Celtic are still living 'life in the slow lane'... but boss Martin O'Neill vows to get the club back on track after Champions League debacle

It's remarkable how prescient certain statements can prove to be in the fullness of time.

Almost exactly 23 years ago, a few months after Celtic had come within a hair’s breadth of winning the UEFA Cup, Martin O’Neill expressed his concern about what he believed was coming down the track.

Warning that an impending tightening of the belt would inevitably diminish the chances of supporters seeing their side return to that stage, he didn’t mince his words.

‘We might need to get used to life in the slow lane,’ he stated.

The intervening years have not proved him wrong. While Celtic did have enough to defeat Barcelona in the same competition later that season, that remains the last time the club won a post-Christmas knock-out tie.

As smaller but far better run clubs have overtaken them, Celtic have chugged along just as O’Neill predicted.

While success in Europe has arrived sporadically, the wide shot of the club’s travails in continental competition is far from good.

Any team could lose one play-off for the Champions League. When it loses eight out of 10 and six on the spin, it’s not a rub of the green it needs. It’s a whole new strategy.

Invariably ill-prepared and undercooked when the biggest game of their season arrives, Celtic’s atrocious record in recent times is all their own making.

While this summer’s transfer activity was a minor improvement on much of what had gone before, everything is relative. Celtic still faced LASK while in profit. 

A failure to replace Arne Engels before selling him to West Ham for £22million was another gamble which blew up spectacularly in the faces of the board.

‘Perhaps there was the thought Arne might stay for the game,’ said O’Neill. ‘But, look, we genuinely need to learn. That’s the most important thing.

‘I know that sounds like a politician answer after the whole thing and saying what we should have done. 

'If there are lessons to be learned, if there is a common denominator about not making it into the Champions League for each time you’ve had to play a qualifying game, let’s genuinely analyse that.

‘I haven’t had a chance to do that. I’m just part of the statistic now.’

Few supporters who watched the latest continental catastrophe unfold are in any doubt as to what that factor might be.

From AEK Athens to last year’s debacle away to Kairat Almaty, the recurring themes have been the selling of key men without having first replaced them, poor recruitment and the glacial pace at which deals are signed off.

‘Do you know what?’ said O’Neill as this was put to him. ‘I’m in no position to argue, really, not today.

‘But in my moment in the ashes, and I do feel like that at the moment, I think the club will rise, and I’m hoping in the not-too-distant future.

‘I might not be there, but I do think the club will not just qualify but to make it through and really do fine in the competition and attempt to get to the latter stages.’

While the hierarchy have again come under fire once for failing to adequately bolster the squad, the scattergun of criticism has spared no one since Tuesday.

At any level of football, surrendering a four-goal lead to any calibre of opponent will always be wholly unacceptable.

Callum McGregor felt his team-mates were scared as LASK turned up the heat. It was impossible to argue with that assessment.

The inability of O’Neill and his backroom staff to get the players to simply batten down the hatches as the Austrians came at them in waves was also troubling.

‘We played the first game, we won 3-0,’ O’Neill recalled. ‘I did say afterwards that the game was very much in the balance. That wasn’t just a defence mechanism. It was the truth of the game. I thought that they were a really fine side.

‘I know we did not do well in the second half, but in all honesty we should have been out of sight by half-time.

‘I’ve experienced these things before, both for and against. And the momentum that they had was very strong.’

While it was a desperate night for all involved, sleep would not have come easy for Luke McCowan.

A Celtic fan to his bootstraps, he could not do right for doing wrong when he came off the bench. Dispossessed on the edge of his own box as LASK struck the killer blow, it’s to be hoped he went nowhere near social media in the days which followed.

‘If it hadn’t been Luke, it would have been somebody else,’ said his manager. ‘People have been, throughout time, subjected to lots of abuse. It just seems to be the way.

‘Generally speaking, I’m not in the mood for putting arms around players at this minute. But I will.’

Last season, the cloud of Kairat never really went away. O’Neill appreciates the importance of putting a lamentable display in Linz in its box.

‘Are you going to stem the flow of negativity?’ he asked. ‘I just think this is it. I think that people, first of all, you have to be disappointed. And if you’re angry at it — I absolutely accept those things.

‘But somewhere along the way we as a football club have to get back up again as quickly as possible. Try and ride the disappointment out. And learn from it.’