Celtic's Champions League Setback: O'Neill Reflects on Disappointment

Martin O'Neill did not try to dress it up. Missing the Champions League league phase for a second straight year, he admitted, is a hammer blow – not just to pride, but to Celtic’s pulling power in the transfer market.

He knows exactly what that means.

"We know we are a million miles away from the finished article; that's absolutely true," he said, still processing a night that unravelled badly. "We thought that anyway, regardless. But we felt that if we qualified for the Champions League, there would be players that would be wanting to come on that very basis. That's not going to be the case. But we'll see."

The brutal reality of LASK’s dominance left no room for argument. Forty attempts on goal. An expected goals tally of 4.8. Ten big chances carved out. Celtic, by comparison, barely laid a glove: eight shots across 120 minutes, worth just 0.5 xG. In a tie of this magnitude, that gulf is not a statistic. It is an indictment.

O'Neill had praised his side’s display in the first leg, and he clung to that as proof there is at least a base to build from.

"When I see that we're short – and maybe talking about a million miles away – we played brilliantly the other night, brilliantly in the game; they [LASK] were a fine side too, scored some brilliant goals. And we came up well and truly short – particularly in the second half."

That second half will linger. The legs went, the structure went, and with it went Celtic’s Champions League dream for another year. The Austrians grew stronger, more confident, wave after wave piling forward. Celtic shrank.

O'Neill did not look for excuses. He stepped into the line of fire.

"I'm responsible for this one. Without a doubt," he said. "Naturally, it took me a long time to get over the UEFA Cup final in 2003, but this was majorly disappointing. In the context of things, one was a final which it would have been terrific to win; this was a qualifying game which we should have been able to get through."

That is the sting. This was not a glorious failure on a showpiece stage. It was a tie Celtic expected to survive, a gateway to the money, status and attraction that come with the Champions League.

Now, with that door slammed shut again, O'Neill faces a harsher market, a thinner talent pool willing to join, and a squad he openly admits is "a million miles" from where it needs to be.