GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - SEPTEMBER 13: (L-R) Celtic Interim Chairman Brian Wilson, CEO Michael Nicholson and CFO Christopher McKay during a Premier Sports Cup Quarter-Final match between Rangers and Celtic at Ibrox Stadium, on September 13, 2026, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Today, there will be a temptation for a lot of Celtic fans to simply write that off as a bad day at the office. But it wasn’t a bad day at the office, and those of us who are capable of looking at it clearly know that.
The reason a lot of us were very muted in our predictions before this game, the reason a lot of us felt very subdued about it, was that you could see a mile away that this was possible. And if you want to know why it was possible, I suggest you listen to Derek McInnes.
“(That) space at the edge of the box, we knew we could occupy that space at times if we attacked properly and we looked after the ball. If we forced Celtic back in that space.”
Derek McInnes is not a special manager. Derek McInnes is a serial loser who is incapable of thinking through anything more complicated than building an IKEA wardrobe. But Derek McInnes saw how to win that game today, and he got his player to position himself in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, and then left it up to whether or not that guy could get the ball on target.
Now, Derek McInnes is not a genius for working that out. The LASK manager worked it out way before McInnes did, and watching the LASK highlights, a lot of us worked out the same thing. We’ve only been talking about it for weeks.
And if amateurs on Twitter and in the blogosphere can see something this clearly, an experienced football manager like McInnes was never going to miss it in a hundred years. It seems to me that the only people, the only people who didn’t clearly see it, were the people on our coaching staff.
LASK destroyed us in that same area, that same little space which should have been occupied by a player who knew that you do not let the opposition shoot from that range, from that angle, from that position. Anyone who watches enough football knows that’s one of the most dangerous parts of the pitch from which an opposition player can get off a shot.
If your defence is in front of you, you don’t even see that coming as a goalkeeper until it’s too late. So, if a player can get those on target consistently, that player is going to hurt you. And they did it twice in one game. The exact same player, in the exact same spot.
I knew they would get a similar goal after they got the first one, because we watched as the Austrians took shots from there over and over again, and we didn’t close it down. We watched as they got the first one today without closing it down either.
It should be unconscionable for a team to lose the same goal from the same place twice in one game. But we lost a couple of them in Austria from the exact same place, and all McInnes had to do to know how to get shots on target, at the very least, was to watch that performance and do the same thing.
Every club in this league knows that gap is there. Every club in this league we have played against has tried to exploit that space. All it takes is to come up against the wrong club at the wrong time, with a player capable of putting that in the net, and you’ve got problems.
That was not a bad day at the office.
That is the culmination of bad day after bad day after bad day at the office. Forget about last season. Last season is done. Last season is over.
This coaching staff is getting judged on what it does right now, and what it’s doing right now is sleeping at the wheel. A Celtic coaching staff is very lucky to survive a European tie in which you have a four-goal lead with 60 minutes to go and somehow contrive to lose. There was a time when a Celtic boss would not have got out of that without a grovelling apology and a serious internal club inquest.
We didn’t even learn from it. We just set up the same way and repeated the same mistakes. So, in addition to that humiliation, you’ve got today’s humiliation, and more is waiting for us because teams now know where one of our vulnerabilities is. I guarantee you this: Ferencváros will exploit the exact same hole on Thursday night, and we don’t even have a player whose natural position is to fit into that slot.
It is easy to blame the people in the boardroom. All of us do anyway. All of us know that they are guilty of a multitude of sins. All of us know that they could have helped the manager and helped the team by bringing in some more quality in midfield, but they failed to do it. They didn’t want to do it.
Whatever strategy they were following got axed the moment we went out of the Champions League, which is exactly what happens when your entire club is a leadership void and is simply allowed to drift. A plan is either robust or it isn’t. The way we were so quick to ditch it means that it was never really nailed down in the first place.
But we’ve got problems here that run deep, and blaming the individual players is not going to get this done. We have the individual players at this club who could have won that game today and comfortably put away the home side, who are themselves not a great team.
But as I said after that night in Austria, that’s a result that doesn’t just get to go away. That doesn’t just erase itself from the memory. Because what I remember about that night is what I saw again today: a coaching staff standing there looking bewildered because their plan to rely on a handful of players conjuring moments of magic wasn’t working and was never going to work. And they had nothing in the locker to change it.
That’s not a bad day at the office.
That’s a real, fundamental problem at the heart of the whole football operation. Pretending you don’t see it is not going to make it go away. We need to find some answers here, because real doubts now exist about everything this club is doing.
That team line-up today was indefensible. That team shape today was indefensible. The way we sat back behind the ball and allowed them to press us was indefensible.
And that gap that McInnes thinks he’s a genius for spotting, when all of us have been talking about it for weeks? For that gap still to be there, and for him to be able to exploit it like that, is absolutely indefensible. All the talk about learning lessons is not going to make any one of us feel a little bit better because we’ve heard it all before.
Talk is cheap. We either learn or we continue to suffer. This was not a bad day at the office. The set-up is wrong. The coaching is wrong. The tactical plan is wrong. Those are fundamentals, and they had better get fixed.
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As I said in last piece, you hammered the board all summer and now the football has started you are hammering the coaching staff and the manager plus you and Derek McInnes can see things the coaching staff can’t, ha ha.
I imagine you think Brendan could sort this all out.
Nothing has changed, we probably have £100m in the bank and that is the squad we have to put on the park.
It always was and still is 100% the boards fault.
Abyssmal performance, end of. Ahm just shocked at the manner we capitulated today. Tho from the off, tactically it suited the ibrox side perfectly. Changing GK’s was a mistake right away. Sinisalo shouldv’e kept his place. Duran is far more effective through the middle. Our mid is woefully understrengthed. And the less said about Tounetki the better tonight. Ah hope our players don’t IGNORE all the gloatin and mega hype, we’ll be readin and listenin tae in the comin days. They SHOULD listen tae and read it all. We deserved what we got today, but that lot are not a good team either. We made them look better than they are. Thats no sour grapes, that’s a reality imo. Big rethink needed for next week.
We all love Celtic. We all hate losing to the huns. Most of us think the current board should be gone. Most of us were delighted with most if the signings. However, our coaching staff are either arrogant or stupid. I think it is arrogance. Sometimes they must be so pleased with themselves because we can cruise matches in the SPL. The team selections today reeked of arrogance. We can play a goalkeeper just to give him a taste of the fixture. We can play Tounekti because he fid well in the last game. We can play Hogh and Duran out of position and most of all, we can allow Nygren to swan around the opposition half constantly giving the ball away. We can play 4 3 3 because we will not adapt to a better system.
Most of us can see that Nygren is now a luxury player. I bet if we played Hogh and Duran up top together, they would bang in more goals than we can expect from the lazy Swede.
MON and his staff must ditch the current system for one that suits our oplayers. They have a lot of work to do before Thursday. There is an old saying about doing the same things time after time and expecting a different result. If punters like myself can see it, if bloggers and tv pundits can see it then surely our arrogant coaching staff can see it. Unless, of course, they really are stupid.
The manager and coaching staff should be ripped new ones for their performance today. We have the players to play 3-5-2 and 4-4-2 – what we don’t have is the midfielders and wingers to play 4-3-3.
MON needs to demand more help on the coaching front. There is no way that Maloney and Fotheringham can justify their preparation of the team this week.
This blog demanded that the board pony up for the contracts for MON’s coaching staff. There is every indication now that MON should have rode off into the sunset in the summer and a total refresh and move away from BrendanBall undertaken.
Don’t worry everything will be fine as MON said post-match that he will analyze the game to find out what went wrong.
Which begs the question, is this the first time he’s done that this season ?
Of course not don’t be silly !
But if not, then why are we still being bombarded from the exact same shots on goals ? All teams blast our goal from the same big empty danger spot yet we still leave it empty.
How many games/points/trophies must we lose before this idiocy is rectified?
Are we run by amateurs ? If amateurs like us can see this glaring problem does that make our coaches poorer amateurs than us ?
Of course not don’t be silly !
Or
Are we worse than last year without Iheanacho and Diazen to rely on ie did they mask coaching deficiencies ?
I hope not, perhaps this is just a big settling in period for the team and coaches still getting to know each others style.
On the bright side at least we can see where we need to plug and improve, so get the finger out Celtic and try new combinations.
Losing a 4 goal lead in the CL qualifier, then a 3-0 drubbing which could easily have been 5 or 6, against a very ordinary Ibrox team is unacceptable. In those two games the players looked ill prepared and the coaching staff devoid of ideas. The next two games will prove one way or another, if our manager and coaching staff have any idea how to reshape our team, and get the best out of the players available to them.
MON and his staff have squandered all the goodwill they had banked by winning an unlikely League Title last season. The next two games are now vital not only for this team, but more so for the manager and his staff.
I’ve been watching Celtic since 1950, the game against an average Lask team was the worst tactical display in Europe I’ve ever seen, and that abject display today at Ibrox was the worst ever display against Sevco since it arose from the ashes of Rangers FC [1872] in 2012.
Mon looked like a man who was out of his depth.
I hate saying that but it’s true.
There was no plan b, like in days of old. There was no fire from the touchline, and no fear from the players for the dressing down the would receive at full time.
What we seen was a dereliction of responsibility from the board and it’s transfer duty over the summer.
Think about it for a moment. A net profit of £20million on sales, and only 4 players signed. The rest are here on loan.
The fans can’t complain. They have accepted this. I’ve read and listened to some saying it was a good window . FFS is this what we’ve become?
The champions signing the fewest players!!!!
Yesterday was confirmation that we don’t have a team to compete at any serious levels.
The ppl who run the club just worry about the bank balance, and fans have accepted this.
I’ve made my views clear in what actions should have taken place to oust this board, and the fans have done nothing.
So it’s time to suck this up and expect more to come.
Until this board and Desmond are gone, this is just the way it is
We were terrible yesterday and it’s on O’Niell. It’s not a bad day at the office because as soon as the team came out me and many others had a bad feeling about what was coming. Play a 3-5-2 ffs! Play Hogh and Duran together. Duran is totally wasted on the wing. There is no cohesion between Baur and McGregor. They got ripped apart and were at fault for a goal each.
Overall we have no discernible style.
As for the goalkeeper, what was the decision to play him all about? Utter madness, Sinisalo didn’t deserve to be dropped, especially not for a guy on loan from Wolves but O’Niell made Johnstone his no.1, he was terrible and now what? If you drop him, which he absolutely should, you risk ruining his confidence or if you stick with him it’s completely unfair on Sinisalo