Celtic's Struggles Under Martin O'Neill: From Swagger to Shambles
The faith is fraying now.
For years, Celtic supporters have treated doubting Martin O'Neill as something close to heresy. He was the man who steadied chaos, the leader whose personality dragged a faltering club over the line and back to the top. But after Ibrox and now Ferencvaros, belief is being stretched to breaking point.
Another big game, another heavy defeat. Three more goals conceded. The same old flaws.
From swagger to shambles
This was supposed to be a reaction to the shellacking at Ibrox. It never came. Celtic drifted through long spells of the match, their play littered with absent-minded touches in midfield and loose, half-hearted defending. Pass and move – the most basic of basics – looked like a foreign concept.
They had the ball. They did little with it.
At 3-1 down, there were flickers of defiance, but they were cosmetic. Shots from distance, speculative efforts, nothing that hinted at a team capable of building sustained pressure through tempo, pressing and coordinated movement.
Under Ange Postecoglou, Celtic were a blur of aggression and invention, a side that played on fast-forward and dragged defenders into places they hated. They took risks. They played with conviction and joy.
This is a pale imitation of that era. Slower. Safer. Softer.
Scottish football can change quickly, and it may yet again, but right now Celtic look like a team in freefall.
Echoes of old failures
The recent evidence is damning. Five goals shipped against LASK. A desperate afternoon at Ibrox. Now this.
There were passages on Thursday that felt eerily familiar, and not in a good way. Cluj and Copenhagen in 2019 and 2020. Sparta Prague in 2020. Those long, bleak European nights when Celtic looked naïve, disorganised and mentally fragile.
This had the same energy. Very Legia Warsaw. Very Salzburg. Very Maribor.
The running was laboured, the atmosphere toxic, the booing loud and sustained. The image of a team with no answers, no spark and no real idea how to fix it was impossible to ignore.
In the aftermath, O'Neill spoke of frustration, failure and psychological damage. He acknowledged how hard these moments hit, how they test a squad’s resolve. He promised to “get ourselves together” for Rangers on Sunday, but his delivery lacked edge. The tone was flat, weary even.
He listed the problems. He did not sound like a man brimming with solutions.
His post-match words felt like his team’s performance – leaden, stale, draining.
The aura has gone
O'Neill has rebuilt Celtic before. His first spell brought trophies and stature. His return last season brought order to chaos, a title race turned into a title procession, and a team that became brutally hard to beat.
They were not always pretty. They did not need to be. They were relentless. Nobody got the better of them when it mattered.
That version of Celtic feels distant now.
They actually started reasonably against Ferencvaros. Then, as so often with fragile sides, they conceded a soft goal. They responded with a flash of quality to level, only to slip straight back into their bad habits: sideways passes, limited ambition, little fire, barely a hint of emotional intensity.
The goal they gave up just before half-time was the sort that haunts bad teams. Hesitation for the loose ball. Weakness in stopping the cross. Confusion and disarray in the box when it mattered most.
Celtic had 62.5% of the ball in the first half. They still trailed 2-1.
Camilo Duran, restored through the middle ahead of Kasper Hogh, had eight touches in that opening period. Eight. In his preferred role, he looked lost, a shadow of the bright, enthusiastic forward who seemed to embrace Glasgow life only weeks ago.
Hogh’s story is no less stark. The striker who once scored freely for Bodo Glimt – goals against Man City (two), Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Sporting, Porto, Jagiellonia and a hat-trick against Olympiacos – now resembles an awkward centre-forward with a heavy touch and no service.
One goal in eight Celtic appearances. An £11m investment that O'Neill has not yet come close to unlocking.
Leaders adrift, questions mounting
Even Callum McGregor, the constant, the emotional anchor of this team, looks disoriented. When the captain seems unsure, the whole structure wobbles.
O'Neill has the experience and tactical nous to arrest this, but time is not his friend. Nor is the mood around him. He does not look or sound particularly convincing right now.
And then came the inevitable twist.
Daniel Arzani, a former Celtic player whose spell at the club passed in a blur of nothing much, stepped into the script. Of course he scored. Of course it was a beauty.
Ferencvaros broke with ease, slicing through Celtic’s shape. Colby Donovan had over-committed upfield and was left sprinting desperately to recover, chasing shadows. Arzani stood in acres of space on the left, waited, measured, then whipped a superb finish into the top corner.
The defending was chaotic. There was more structure in a Keystone Cops chase.
A broken team before Rangers?
O'Neill now needs a remarkable number of answers in a very short space of time. Football has a habit of flipping narratives quickly, and he has rebounded from crises before. His career is built on comebacks.
But this is a long list of problems. His team lack ideas, conviction, composure, physical presence, mental strength, creativity, ruthlessness and, most damningly, the appetite for a fight.
The manager himself looks short of inspiration. The aura that once surrounded him at Celtic has thinned.
McGregor has admitted the team is “a little bit broken” at the moment. Rangers, watching all of this unfold, will fancy their chances of inflicting more damage at Celtic Park on Sunday. They know the cliché about wounded animals. They also know an opportunity when they see one.
The second act of this season’s Old Firm drama now looms as something more than just another derby. It feels like a verdict.
On Sunday, we find out whether this is just a slump – or the start of something far more troubling for Celtic under Martin O'Neill.
