The Champions League cloud that casts a long, dark shadow

More than a year on from one of their most embarrassing European exits, Celtic are struggling to escape from a groundhog day entirely of their own making.

Amid buzz phrases like “learning lessons” and “wake-up calls” following last weekend’s derby drubbing at Ibrox, an interesting yet awkward question emerges: have Celtic learned anything at all from last year’s costly mistakes?

Going out of the Champions League to Kairat Almaty cast a cloud over huge swathes of last season.

Celtic only emerged blinking into the sunshine in the final few minutes of the final game when Martin O’Neill completed the Premiership’s great escape. A success that seems merely to have papered over cracks.

Let’s wind the clock back to the end of August 2025. After a woeful performance in Almaty, Celtic were eliminated from European football’s top table by the champions of Kazakhstan. A catastrophic result that changed the course of the club’s recent history.

Within a couple of months domestic form dipped drastically, Brendan Rodgers resigned, majority shareholder Dermot Desmond let rip in the most public manner possible and the club gambled on Wilfried Nancy.

Fan protests were rife, discontent was widespread. O’Neill rode to the rescue not once but twice, delivering the most unlikely double.

Surely Celtic wouldn’t – couldn’t – make the same mistakes again?

And yet here they are. Another calamitous Champions League exit, another long portentous shadow. Another period of patchy recruitment in which the signing of players who can score goals is being undermined by a failure to sign (enough) players who can help keep the ball out at the other end.

Are Celtic stronger or weaker than last season? For the much-heralded arrivals of Camilo Duran, Kasper Hogh, Haissem Hassan and Mika Baur there have been the departures of Daizen Maeda, Arne Engels, Reo Hatate, Kelechi Iheanacho and Marcelo Saracchi. If Celtic are more enterprising, are they weaker at the core?

It certainly looked like it in the meek defeat to Rangers. The Champions League play-off with LASK threw up an astonishing statistic: Celtic conceded 60 shots across those two matches.

Celtic have made themselves far too easy to play against and cut through. Five times Dundee United rattled the woodwork earlier this season and still lost 4-0.

There is something lightweight and ineffectual about the current Celtic set-up: a gaping hole in midfield. Captain Callum McGregor says you can’t defend “with six players”. With Ferencvaros, Rangers, Motherwell and Benfica on the imminent horizon, Celtic simply cannot afford to carry any passengers.

Successive chronic failures to recruit comprehensively enough – early enough – has resulted in six successive failures to qualify for the Champions League.

The shadow it cast a year ago only dispersed fleetingly over the summer. It’s back, arguably darker and more foreboding than before. Twelve months ago, O’Neill was seen as the solution. We’re about to find out if he still is.