5th September 2026; The Marbill Coaches Stadium, Paisley, Scotland; Scottish Premiership Football, St Mirren versus Celtic; Celtic assistant manager Shaun Maloney
Shaun Maloney has delivered a blistering assessment of Celtic’s multiple failings in Europe.
To a neutral his comments seems very close to the anger being expressed by fans on social media, websites and podcasts.
There is nothing over the top in what the Celtic Assistant Manager has to say. He was part of the last Celtic squad that won a UEFA knock-out tie- 22 years ago.
David Marshall and John Kennedy were the youthful heroes away to Barcelona. O’Neill was the manager.
Since then successive managers have failed across three UEFA competitions.
In that time two Scottish clubs have reached UEFA finals. Even Barry Ferguson has a knock-out win on his CV alongside his failings at Clyde, Kelty Hearts and Alloa Athletic.
At the 2025 Celtic AGM Ross Desmond warned of the dangers of swinging and missing in Europe.
Club Brugge, Bodo Glimt and Sabah are currently ignoring that as they revel in the Champions League.
It is clear that the Celtic Assistant Manager wants some of the same with The Sun reporting Maloney saying:
It’s difficult for me to say we are close after being beaten by Benfica and Ferencvaros.
As a team, we have a lot of work to do to beat Celta Vigo.
There have been teams without the biggest budgets who have shown they can have deep runs in Europe. That should be what we’re aspiring to do.
To do that we have to get everything right — as coaches, recruitment, all departments of the club have to be bang on to get those runs.
We’re not there now but that is what we should aspire to.
Even with our budget in terms of the European stage, we should be trying to get as far in European competition as we possibly can.
Recently clubs with a similar budget to us have done it, so that has to be our motivation.
MALONEY KNOWS THE ASPIRATIONS AND AMBITIONS OF THE CELTIC SUPPORT
Those comments are very familiar to fans engaged in social media and websites.
Maloney stopped just short of highlighting six successive failures to reach the group stage of the Champions League against unseeded opponents.
The names of Maribor, Malmo, AEK Athens, Cluj, Ferncvaros, Midtjylland, Kairat Almaty and LASK Linz have a special meaning to Celtic supporters.
Just two seasons ago Celtic were on the verge of beating RB Leipzig 3-1. An outstanding performance and well deserved result.
In Celtic’s last 10 Europa League matches they have picked up 11 points.
The decline has been stark with no acknowledgement from inside the club. Bland phrases are thrown around that carry no meaning or back up.
Maloney knows that Celtic should be doing far better in Europe.
It wasn’t planned for the Assistant Manager to be on media duties yesterday- his comments won’t be welcomed among Ross Desmond’s Celtic circle.
