The whole Celtic team at Ibrox bent around one player, and it wasn’t Duran.

One of the things that was incredibly frustrating yesterday was how long we stuck with a failing plan. It was also pretty extraordinary that we went into a game of that nature with a plan we should have known was going to fail.

Nobody was going to look at that midfield and confidently think it would get a result in that stadium. My heart sank when I saw the line-up.

Last week, I said we were in danger of making a terrible mistake by building the whole game plan around a single player.

The guy I’m thinking of, of course, is Camilo Duran, who didn’t really get a chance to make an impact because whenever we got the ball to him, he was surrounded by players.

He and Kasper have come in for some pretty sharp criticism, but if you’re looking at them, you’re looking at the wrong problem.

Likewise, Tounekti got some really serious criticism, but that’s another variation of the same issue. Before you start blaming the players at the front, look at what was happening behind them.

The selection that really caused us problems was elsewhere.

The player started the game and was on the pitch far longer than he ought to have been. That was Benjamin Nygren, and we need to have a discussion about him. More precisely, we need to discuss the decision to play him in that midfield.

Nygren is going to be an important player for Celtic this season, and you can tell that by the way he’s started the campaign. He’s got assists and he’s got goals.

But he was absolutely the wrong choice for that role yesterday, because he is not a midfield grafter. He does not give you the tracking back and defensive work that this particular midfield needed.

The argument for selecting him over someone who would do that work is that he scores goals. There are people who say that’s worth his inclusion, but you need to get the ball to him before he can do anything with it.

If the rest of the midfield isn’t up to the job of doing that, you’ve selected an attacking weapon you cannot properly use.

I’m going to say something that is going to be controversial. I have no doubt about that, but I’m going to say it anyway because it needs to be said. If you’re trying to shoehorn Nygren, Hassan, Duran and Høgh into the side at the same time, you’re going to make category-one errors unless you change the whole system we have been using.

Even then, I’m not sure you’re going to benefit from it.

Nygren lacks too many of the qualities required for the midfield job we gave him yesterday. In that role, on an afternoon like that, he becomes a luxury player. A luxury player is not a guy you want in a fight, particularly when the players around him are already struggling to hold their own.

Say we had changed tactics yesterday and gone with a 3-5-2. That would have enabled us to play both strikers at the same time. You could have Høgh and Duran through the middle, Hassan wide right, Tounekti wide left and Benjamin Nygren playing behind the strikers. Now, that’s a powerful attacking five.

But then you’ve got two central midfielders covering a lot of territory, including the wide positions whenever those attacking wingers are caught up the pitch. You’ve got no full-backs providing natural cover, and you’re asking the outside centre-backs to deal with whatever develops around them.

With those players and those responsibilities, the gap between the defence and midfield could be as gaping as it is right now. Maybe even more so.

When Martin O’Neill used to play a 3-5-2, he used attacking wing-backs, and in the best version of that team he had Neil Lennon as the anchor. It was not, as many have surmised, an all-out attacking system. Those wing-backs had defensive jobs, and there was someone in the middle who understood exactly what his job was.

You don’t recreate that balance simply by writing 3-5-2 on a piece of paper and putting two wingers into the wide positions. Nor do you solve the problem by giving Nygren a place behind the strikers if you haven’t equipped the rest of the team to support him. You’ve still got to do the work that allows those attacking players to attack.

Now imagine you play a 4-4-2.

Where does Nygren fit into that side? In this scenario, the reason you’re playing it is to get Duran and Høgh up front together. Then you have Hassan on the right and, using yesterday’s personnel, Tounekti on the left.

You can, if you want, take Tounekti out and put Nygren on the wing. But again, that’s not his best position, and you still need someone to do the defensive tracking back. Not that Tounekti gave us enough of that yesterday either, but you get my point. Moving the names around does not automatically produce a functioning team.

A 4-3-1-2 is probably the most obvious way to accommodate Nygren behind those two strikers. That gives you your back four, your three-man midfield and Nygren operating in front of it. But if you play that system, you’re leaving Hassan out. Tounekti is also left out, although people will regard that as less of an overall burden.

You make sacrifices to get there. You accept that some good attacking players cannot all start together, and you pick the combination that gives the team the best chance. That should not be some extraordinary concession. It is part of the job.

I understand why Martin O’Neill wants goals in the team. I don’t understand why he thought yesterday’s midfield was the way to provide them at Ibrox. The moment you selected Nygren in that combination, you left yourself short of the work required in the area where the game was going to be won and lost.

If your defensive players and your midfield are pegged back in your own half, you’re not going to get service to the guys who can do the damage. The whole game flows through the midfield. Get the balance there wrong and it doesn’t matter who you have in the final third. Without service, those guys are going to produce nothing.

The obvious argument against leaving Benji out is that if we don’t win, people will ask why our best goalscoring midfielder was sitting on the bench. Perhaps that weighed on O’Neill’s thinking. I cannot know that, but it is certainly the defence people make of the selection.

And it misses the problem entirely.

You select him for his goals, but his inclusion in that particular midfield leaves you less able to get the ball forward and create the chances from which those goals might come. That is a self-defeating system. He should have left Nygren out.

And when you leave Nygren out, what do you get? The opportunity for greater balance in midfield. You play Oxlade-Chamberlain or Sørensen. Guys with experience. Guys who know the ropes and whom you can give the job of supporting McGregor, covering when he’s not in position and making their midfield work harder.

Perhaps you also get players who can help move the ball to your attacking players and create chances. You take your goalscoring midfielder out of the side, and perversely, that may well have the overall effect of helping you score goals. Because the other players now have a better chance of getting the service they need.

At least on certain afternoons. At least against certain opponents, those who are going to make the midfield the key battleground and make you fight for every ball.

In those games, Nygren’s goals do not automatically make him the right choice for a midfield role. You play someone who can fight and claw, and you get the goals from somewhere else.

If you’re playing him for no other reason than that he can put the ball in the net, you’re tying your own hands needlessly on the off chance that he produces a bit of magic. That is not playing to the strengths of the team overall. That’s trying to build the system around a single player, without making sure the rest of it works.

Here’s where I step into heretical territory.

The Ibrox club made a version of this exact mistake for years by continuing to play James Tavernier regardless of the defensive consequences. I don’t know how many times they suffered for it, but it was a lot.

They kept picking a player whose position carried a defensive responsibility because he provided something at the other end of the pitch. He could hit a free-kick, take a penalty and score when he got into the box. Those were valuable qualities. But they did not make the space he left behind disappear.

Over and over again, his goals became the justification for his inclusion.

Other players had to cover when he was not in the position he was supposed to be filling, and opponents knew where to attack. The individual numbers looked good. The effect on the balance of the team was another matter.

The comparison is about that selection trap.

Because one player provides you with something in one area of the pitch, you will field him even at the expense of other areas. He gets selected because he is individually capable of something that others in the team can’t quite do, and your entire system starts bending around that one contribution.

This is not exceptional, and it is not restricted to Celtic. It is a blind spot that is common in football. But that does not excuse Martin O’Neill and his coaches for failing to recognise it in the way they used Benjamin Nygren yesterday.

Eventually, on a day like that, you run into the law of diminishing returns. The thing you’re picking him to provide becomes less and less likely to happen because of what the team is missing elsewhere. Any coaching team worth its salt should recognise that possibility before naming the starting eleven.

With a more coherent team shape, you give yourself a better chance of avoiding those gaps and winning the midfield battle. If you win the midfield battle, you can feed your forward players. If you feed your forward players, you give yourself a chance of taking the lead rather than chasing the opposition.

Then they have to come out and chase. Then, if you’re smart and you know when, you can deploy a player like Nygren. But the fundamental task is to equip the team with the tools to do the first job before you start thinking about the coup de grâce.

In fielding Nygren yesterday, we prioritised the goal he might score over the work that midfield needed. We selected a player for his ability to produce something individual, then wondered why we did not function as a team.

We wondered why the midfield was left exposed over and over again. We wondered why our own players were dragged out of position to cover areas we hadn’t properly equipped anyone to control.

That is a selection and coaching failure. Nygren’s limitations in that role were there before kick-off. It was the management team’s job to account for them.

It was one of the dumbest decisions of the whole afternoon, and it’s a mistake we cannot afford to repeat. There are days when Nygren will be an excellent player to have on the pitch. Yesterday was definitely not one of them.

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