Celtic's Struggles: A Manager in Crisis
Celtic used to treat doubt about a manager as a kind of heresy. Question Martin O’Neill? After everything he’s dragged this club through and out of? That was the old logic.
Right now, faith is being stretched to breaking point.
Four days after being torn apart at Ibrox, Celtic walked into their Europa League opener needing a reaction and walked out with another heavy defeat, three more goals conceded and a fanbase staring at a team that looks nothing like itself.
The performance against Ferencvaros was not an angry response. It was a continuation.
Loose in midfield. Slack at the back. Negative in possession. Simple passes going astray. No rhythm, no conviction, no real grasp of the basics of pass and move. The intensity that once defined them has drained away. The work-rate that used to suffocate opponents has gone missing.
At 3-1 down, Celtic tried to rouse themselves. There were long-range efforts, hopeful hits that spoke more of desperation than design. Nothing built on coordinated pressing or sharp combinations. No waves of pressure, no sense of inevitability. Just shots from distance and a vague sense of “maybe”.
Under Ange Postecoglou, Celtic at full tilt were a blur of aggression and invention, taking risks, playing at breakneck speed, dragging defenders into horrible areas and refusing to let them breathe.
This side is a pale imitation of that memory.
Echoes of Celtic’s darker European nights
Scottish football can flip quickly, but the mood around Celtic is dark. Sunday’s second act of the Old Firm saga at Celtic Park should, in theory, be a knife-edge occasion. Home crowd. Pride wounded. A manager with a history of finding solutions.
Yet the evidence keeps piling up the other way. Five goals shipped against LASK. Humiliation at Ibrox. Now this Europa League collapse.
At times on Thursday, the football felt like a greatest hits of Celtic’s recent European failures: Cluj and Copenhagen in 2019 and 2020, when Bayo and Bolingoli were on the scene; Sparta Prague in 2020, with Klimala, Ajeti, Duffy and Laxalt. Names that trigger a shudder in the stands.
It had shades of Legia Warsaw, Salzburg, Maribor. Drained energy on the pitch, rising fury off it. The boos were loud, and they were earned. You could see, almost feel, a team with no answers.
O’Neill’s words afterwards only deepened the unease. He spoke of frustration, failure, psychological damage. He talked about how nights like this hit you, how they test your resolve. He promised Celtic would “get ourselves together” for Rangers on Sunday.
The delivery told its own story. Flat. Tired. Lacking spark.
He listed the shortcomings – and there were plenty – but he didn’t sound like a man brimming with solutions. His post-match demeanour mirrored his team: leaden, stale, dispiriting.
This is the same manager who has solved problems here before, who returned to a club in chaos last season and restored order and confidence. He built a side that might not always have been easy on the eye, but was brutally hard to beat. When the title was on the line, nobody got past them.
That defiance feels both recent and very far away.
Possession without purpose, leaders without impact
Celtic actually started reasonably well against Ferencvaros. Then came a soft goal. They clawed their way back with a flash of quality, only to sink straight back into bad habits: safety-first passing, minimal urgency, a flicker of emotion when they needed a blaze.
The goal they conceded before half-time was the sort of concession you associate with poor teams. No bite in the first duel for a loose ball. Weak in the second phase trying to stop the cross. Then chaos in the box, defenders looking at each other, not the danger.
By the break, Celtic had 62.5% of the ball and trailed 2-1. Sterile dominance. Ferencvaros didn’t need the ball to control the night.
Up front, Camilo Duran led the line through the middle, preferred to Kasper Hogh. Eight touches in the first half. That was it. This is a player who, only weeks ago, looked energised by his new life in Glasgow, full of verve and personality. Now he’s a ghost.
Hogh’s decline is just as stark. The striker who once scored against Manchester City (twice), Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Sporting, Porto, Jagiellonia and Olympiacos (three) for Bodo Glimt has turned into an awkward presence, struggling with his first touch, starved of service and confidence.
One goal in eight Celtic appearances is the cold number. Behind it sits a bigger problem: an £11m signing that O’Neill has not yet managed to unlock.
Even Callum McGregor, the captain, the constant, looks adrift. The midfielder who has so often been Celtic’s metronome and conscience is now describing his team as “a little bit broken”. You don’t often hear that from him. You certainly don’t hear it when a group believes it’s a tweak away from clicking.
O’Neill has the experience and tactical nous to address it, but he has to do it at speed. Right now, he doesn’t look or sound convincing.
Arzani’s strike twists the knife
Given how this season is unfolding, you could almost script Daniel Arzani scoring. A former Celtic player who passed through in a blur of frustration and unfulfilled promise, returning to deliver a brutal reminder of what the club used to represent.
The manner of his goal was as damning as the identity of the scorer.
Celtic were ripped apart on the counter, their shape shredded. Colby Donovan had over-committed in attack and then turned to chase in vain, legs pumping, the picture of a man running into inevitability. Arzani found himself in acres of space on the left, took his time, picked his spot and whipped a stunning finish into the top corner.
It was clinical. It was easy. It was everything Celtic were not.
The defending, by contrast, was pure farce. There was more structure in a Keystone Cops routine.
A manager searching for answers, a derby looming
O’Neill now stands in front of a mountain of problems. His team lacks ideas, conviction, composure, physical presence, mental resilience, creativity, ruthlessness and sheer appetite for a fight. Strip all that away and what’s left of a Celtic side?
The most worrying image is of the manager himself. He looks short of inspiration, short of the old fire. His career is full of comebacks, of seasons rescued and campaigns turned on their head. You almost become conditioned to expecting him to do it again.
This time, the list of faults is long and the clock is ticking loudly.
McGregor’s admission that the team is “a little bit broken” will not have gone unnoticed across the city. Rangers, having already inflicted one heavy wound, will fancy their chances of opening it up again at Celtic Park.
A wounded animal can be dangerous. That cliché will be wheeled out before Sunday, and with reason. Pride still lives in that dressing room, and a derby can jolt even a drifting side into life.
But right now, with Celtic fragile, short of belief and staring at a crisis of identity, the bigger question hangs in the air: is this just a slump, or the start of something far more serious in the balance of power between Glasgow’s giants?
