This assignment was in two parts. Celtic deserves no pass marks for Tuesday.

In spite of all the Ginger Witch stuff, I am actually a teacher, and if I were sitting at my desk with a red pen in my hand, looking at Celtic as I would look at one of my students, I would have to be brutally honest.

There is talent here, there is potential here and there are some very promising signs, but there are also some serious weaknesses, some unacceptable mistakes and, most importantly, one gigantic problem with consistency.

After what happened against LASK, I simply cannot write, “Well done, Celtic, you tried.” No extra marks for giving their best. Some of them didn’t make that grade, and even those who did … your best isn’t good enough at all, and you should probably be more worried than those who are accused of not even trying.

If one of my students produced a piece of work which showed flashes of brilliance in one paragraph and then collapsed completely in the next, I would praise the good parts, but I would also circle the mistakes in red and tell them exactly what needed to improve.

So today I am doing exactly that with Celtic. My dear Celtic, this is your evaluation, and believe me, I am holding my red pen very tightly.

Let me begin with the positive because, as a teacher, I believe an evaluation should never be only about mistakes.

Celtic have strengths, and the first one is quality in some areas.

But I have to highlight that this quality is horribly inconsistent. Watching Celtic at the moment can feel like riding a rollercoaster: one minute you’re flying upwards, the next you’re dropping through the floor. The quality is definitely there, but sometimes it looks as though it has been packed with holes like Swiss cheese.

We have seen what this team is capable of.

That performance against LASK at Celtic Park did not come from nowhere. The goals, the movement, the intensity, the hunger and the attacking football showed me what this Celtic team can actually be when everything clicks.

That is exactly why what happened in Austria hurts so badly.

I know what these players are capable of because I watched them demonstrate it only days earlier. Camilo Durán showed why Celtic brought him to Glasgow, Kasper Høgh has brought goals and movement, Mika Baur has added energy and attacking imagination and Haissem Hassan has given us another dimension.

There is talent in this squad. There is youth, hunger and speed, and there is something I did not always feel last season: ambition, at least in terms of what the man in the dugout has attempted to do in identifying his targets. That is a genuine strength.

Another strength has been the mentality Martin O’Neill helped rebuild around this team. I have said it before and I will say it again: Martin O’Neill knows Celtic. He understands the pressure, he understands what this club means and he knows that wearing the Hoops is not simply another football job.

I believe Celtic rediscovered an important sense of belief under him, but belief alone is not enough. You have to demonstrate it every week, in every competition and especially on every European night. Austria showed us that whatever mentality had been rebuilt is still far more fragile than any of us wanted to believe.

If I were marking an English student’s written work, accuracy would be one of the first things I assessed. Celtic’s accuracy at the moment needs serious work.

The LASK defeat was filled with errors. There were defensive errors, decision-making errors, positioning errors, concentration errors, coaching errors and structural errors. Most worryingly of all, there were errors of mentality.

Celtic’s quality was so unstable that it almost disappeared completely when the pressure increased. You cannot produce one of your best performances against a European opponent and then look like an entirely different football team when you meet them again a week later.

A student cannot write a brilliant introduction and then forget how the English language works halfway through the essay. Celtic cannot play like champions at Celtic Park and then completely lose their structure, discipline and confidence away from home.

Consistency is accuracy over time, and that is the lesson here.

Then we come to another category I use with my students: fluency.

Can you communicate naturally? Can you keep going? Can you connect one idea to another and maintain control instead of panicking when something goes wrong?

When I watch Celtic, I see spells of beautiful football. I see moments when we move the ball brilliantly, attack with purpose and look genuinely dangerous, but I still don’t see enough fluency over the course of an entire game.

Suddenly everything becomes rushed. The passes become sloppy, the decision-making becomes nervous and the players start chasing the match instead of controlling it. Against good European opposition, that can destroy you, and on Tuesday night it did.

Celtic have to learn how to stay calm and manage difficult periods. They have to know how to suffer without panicking, how to respond when an opponent scores and how to say, “Fine, you have scored. Now watch what we do.”

That is maturity. More specifically, that is European maturity, and Celtic urgently need much more of it if they are going to do anything worthwhile in the Europa League.

Every student also needs vocabulary, and every football team needs options. I actually like some of the new vocabulary Celtic have added to this squad because there are different attacking profiles, more physicality, more pace, more creativity and players capable of changing the rhythm of matches.

That is encouraging, but I want more.

I want Celtic to have Plan A, Plan B and Plan C. I want Martin O’Neill to be able to look at his bench and think, “Right, this game needs something different,” and actually have the personnel available to make that change.

I want Celtic to be unpredictable because European opponents will not simply stand around admiring us. They will study us, analyse us and attack our weaknesses.

LASK did exactly that, and when the questions became difficult Celtic suddenly appeared to have forgotten half the answers.

That brings me to the most important section of my evaluation: homework. That’s the stuff that happens in the coaching and the setup and the tactics.

The first piece of homework is defensive organisation.

There can be no excuses for basic concentration lapses on this scale; huge spaces opening between units or players looking as though they have only just been introduced to each other when a European game becomes chaotic.

The second is mentality away from Celtic Park.

The Hoops have to travel with the same personality they show at Paradise because confidence which disappears at passport control is not much use to anybody.

The third is game management. If Celtic are ahead, control the match. If Celtic concede, do not collapse. If we are under pressure, stay together and understand that sometimes the intelligent thing is not the glamorous thing.

The fourth is squad depth. We are no longer talking about Champions League depth because Celtic threw that opportunity away in Austria. We are talking about building a squad capable of competing seriously in the Europa League, and Tuesday night showed that the work is nowhere near finished.

The fifth piece of homework may be the most important of all: the coaching and recruitment departments have to work together properly. Martin O’Neill needs players who fit his football, not simply footballers who look good on a spreadsheet, happen to be available or can be bought at a price somebody in an office finds comfortable. They need to be players who fit. Players who understand the assignment.

Because there is no point giving a teacher a classroom full of talented students if none of them are prepared for the exam.

So many failures in those areas. So, so many failures, and I do not want to pretend everything is broken because it isn’t.

There are foundations here. The attacking potential is exciting, some of the new signings have given Celtic fresh energy and there is a mixture of youth and experience which could still develop into something very good.

There is also a manager who understands the club, even if Tuesday night badly damaged confidence in his ability to control a modern European match when everything begins going wrong. Martin O’Neill does not get a pass from me simply because I like and respect him.

His game management in Austria deserves criticism. The harshest. So does the team. So does the football structure which left him with the options he had. Nobody gets an automatic A because of what they achieved last season.

The opportunity directly in front of Celtic now is the Europa League. The Champions League is gone, and there is no point pretending that will be easy to take. It won’t. But European football continues, and that gives Celtic another chance to demonstrate that what happened against LASK was a catastrophic lesson rather than a preview of the season to come.

One terrible piece of homework does not define a student.

But neither can a student keep making the same mistakes and expect the teacher to keep writing “excellent effort” at the bottom of the page.

That brings me straight back to LASK.

LASK was not merely a defeat. It was a warning. That is why I refuse to brush it aside or accept the idea that everybody should simply forget it and move on.

A catastrophic collapse like that has to be analysed. It has to hurt and, above everything else, it has to teach. If Celtic learn from LASK, perhaps that horrible night will eventually have some value. If we repeat those mistakes in the Europa League, then I will be sitting here with my red pen again, and believe me, Celtic, my marking will not become any kinder.

I want this team to succeed. I want these players to succeed and I want Martin O’Neill to succeed. I wanted Celtic in the highest competition possible, but that opportunity is gone because the club failed the examination when it mattered.

Now there is another test coming. Wanting to pass it will not be enough.

Something has to change immediately.

No excuses, no hiding behind “it was only one game” and no pretending everything is fine because the previous performance was adequate.

Celtic are being evaluated now, so here is my final assessment.

And bear in mind this is only for Martin and his team.

I will judge the board much more harshly later on, and without the aid of the red pen.

Overall: 6/10. The attacking potential gets 8/10, as does the overall potential of the squad … but only if there are reinforcements. Character gets 5/10, and Austria has made me question that mark more than I expected.

Consistency gets 5/10 because it was one half of the tie good and the other dreadfully bad. Defensive accuracy gets 5/10, European maturity only 4/10, and game management gets 4/10 after what we witnessed in Austria.

That leaves Celtic at around 6/10, and perhaps even that is generous after Tuesday night. The reason for the generosity is that, frustrating as it is, I can see the A-grade student hiding inside this team. I genuinely can. I have seen the football, the hunger and the power, and I have seen flashes of what Celtic can become.

But Celtic, my dear Hoops, you cannot submit one brilliant assignment and then hand me complete chaos the next week.

I want consistency, discipline, intelligence, hunger and improvement. Above everything else, I want Celtic to demonstrate that they can actually learn from their mistakes.

Because the next European test will not care about excuses. Neither will I.

So Celtic, take your homework, read my comments, correct the mistakes and come back with a much better piece of work.

Class dismissed for now.

The Europa League examination may be even tougher.

My marking certainly will be.

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