Celtic beat Rangers 5-1 last Saturday in the first Old Firm derby of the season, but were brought crashing back down to earth when they were hammered 7-0 at Barcelona on Tuesday in the Champions League.
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Unsurprisingly in a 7-0 victory over Celtic with Lionel Messi scoring a hat-trick, Luis Suarez scoring a brace and Neymar also on the score sheet, trident took the headlines.
I remember playing one game for Celtic away in the Champions League against Shakhtar Donetsk and you wanted to play really good but you just couldn’t get a grip of any of the players.
“If it had gone to 1-1 then maybe they might have hit the crossbar a couple of times but that didn’t happen, of course”.
“The whole mindset has to change”.
‘I think they should forget that game as quickly as possible.
“On one hand we’re being told Celtic are a great club, great tradition, great history and they go and lose 7-0 to Barcelona and people are nearly saying “these things happen it’s acceptable”. They scraped through and I thought they’d actually won the competition.
Last season they didn’t even win a game in the Europa League.
The former Manchester United and Ireland captain, who had a short spell at Celtic 10 years ago, says he was astounded to see the celebrations in Brendan Rodgers’ camp when they qualified for the group stages after a 2-0 defeat to Hapoel Beer Sheva in Israel last month. People were hugging each other – the manager, the coaches, the players – they should be expecting to do well.
“Celtic were losing games on the road with a far stronger set of players than they have now”. He understands the Celtic players and fans’ anguish following their 7-0 thrashing by Barcelona, and the sense of helplessness that accompanies it. “If it is another team, with all due to respect to a team like Borussia Monchengladbach or someone, but this is Barcelona, one of the best teams in the world with some of the best players in the world”. Hopefully they have a little bit of luck or Barcelona and Manchester City have already qualified when they play and then they have to fight for third place with Moenchengladbach.
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“In the last number of years when they have been involved in Europe they have struggled and lesser teams than Celtic have done well”.
