By Amy Canavan, BBC Sport Scotland
On Thursday in Herning, Martin O’Neill cut an exasperated figure as Celtic were put through a harsh lesson by Europa League leaders Midtjylland.
The interim manager, who had briefly lifted spirits after Sunday’s League Cup semi-final win over Rangers, watched three first-half goals in eight blistering minutes leave his side gasping. Although the final margin was two, O’Neill conceded it “could have been any sort of score.”
Midtjylland’s attack was clinical: nine shots on target and six more off target, while Celtic rarely made the visitors work for their goals. The 19-year-old Mikel Kruger-Johnsen netted a composed second after a smart clipped finish for the opener; the second was the product of too much space and the third arrived from a failure to clear a throw-in.
O’Neill was blunt about the basic defensive failings.
“The goals that we conceded weren’t good,” he said. “Once a winger takes you on at full-back, you’ve got to stop him from getting into the penalty area. You have to engage him before he gets there… Then in the second goal, we had a 2v2 situation, and we allowed the player just to come inside and bend it into the net. So from our viewpoint, not good defending, really.”
He framed his role in simple terms: having returned to steady a troubled dressing room, he sees himself as a teacher who must remind players of fundamentals quickly. “Things that they may already know, may need reminding, maybe they don’t know, and it’s my job to try and improve the football club,” he said. “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.”
The defeat was a sharp reality check for a club that had briefly enjoyed a feelgood buzz around O’Neill’s comeback. The positives of the weekend — and even jokes about the manager’s matchday fitness after extra time — faded as old problems resurfaced.
Captain Callum McGregor, who scored in extra time on Sunday, warned that one good result hadn’t fixed anything. “Nothing’s been solved after a really good game at the weekend,” he said. “We know that we don’t get too up or too down. We come away here against a really good side… There’s a lot of growth still left in our team as well. We know where we are and we know where we want to get to.”
The task ahead is considerable. While O’Neill and assistant Shaun Maloney have brought experience and a temporary lift, the underlying issues — defensive lapses, consistency and mentality — remain. On a sobering night it is not just the interim manager or the players who will face scrutiny; the club’s board, which briefly quietened critics by reinstating O’Neill, will again feel the heat as supporters demand longer-term answers.
