despite obvious limitations. Liam Scales has played enormous amounts of football for Celtic despite repeated questions about whether he is good enough for the level the club claims to aspire to.
There are others too. This is not fundamentally their fault.
If Celtic offer someone a contract, of course he signs it. If the manager selects him, of course he plays. If the club keeps paying him, nobody expects him to walk into the chief executive’s office and announce that he has decided he isn’t Celtic class and would therefore like his employment terminated.
The failure belongs with the people who establish the standard.
The executives who approve the contracts. The recruitment department which fails to find better players. The football structure which accepts mediocrity. And, yes, the coaching staff when they continue selecting players who repeatedly demonstrate that they cannot perform the required role.
I can blame the coaching staff for plenty of what happened in Austria. There were obvious tactical and game-management failures which deserve separate examination, and I have already said that Martin O’Neill and his staff looked badly out of their depth as the game collapsed around them.
But the best coaches in the world cannot turn every footballer into a Celtic-level player. Sometimes the player simply isn’t good enough.
There is nothing cruel about recognising that.
If Celtic could move McCowan tomorrow to a club willing to assume his salary, I would hope we would not stand in his way demanding a transfer fee. I would regard freeing the squad place and moving forward as more important than trying to squeeze another few hundred thousand pounds from the deal.
The irony is that Celtic themselves made that harder by extending and improving his contract. That is typical of this club.
Luke McCowan has become a walking example of several things which are wrong with Celtic. The lowering of standards, the overvaluing of registration convenience, the questionable awarding of contracts and the tendency to make decisions which become harder to reverse later are all wrapped up in his situation.
I don’t say that because I dislike him personally. I don’t know him. For all I know, he is a terrific guy, and his reaction in Austria certainly suggests somebody who understands what the result meant and was deeply hurt by it.
But Celtic cannot be run according to who is a nice guy. It has to be run according to standards. Personal abuse should stop and anyone doing that should take a serious look at themselves. Football criticism is different.
Saying Luke McCowan was catastrophically bad on Tuesday is not abuse. Saying I do not believe he is good enough for Celtic is not abuse. Saying the decision to give him another contract represented a failure of judgement is not abuse. And saying Martin O’Neill should seriously consider leaving him out of the Europa League squad is not abuse either. Those are football opinions prompted by a football performance.
McCowan’s tears showed that he cared. I accept that. But I don’t give a shit about it, and I don’t give a shit that he feels hurt or put upon. I cannot muster sympathy for someone this club has made an undeserving millionaire and turned in a performance of that ineptitude on that stage or the manner in which he pulled out of tackles, was easily dispossessed and could not motivate himself to do better or more.
Celtic supporters care too, and unlike the people on the pitch, supporters are paying for the privilege of having their hearts broken.
They deserve standards. They deserve accountability and after Tuesday night, they have every right to demand both, no matter whose fragile feelings that hurts.
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Whilst I agree wholeheartedly that Luke McCowan isn’t good enough to be a regular for Celtic he is far from alone. At least McCowan genuinely cares which I’m far from convinced is the case for some of the others
His performance may have been the most abject but he was in good company. Tounketi should be moved on at the first opportunity as he clearly didn’t fancy it again.
That said, I can’t agree with the position that being well renumerated equates to zero empathy. The players don’t pick themselves and ultimately are employees. I avoid social media as I view it as a swamp but when the level of online abuse forces somebody to delete their account something is seriously wrong.
James, I hold very similar views to you regarding the squad, the board, the structure, who is responsible etc but the absence of empathy reminds me of the scorched earth mentality that exists at Ibrox. Like you I’m angry, but the real blame lies with the board. Focusing on certain players may diminish their accountability. Luke McCowan was crap but let’s leave it there.
Brilliant comments Mike.
Its not Luke McCowan’s fault that he is in the position he is. I think he genuinely tried and cares – he’s just not good enough.
Others who are more than good enough didn’t try and didn’t care – that’s far worse.
Yesterday I was really depressed over the football , more than Tuesday night. I’ve got a mate that sometimes comes to the games who watched a film rather than watching the extra time sensing the writing was on the wall. We could all sense that I’m sure, but I could never turn it off. He’s a casual fan that brushes off the disappointments of defeats, it doesn’t bother him, but still revels in the victories of Celtic. All the time and energy I spend agonising, analysing, pleading, and fretting over Celtic is absurd really and doesn’t make a bit of difference to Celtic. It made me wonder if I, and most other football fans really are just the mugs that clubs take us for. But most of us can’t turn it off and don’t want to. I decided though, to brush off this CL exit. As McGregor said, we got what we deserved. Hearts qualifying commits them to the Thursday Sunday pattern and the tribute act (who finished third last year) will probably be the same so it’ll come down to squad depth. We know we have the strongest starting eleven but it’ll come down to depth and the squad is weak so get busy Celtic.
As Dylan sang,” A lot of people don’t have much food on their table / But they got a lot of forks and knives / And they gotta cut somethin’. I feel for McGowan because there a lot of people who should be joining him on that sacrificial table. The guys who chose the team and tactics for a start.
For me their first goal was the one that changed the balance and that was down to McGregor who instructed Nygren to pass the ball back and who did it without even thinking.
MacGregor’s” the ball is a hot potato, get rid as soon as possible ” style is what has kept Celtic back for the last 5 years. Don’t let players think for themselves and point point and point again and appear like you are a midfield general.
Ironically McGowan tried to give us something we have never had for ages, a player who can “put his foot on the ball” as we used to say. He just wasn’t good enough at this level. He didn’t pick himself.
The issue is not McCowan — it is about the player that McCowan has become.
He has fallen off a cliff after two years in our dressing room.
50%’er at Dundee — his 50% good games got remembered.
His 50% poor games were forgotten about given the ups and downs of a small club.
He is now less of a player / less of an adult after 2 years in our care.
Similarly Ralston is much less of a player now Postecoglu has gone.
That is the state of the club, the state of our coaching and the state of our squad.
Our dressing room is now a black hole regarding building and developing talent.
Engels couldn’t get out quick enough after stalling his NT career for 2 years.
Hatate and Maeda seemed to detach themselves from the rest of the team.
CCV and Trusty can’t get a game over two or three footballing pensioners for the US.
Once they were quoted now they are on the sidelines.
Our squad dynamics are terrible.
We put no effort into the basics — corners / free kicks are a chore.
Penalties are too much for us now — Engels vs Hertz was the worst of the season.
But he scored and nobody cares that the GK’er jumped over it.
McCowan has a back story of redemption, lowly beginnings and the slow climb to success.
Until he met our dressing room and the black hole it is for ambition and fight.
And now he is a nervous wreck who needs social work support.
McGregor is not to blame — my thoughts are that the bad habits started under Brown.
Who wants to put in the effort to gain Euro credibility when you can be a flat track bully in the SPL and collect pots to your heart’s content.
However McGregor has been the constant throughout our decline.
Loved by moody Danish GK’ers because he let them do what they want and never challenged him.
Loved by managers who were phoning it in and taking the money from their second shift because he was the “manager” in the dressing room / training ground meaning they had more time for their other interests.
Too many take every utterance at face value — fly people play fly games.
McGregor has been a lifer for us because no-one else wanted him.
Forrest is a lifer because no one else would put up with him.
Wee guy coasting it in easy street — NT goal scoring lasted one week.
Fix the club — fix the squad and then fix the board.
Both are lazy / greedy / self centred shambles at our expense.
McCowan is just collateral damage.
He needs a break from our dressing room.
McGregor-“Loved by managers who were phoning it in and taking the money from their second shift because he was the “manager” in the dressing room / training ground meaning they had more time for their other interests.”
Absolutely nailed it. I would go as far as saying he had something to do with Hatton and McArdle being put out on loan as they showed up the midfield when they got their chance.
Celtic will never progress until he goes and as you say, “McGregor has been a lifer for us because no-one else wanted him.”
Gonnae gie’s peace wie yer clap trap about McGregor.Things are bad enough without reading this over the top shite from you.
Well said Micmac
If anything needs an over the top reaction it is losing a 4 goal lead. More interested in pointing out the team’s obvious weaknesses to help improve it than being a only fans supporter for third rate performers.
Re-cycled for context.
We have honking dressing room / terrible squad dynamics for a reason.
The managers have not put in much effort to make the squad sweat.
*****
*****
James F — What does MON have left to protect?
He is just a rich man’s well paid excuse-monger in chief.
Cloughie had him worked out years ago.
MON was the brand / Robertson was the footballing brains.
MON is still the brand / footballing brains is unfortunately now a bit limited.
This is 2004/05 all over again.
MON is semi-detached and the dressing room is running training.
90 minutes of half ersed laughing and joking to prep for a CL qualifier.
Eventually the newbies give up the effort and just fit in.
McGregor is a huge influence but he is not a captain.
He does too much thinking and he doesn’t do leadership.
Takes a big coaching personality to get the squad moving forward.
Maloney is not the coach and he is not the personality to do it
In McGregor’s defence — I have always rated him.
Slow burner / good loan spell — wide attacking mid / got a shot / mobile / got a step.
Issues with consistency — bit of a 50%’er with poor performances following good.
But he is / was always a talent who was better to have.
However he is not a pivot / not a defensive MF’er / not a captain.
Would appear to be a thinker but not a natural leader — most of us are not or it takes a while to get there so not a negative if you have someone else to be the captain.
Played better for the NT because he had more support / stronger tactical set up — plus playing second string in the eyes of the media to Gilmour seemed to give him focus and desire to get involved. So he has an ego and makes an effort to make the odd point as some of his performances show.
For us he has been rationing his effort for the past 3 years — this timing might be interesting given the manager situation. Playing hide and seek behind the opposition’s forward is now far too much of his game.
Now — we cannot play 3 in the midfield and play both him and Nygren.
If he plays then he needs to have two grafters behind him that can fill in the gaps when he makes a move forward.
We do not have that so with Nygren being great for 45 minutes then he has to be benched or Nygren moves to the forward line.
Maybe it’s 2002/03 all over again? That would be nice
So that’s it decided then? After detailed analysis of the board, recruitment, physios, coaching staff and players, we’ve unearthed the responsible party for Celtic exiting the Champions League.
It’s Luke McCowan who’s now being held responsible, and no-one else.
McCowan was abysmal but so we’re a few others.
These guys are paid well but most of them are looking unfit.
Surely when they came back the fitness guros checked there levels and put plans in place.
Unfortunately it looks like none of that happened.
The club need to be looking at the fitness coaches as Lask outran and outperformed every player.
Celtic players dropping with cramp tells its own story.
This doesn’t excuse McCowan he is paid well to stay in top condition.
At one stage he ran beside a Lask player and 10m later the Lask player was 5m ahead,that is unacceptable.
He needs to be loaned out.
Well said james ,luke is not good enough for celtic along with ccv trusty scales tounetki ralston , we could go on , even the new guys hogh and duran lacked fight against lask , nygren for all his goals is 1 lazy self seeker of a guy ,an empty jersey when you have to fight , and mon and staff were humiliated and should step away
Poor squad dynamics / poor dressing room culture — Tierney now looks more and more lost.
Since he has returned he has never looked comfortable playing for us — body positioning has been poor / struggling to make a good connection / looks under pressure in the line up.
Tierney does not look the guy we sold.
And even worse he seems to be diminishing as time goes on.
My thoughts — another negative data point regarding our training / coaching / conditioning / squad cohesion.
To the point that I miss Saracchi — much more complete footballer.
KT is not the player we sold – he is older and better and more productive. He had his best ever season last year with 18 goal involvements and played in 53 games (his most since 2017/18). KT is the least of our problems.
In “old money” MON needs a coach like Frank Connor or Steve Walford to put the fear of God into our players and improve fitness levels. PSG coasted for many years domestically and lost at the business end in Europe. It took Luis Enrique to come in and clear out the egos before they started winning the CL. We are coasting domestically and this is killing us in Europe.
Not sure your numbers chime my my recollections.
Goal involvements — care to detail?
To my eyes he is nowhere near as confident or involved enough in the games.
Games played — how games many did he finish / how many did he slow to a crawl before being subbed?
Also why does KT look lost in so many games?
His appetite for the game / the fight / the challenge looks much diminished.
We needed big characters on Tuesday and he was nowhere to be seen.
Other point — I too blame the SPL.
We don’t take it that seriously and I fear our training efforts reflect that.
Fear of God into the squad — not sure 2026 O’Neil or Maloney are up to it.
That was a team collapse the other night, plus there was no direction coming from the bench.
To blame a sub who came on in the 71st min with his team 3-1 down is just ridiculous, and a sign of the times. The personal vilification aimed at famous and not so famous individuals online is just way over the top.
What I do notice is that Scottish and Irish Celtic players seem to be judged and criticised more harshly, and negatively by a lot of the support after a bad result.
This Celtic team is going to be really down after this debacle, they will need support not vilification and hatred directed at them.
Completely agree micmac. And I am pretty certain that James lauded Luke McCowan when we signed him.
Further for James to make the comment that we should have looked at Lennon Millar when at the time his was suggesting he wasn’t worth more than £3m and railing against the “Celtic tax” that he perceives is hypocritical – James is always looking for us to buy the exotic foreigner and is quick to bad mouth emerging Scottish talent.
I hope that one positive from Tuesday might be a reassessment of the talent in the academy – let’s see more of McArdle and Hatton – and a review of other association trained players.
People talk about the board, the Scottish League, lack of planning, lack of proper academy etc.
And all these factors combined surely play the part in our failures.
Nevertheless, there is something way more fundamental than that.
The whole LASK starting line-up was assembled for less than Balikwisha, Tounekti, Hatate and McCowan combined, none of whom made our starting line-up.
Their stadium is the size of Tynecastle.
Their new acquisition is a guy from St Mirren.
Their record signings who run us ragged cost less than a half of Trusty..
Their league may be a bit stronger and competitive than ours, yet somehow one of their top teams Rapid Vienna was knocked out by Hearts on Wednesday, and Dundee Utd lost to the same team just by, on penalties last year. And we defeated Sturm Graz last year and Sevco narrowly lost.
Time after time we lose to the teams with a fraction of our turnover, a fraction of all the transfer fees we pay for our players, with a fraction of the size of the stadium, and teams from the leagues comparable to ours.
You can’t win a football game with bad psychological attitude and poor physicality and an inability to do the basics – like getting close to opponents, fighting, being aggressive, blocking crosses, putting a foot in to defend.
Even if you’re great technically (and we are not) you have to have this attitude, this psychology, this aggression, this physicality.
We seem to have none in the midfield – McGregor, Hatate, McCowan, Baur, Nygren, Chamberlain are NOT this kind of player. And our backline is soft and lacking in speed, aggression and physicality as well.
We talk about reinforcements, which makes sense, but unless we get the basics right, we can’t progress.
Look at all the failures from previous years. Cluj, Midtjylland, AEK, Ferencvaros, Maribor, Kairat etc etc – all these clubs share the same features as LASK. A fraction of our stadium size, of our budget, of our resources and a comparable poor league they come from. It’s no coincidence and not any kind of accident. It’s just a pattern.
It’s just ridiculous that we can’t defeat teams whose entire squad was assembled for the same amount as a couple of our reserve players.
The whole team was to blame but in defence trusty is weak as piss. He is a big guy but gets bullied off the ball so easily and they cries like a bitch. He needs to harden the fuck up. We need someone like Bobo at centre half, no nonsense defender. And then someone in midfield who can break up the play. Our current lot are soft as shite
Good summing up Wonderbet, agree with every word..
EXACTLY THIS!
Spot on Wonderbet10.
We all know how we personally feel after that defeat, the hurt, the anguish and the pain. However, no matter how bad that feeling is, Luke McCowan will be feeling it ten times worse. As a Celtic supporter as well as player he will be feeling personally responsible for the outcome, he will be feeling like shit and nothing can be said or done to undo the guilt he is having to endure. I feel deeply sorry for Luke, he might never recover from this setback and anyone with a heart should realise the turmoil he is going through. I wish him well and I hope his mental state of mind heals quickly with time.
Well said Johnny, This was a team and management failure, individuals shouldn’t be getting dug out for criticism.
Spot on micmac and Johnny.
I’m sure I commented on this, but it appears to have been deleted.
Pravda anyone?