MARTIN O’Neill has long been one of the most entertaining and astute football pundits on television so it was, as the Americans would say, a bit of a no brainer for Amazon Prime to draft him in to contribute to their coverage of Celtic against Kairat in Kazakhstan tonight.
However, the Northern Irishman was particularly well placed to give an expert opinion on the second leg of the Champions League play-off double header in Almaty having been through the same ordeal on more than one occasion himself during his time as a manager at Parkhead.
O’Neill experienced the sheer elation of an emphatic victory over Dutch giants Ajax in the final stage of qualifying for Europe’s elite club competition in 2001 and suffered the crushing despair of a heartbreaking loss to Swiss rivals Basel the following year.
He confessed that the nerve-shredding, nail-biting, stomach-churning occasion had momentarily transported him to the Amsterdam ArenA and St Jakob-Park as he chatted his former player Stiliyan Petrov and presenter Gabby Logan in the studio during the build-up.
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“It brings me back to these evenings, when you are thinking about trying to get through,” he said. “The money is the furthest thing from the mind of Brendan Rodgers, he is just thinking about getting through the tie.
“I bet he is thinking back to Munich last season when they nearly made the last 16. Now he is in a qualifying game 3,500 miles away from home, trying to make it into the league phase. It is really difficult.”
There was, however, a huge difference when Celtic took to the field with a lucrative place in the Champions League group stages on the line during O’Neill’s memorable five year tenure. He had exceptional strikers like John Hartson, Henrik Larsson and Chris Sutton at his disposal. At no stage did he need to play wingers Bobby Petta or Steve Guppy out of position up front.
Would the Scottish champions have missed out on the league phase after 180 minutes of football, extra-time and penalties if they had had a specialist central forward leading the line for them? It is doubtful.
The failure to adequately replace Kyogo Furuhashi, who was sold to Rennes in France for £10m back in January, or Nicolas Kuhn, who departed from Como in Italy for £17m last month, has dismayed Rodgers.
For them, their great club should not be going into the Champions League play-off games with a winger like Daizen Maeda in attack. There are tens of millions of pounds at stake at this stage in the competition for goodness sake! Could the board not speculate to accumulate a little? They have a few bob in the bank after all.
That Arne Engels and Adam Idah, a duo who cost a combined £20m combined last summer, came off the bench in the second half will have done nothing to quell the unrest which exists among the Celtic fanbase at the moment. Nor will the imminent arrival of Michel-Ange Balikwisha or Uruguayan full-back Marcelo Saracchi. Too little too late.
Maeda is adored by his club’s support. The PFA Scotland and SFWA Player of the Year is a force of nature. He runs from kick-off to the final whistle whenever he dons a green and white hooped jersey and has netted some important goals for them in big games during his three-and-a-half years in this country.
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However, he is not a natural finisher. He lacks the composure, technique and ruthlessness of his compatriot Furuhashi in the final third. That showed and then some against Kairat. He was one-on-one with the keeper in injury-time in the first leg and in the second half tonight. He failed to convert either opportunity.
His team mates were not a great deal better. The visitors bossed the extra half an hour and carved out a raft of opportunities. They failed to capitalise on them. There was a cruel irony when Maeda, after Idah and Luke McCowan had seen their poor spot kicks saved during the shootout, failed to bury his attempt from 12 yards and gifted the underdogs the triumph.
Celtic have brought in no fewer than eight players, including forward Shin Yamada, since their Scottish Cup loss to Aberdeen at Hampden in May. Two of those new recruits, Kieran Tierney and Benjamin Nygren, started in Almaty. But should they have had far greater firepower? They should. Should they have posed a greater threat down the flanks as well? They should.
It is worth pointing out that the largesse of the O’Neill era came at a cost. The Glasgow giants operated at a substantial annual loss when big earners like Hartson, Larsson and Sutton were in their squad. Including when they went all the way to the UEFA Cup final in 2003.
That said, could they not have done more, much more, to get in like-for-like replacements for Furuhashi and Kuhn? They could. They paid a price for their parsimony last night. To date, they have spent less than £4m. That has cost them £20m.
They will still face some big clubs in the Europa League league phase – Roma, Porto, Feyenoord, Lille, Real Betis, Red Bull Salzburg, Aston Villa, Lyon, Bologna, Nottingham Forest, VfB Stuttgart await among others. They will have to play far, far better to progress to the knockout rounds.
Still, a club like Celtic should aspire, despite the widening financial gulf between Scottish football and the continent’s major nations, to compete at the very top. They showed they can do so last term. This failure is a major blow. Some will argue the reasons for it are inexcusable.
What will it mean for Rodgers’ future? He is entering the final year of his contract and has stated that he needs to see evidence that the hierarchy have the same ambition as him before he agrees to stay. Failing to make the Champions League proper is a retrograde step. He will, privately if not publicly, not be happy about the lack of resources which have been spent to help him achieve his objective and may feel, as O’Neill ultimately did, he needs to move on.
