Martin O’Neill has acknowledged that his fragile Celtic side were handed a harsh European lesson and insists it falls to him to guide them towards improvement. The manager has also offered words of support to devastated youngster Callum Osmand, who was stretchered off during only his third senior appearance with a serious hamstring problem.
The Parkhead outfit were torn apart during a ruthless seven-minute first-half period by Midtjylland. O’Neill concedes the first-half collapse was as much a question of mindset as quality and provided a stark illustration of the substantial work required to restore Celtic’s competitiveness on the European stage. When questioned whether the Danish hammering served as a wake-up call regarding Celtic’s European standing, he responded: “Of course. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more.
“European football is where this club, because of the great Jock Stein has based a priority. But tonight there, it can show you, the very obvious thing is we have to improve. That’s a big lesson for us, to know what it takes to be a really decent European team.
“You’ve got to hang in. Until you get regrouped, whatever you do, don’t concede a second goal. I think just to play football at the top level, not only do you need ability, but you need mentality. And mentality sometimes overrides ability as well, too.
“I’ve seen this game where players with lesser talent but more drive and more determination come through and players who have the talent but don’t have that mentality fall by the wayside.”
Making matters worse, Osmand’s devastating injury proved a cruel blow for the teenager, who had only been drafted into the Europa League squad at the last minute.
Arne Engels had already limped off before the youngster departed in anguish just five days after his Hampden heroics against Rangers.
O’Neill said: “He’s very young, it’s never happened to him before, so he was distraught because he was just trying to get his career going.
“But, if everything works out well, he’ll recover from that and then start again. And that’s what I’ve said to him, listen, you were starting to get going, this is just a setback for you. It’s not terminal, in that sense, and you can fight back.
“You’ll be out for X number of weeks now and it is a shame because he was trying to make an impression, but that’s it.”
Nobody can predict how long O’Neill will remain in charge, but he’s determined to get his messages across, stating: “Do you know what? It sounds from here as if I’m like a teacher telling them. But I will try and teach them the game as quickly as possible.
“Things that they may already know, maybe need reminding. That’s my job to try and improve the football club.
“It was really tough. In the game for half an hour, then we concede two goals within a minute or 90 seconds of each other and the game goes away from you very, very quickly. They score a third and it’s a long way back.
“Disappointing, but I thought that we showed a character in the second half that we could have gone under, it could have been any sort of score.
“On reflection, I thought that Sunday [against Rangers] definitely, in terms of emotion of the game, took a lot out of us, I thought that we became a bit leggy and the irony of it all is that we fought back in the second half, where you’d have thought that’s where we might have gone under.”
O’Neill was highly critical of the defensive display during the first half, with Anthony Ralston enduring a nightmare against the opposition winger for the opening two goals, receiving little support from his teammates.
He added: “I’ve just said to the players in there, some things change in the game, other things don’t change.
“And once a player starts to take you on, or let’s say a winger takes you on at full-back, you’ve got to stop him from getting into the penalty area and you have to engage him before he gets there because then he’s as safe as anything.
“Then you might put your foot in, you could give away a penalty. Attackers, one v ones, they want to get into that penalty area as quickly as possible.
“So we didn’t do that very well. Then in the second goal, we had a two v two situation and we allowed the player just to come inside and bend it into the net. So from our viewpoint, not good defending, really.”