Celtic’s crisis deepens as O’Neill hunts answers before Old Firm reckoning

Two heavy defeats in five days have turned a promising start into an inquest at Parkhead. On Sunday, Rangers arrive with the chance to make matters considerably worse.

Celtic’s autumn is unravelling in public. A 3-0 thrashing at Ibrox ended their interest in the Premier Sports Cup, and Thursday night brought a 3-1 home defeat by Ferencvaros on the opening night of their Europa League league phase. Add the five goals shipped across the Champions League play-off with LASK, and the picture is of a squad that has mislaid its bearings at precisely the moment the fixtures harden.

Martin O’Neill’s post-match briefing did little to calm the support. He talked about frustration, about failure, about the psychological damage that nights like these inflict, and promised his players would pull themselves together before Rangers visit. What was missing was belief. The words arrived flat and tired, a manager reciting a script rather than sketching a rescue plan. For a man whose personality once dragged Celtic through the darkest weeks of a season, that was the most troubling detail of all.

A forward line that cannot hurt anybody

The attacking problems are the most obvious. Camilo Duran was handed the central role ahead of Kasper Hogh and returned only eight touches of the ball before half-time, a startling return for a striker operating exactly where he wants to be. Weeks ago he looked energised by his new life in Glasgow. Now he simply waits for the ball to arrive.

Hogh’s troubles run deeper. Signed from Bodo/Glimt for £11m on the back of goals against Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Porto and Olympiacos, he has scored once in eight outings for his new club and is beginning to resemble an awkward target man with a heavy first touch and nothing to feed on. O’Neill has not yet found a way to make either centre-forward look like a Celtic centre-forward.

Old certainties have gone

Behind them, the structure is leaking. Celtic dominated possession for long spells against Ferencvaros and still trailed at the break, conceding the sort of goal that poor sides concede: hesitation over a loose ball, a soft cross allowed in, then collective confusion. Callum McGregor, the captain who has carried this team for years, has admitted the dressing room feels damaged.

That is the wider anxiety. Under Ange Postecoglou, Celtic were aggressive, inventive and gloriously hard to subdue. This version is neither, and the tempo O’Neill restored last season has vanished. Daniel Arzani, a former Celtic player who barely registered in Glasgow, returning to score a fine counter-attacking goal for the visitors, felt like the perfect punchline.

Eight points, or another bruising afternoon

Liam Scales rejected any suggestion of a confidence crisis, arguing the players showed character to get back into Thursday’s game and that European football is a different examination entirely. He also pointed to individual errors in the biggest matches, his own included, as the recurring fault line.

The stakes at Celtic Park are unusually sharp. Victory would put Celtic eight points clear of Rangers at the top of the Premiership, in the final fixture before the international break. Defeat would hand their rivals a second Glasgow scalp inside a week.

Former Parkhead midfielder Scott Allan, speaking on the BBC’s Scottish Football Podcast, believes the opening goal will decide the mood, warning that a Rangers lead would quickly turn a nervous home crowd against its own team. He expects a narrow away win. O’Neill has had five days to prove him wrong.

With thanks to BBC Sport’s Tom English, whose analysis informs this piece: read the original.