Frightened and ashamed- the view from within
Celtic supporters were much more scathing, no area of the club escaped criticism as the champions of Sweden comfortably took Celtic apart to reach the group stage of the Champions League.
Despite the vast gulf in finances between the two clubs Malmo are a club punching above their weight, a club on the up. Celtic aren’t.
Friday’s Europa League draw will be a sobering experience, not even the slickest advertising campaign will be able to stoke up interest in Thursday night action from a team that have underperformed for three seasons running.
“It is quite simply not even close to the level we can be at,” Deila claimed straight after the final whistle. “We looked very uncomfortable on the ball, we didn’t want the ball.
“We looked very frightened and scared and that is very disappointing. We did it as a team, not as individuals.
“It was a team performance not at the level we can expect at this level. I am a part of that, I am leader of this team. That is my responsibility and I am very disappointed.
“We have to learn from this, evaluate this and get stronger but it is a difficult lesson. Malmo deserved to go through.
“There is a lot of talk in Scotland about Celtic and the Champions League and that makes the games even bigger and it seemed like we didn’t cope with that pressure.”
Equally scathing was the assessment of Scott Brown: “I’m ashamed of the performance from all over the park. From the way defended to the way we attacked it wasn’t like us at all.
“We’ve got to put our hands up. We have high expectations at this club and we need to try to deal with it. It’s a lot of pressure on us but we should have been a lot better than that today.
“The performance wasn’t there. We didn’t look we were going to score a goal and looked like we’d concede a few.”
The aftermath starts this morning with supporters looking very closely to see if lessons are being learned from the failures in Europe over the last three seasons.
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