NafisaThere was no hiding place for Celtic after what happened at Ibrox.
The 3-0 defeat to Rangers was already painful enough for the Scottish champions, but the reaction afterwards threatened to make an uncomfortable afternoon even more difficult to swallow.
Martin O’Neill admitted his side had structural problems to fix.
Then came the words of Callum McGregor.
The Celtic captain could easily have taken the conventional route. He could have pointed to missed chances, praised Rangers for their performance and insisted that his teammates would bounce back.
Instead, McGregor delivered an extraordinarily blunt assessment of what had gone wrong.
And rather than protecting his teammates from the criticism that was inevitably coming their way, the long-serving captain openly admitted that Celtic had looked nothing like the collective they needed to be in an Old Firm clash.
His comparison with Rangers was particularly brutal.
The Celtic skipper believed the difference between the sides was obvious to anyone watching.
Rangers looked like a team.
Celtic, according to their own captain, looked like a collection of individuals.
That admission tells its own story.
McGregor admits Celtic simply were not good enough
Celtic’s problems had been visible long before the final whistle.
Their midfield was repeatedly overrun, possession was given away cheaply and Rangers were able to exploit the spaces left behind whenever the visitors lost the ball.
But what made the defeat particularly alarming was that Celtic never appeared capable of recovering once Rangers established control.
McGregor admitted as much when reflecting on the game.
“Once we went behind in the game we never looked like recovering to be honest,” McGregor told the BBC.
The Celtic captain did acknowledge that his side had opportunities to change the match in the early stages.
“We had a couple of good moments early on if we take them it’s a different game. And we know that coming here you’re not going to get hundreds and hundreds of chances. You get moments in the game where if you take them it can totally change the outlook of the game.
“I felt like once we went one behind we never really looked like getting back in it, to be honest.”
That was only the beginning of McGregor’s brutally honest assessment.
The more he was asked about Celtic’s performance, the less inclined he appeared to be to soften the reality of what had happened.
And eventually, the captain pointed directly at one of the most glaring weaknesses of the afternoon.
Celtic captain publicly tears into his team’s performance
Celtic’s passing had been unusually sloppy throughout the contest, with several careless turnovers allowing Rangers to launch attacks.
McGregor admitted that the standard had surprised him.
“Technically it did. You come here and if you want to impose yourself you’ve got to be good on the ball and we never quite did that.
“To be honest it wasn’t under massive pressure either, it was quite careless and slack. When you think we have half a foot in the game we keep turning the ball over and it’s a counter-attack which is what they want and are good at.”
That was a remarkable admission from the Celtic captain.
The issue, according to McGregor, was not simply that Rangers forced Celtic into mistakes. Some of the errors came when the visitors were not even under significant pressure.
Against an opponent as dangerous as Rangers in transition, those mistakes were always likely to be punished.
But then McGregor went further.
Much further.
Asked whether it had been one of the toughest occasions he had experienced on the pitch, he gave an answer that exposed the biggest difference he saw between the two sides.
“Was it one of the toughest times I’ve had out there? Yeah because it wasn’t us. I think the difference between the two sides was you seen the team and you seen a team of individuals as well.
“Rangers were a team and you could see that. We looked like a team of individuals who wanted to do our own thing and play when we got the ball, not necessarily run when you don’t. That’s what you can’t do when you come here, you’ve got to run. You can’t defend with six players, it’s impossible.”
For a captain to describe his own side in those terms immediately after an Old Firm defeat is as revealing as it is damaging.
McGregor was effectively saying that Celtic had failed at one of the most basic requirements of playing against Rangers: functioning collectively.
Individual quality was not enough.
Talent was not enough.
And trying to make things happen on the ball without matching it with the work required off it was simply not going to survive at Ibrox.
McGregor refuses to hide from the fallout
There was also a clear sense that McGregor understood exactly how much scrutiny Celtic would now face.
The defeat was not going to disappear quickly.
The captain knew supporters, pundits and the media would all be discussing the performance, and he made it clear that he was not interested in avoiding the conversation.
“We’re trying to get the message to everyone that we need to be a team, to be the team we want to be. And we need to find a way to do that quickly because we lost a big game in LASK and another one today. It’s not acceptable.
“There will be other big games in the season and eventually you have to win one if you want to be considered a good team. We’ve put ourselves under pressure and we need to respond on Thursday and then on Sunday and we quickly need to get to the level.”
The reference to LASK only made the situation more uncomfortable.
For McGregor, this was not something that could simply be dismissed as one bad afternoon against Rangers.
Celtic have already experienced disappointment in another significant fixture, and their captain knows that eventually they have to demonstrate that they can deliver when the pressure is at its highest.
That is why he refused to shy away from the criticism.
“I’m not going to shy away from that because everyone’s going to be talking about it, let’s be fair. So if we want to be a good Celtic team we have to win the big games, that’s one thing we’ve always done is win big games and turned up when it mattered.
“So far this season we’ve been bitty in games and we need to fix it.”
That final sentence perhaps summed up the entire interview.
McGregor was not blaming one player.
He was not hiding behind bad luck.
And he was certainly not pretending that Celtic had simply been unlucky to lose 3-0.
Instead, the captain publicly acknowledged that something fundamental was missing.
Rangers had looked connected, aggressive and united.
Celtic had not.
Now O’Neill and his players have to find a solution quickly.
Because after an Old Firm defeat this damaging, McGregor’s words may ultimately be remembered just as much as the scoreline itself.
Nafisa
