Martin O'Neill Mistake Blamed for Celtic Collapse vs LASK

Last night was unacceptable. There is no other way to put it. Celtic had a 4-0 lead on aggregate with less than an hour to play. And somehow, they lost the tie 5-4.

Admittedly, LASK are not nearly as weak as the first leg's 3-0 scoreline had suggested. I had pointed that out time and again leading up to this game. They had had their fair share of chances and simply could not finish.

Even then, when Celtic took the 1-0 lead away in Austria, that should have been that. Yet, the Hoops found a way to make a complete mess of it.

Firstly, it was a misplaced pass right in front of their own goal that gifted LASK their opener. And after that, it felt like an exercise in bad game management on the part of Celtic.

By the time the 120 minutes ended and LASK won 5-1 to go through 5-4 on aggregate, Celtic had only themselves to blame. But was a Martin O'Neill error behind all of this?

With a manager as experienced as O'Neill in the dugout, one would have expected Celtic to see this game out. And yet, they could not.

Shay Given said on Premier Sports' coverage of the game:

"You're inviting them on. You concede a goal at the start of the second half and you keep trying to play out. I'm surprised that Martin he didn't go, 'Wait, hang on a minute lads, the crowd's up, the pressure's coming heavily onto us. Let's just knock it up to Hogh, get some bodies around him, play it a bit ugly at times, be more compact.'

"Get back into the game. What it done, they scored again in the 58th minute and the crowd were just, It's difficult to stop that, we've seen that before on European nights as well. With Celtic, it seems to be a bit of a hoodoo trying to get through the qualifying stage."

One cannot really argue with that. Once again, it comes down to game management, which has been a weakness for Celtic in these situations.

It almost feels like they are not only playing the opposition but also while carrying the weight of their past failures to go through.

This should have been routine after going 4-0 up. Instead, they made it difficult on themselves and gave LASK reason to believe and somehow conceded five goals on the night.

O'Neill deserves his fair share of blame for this. And he did not shy away from that after the game either.

That being said, many fingers will be pointed towards the management as well. Once again, the recruitment might not have been good enough.

Kasper Hogh, barring his hattrick, has not looked good in any of his outings. Camilo Duran has a bit of quality for sure but is being played out of position to accommodate the record signing.

That also means that Haissem Hassan finds himself on the bench. And while Mika Baur looks like a steady presence in midfield, he will not win you a game of football.

Now, the result of missing out on the Champions League is that it will affect the transfer business Celtic will do over the last week of the summer transfer window.

And this is now starting to feel like a never-ending cycle. At some point, the investment needs to be made before the Champions League play-off.

It is not just down to the quality either. By the manner in which they lost last night, one has to question the mentality of this team and why they always find ways to get knocked out of the Champions League qualifiers. The last time that Hoops went through was in 2017.

What do you think went wrong last night? Let us know in the comments.