“No belief, I think that they’ve bottled it, it’s not good enough,” Chris Sutton summed up the feelings of the Celtic support in the closing moments of the 3-0 defeat from Zenit St Petersburg.
The joy and hope that emerged from last week’s 1-0 win was quickly suffocated as Celtic froze on the big stage, putting in a display that seemed unthinkable a week ago.
Last week Celtic played with passion and belief, pressed the Russian’s into errors and got their reward late on.
Tonight within half an hour all of that hard work had been thrown away with Branislav Ivanovic virtually unmarked as he headed the opener while Dorus de Vries was badly at fault as Daler Kuzyaev fired in the second.
At that point the referee could have blown the final whistle, the tie was over with a timid Celtic side unable to hurt their hosts who knew that they were home and dry.
Miklael Lustig was at fault for the third goal with Aleksandr Kokorin racing in from behind to slide home the third goal just past the hour mark.
The stats will show that Celtic then managed a few shots on goal but like Sutton the fans had turned off with Europe over for the season with no sign of progress over 14 matches this season.
