Well, what a fine mess Celtic made of that. The board, chiefly, yes, but also the manager and the players, who cannot escape criticism for their dismal defeat to Kairat Almaty that ended their hopes of Champions League football.
The saying goes that success has many fathers while failure is an orphan, but when it comes to Celtic’s disastrous attempt to reach this season’s Champions League, there is plenty of blame to go around.
That being said, while the manager, in this case Brendan Rodgers, will deservedly take some flak, it is the board who are firmly in the crosshairs of the Celtic support.
Is this fair? Well, taken in isolation, this Celtic squad, for all its faults and glaring gaps, should be able to navigate a tie against the team currently sitting third in the Kazakhstan Premier League. The truly inept level of their performance, particularly from some of those who have cost the club many millions of pounds, cannot be ignored. The manager and the players must accept their part in this shambles.
The most frustrating part of this exit for Celtic fans and for their manager will surely be that it was all so avoidable. The reluctance to spend any significant money in this transfer window until after the two biggest matches of their season confounds logic.
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Celtic 0 Kairat Almaty 0: Board get both barrels as Celtic hopes hang in balance
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'Haven't a clue' - Rodgers' Celtic Champions League transfer admission
Anyone with a passing interest in the team knows they have long had a pressing need to replace Kyogo Furuhashi and Nicolas Kuhn, at the very least, and at a push, the injured Jota too. Without even denting the vast reserves of cash that Celtic have, recycling just a decent amount of the £27m they brought in for that pair alone into those positions would almost certainly have been enough to get a goal or two against Kairat, and guarantee the club another £40m in revenue.
Without that quality in those areas, a hugely limited but well organised side in Kairat were able to sit in, repel Celtic’s attacks with relative ease, and take their chances on penalties.
So, while the argument that Celtic should have had enough in their squad as it is to defeat the Kazakhs isn’t without merit, it also begs the question as to why the people charged with guiding the club wouldn’t want to make absolutely sure? Was a relatively modest outlay on a striker and a winger to all-but guarantee they got over the line too much to ask?
If, as some argue, the board are skittish after their sizeable investment in Adam Idah, Arne Engels and Auston Trusty last summer, then they are missing the point. You need a squad to compete at the top level and these players were all part of the one that performed so admirably in the Champions League last season, augmenting the team with some impressive performances – Idah against Young Boys and Aston Villa, Engels in Munich, Trusty against Atalanta, for example.
No matter how much they cost, and whether they were on the bench or not against Kairat Almaty, none of them would have been able to compensate for the loss of the attacking threat of Kuhn and Kyogo from that squad.
When you zoom out further and view the lamentable overall record of Celtic in these Champions League qualifiers, then it becomes clear that this is a failure of strategy. How does a club of such resource fail to come through the qualification process seven times from their last nine attempts? And in their last five in succession?
How do they lose to clubs like Maribor, Malmo, CFR Cluj, Ferencvaros, AEK Athens and Midtjylland, none of whom can come close to matching their turnover or level of support?
Complacency, at best? Arrogance, at worst? It seems there is not, in fact, a ‘world class’ culture embedded in the club after all, as chief executive Michael Nicholson once promised there would be, but one seeping from the boardroom down that just doing enough is acceptable. That it’s ok just to be a little bit better than your opponents, or your chief domestic rivals, in Rangers.
To go from the highs of their performance in the Allianz Arena in February to this embarrassing low can only be explained by gross negligence from on high. For all that Rodgers should and will take his portion of the blame for it, the same fate has befallen many a Celtic manager.
Nicholson infamously likes to keeps his counsel, but without a public acknowledgment of these strategic errors, the bubbling enmity towards the current chief executive will only grow. Much in the same way as it did towards Peter Lawwell before him, who still now as chairman inspires songs of derision from sections of the Celtic Park crowd.
Principal shareholder Dermot Desmond is the main man at the club, but he too is largely unaccountable. There is only one real chance of seeing him in Scotland this autumn, and it won’t be at the Celtic AGM, but at the Alfred Dunhill up at St Andrews.
What can angry fans really do, then? Vote with their feet? Stop buying the seemingly relentless stream of merchandise? Maybe that would grab the attention of the club's leadership. Then again, from their position of comfort, maybe not.
Celtic had a chance after the relative success of last season’s Champions League campaign to really push on, investing in the squad to give their manager the best possible chance of repeating the feat, or even taking the next step. Instead, the club’s hierarchy got the jitters, and they have regressed at an alarming rate.
Ironically, signings are now imminent, with the board’s long-standing policy of waiting until the last week of the window in the hope of shaving a million or two off transfer fees having cost them the chance to trouser another £40m.
Still, Rangers are a bit of a shambles currently under Russell Martin, and Celtic will probably win the league again, which seems to be enough for some.
And in 12 months or so, we’ll likely be having this conversation again.
