Rangers 3-0 Celtic. Dan Neil twice, Kevin Kelsy once and, perhaps most damningly, just one Celtic shot on target across 90 minutes of a Glasgow Derby.
Martin O’Neill’s side went to Ibrox on the back of six consecutive league wins and with a place in the League Cup semi-final at stake. They left comprehensively beaten.
There was plenty wrong with it. Here are four things that stood out.
Celtic never dealt with Dan Neil
Once was bad enough. Allowing it to happen twice was worse.
Neil opened the scoring after 23 minutes when he collected Kelsy’s pass around the edge of the Celtic box. He had time to take a touch, get his head up and pick his spot without anybody getting close enough to stop him.
Then, on 75 minutes, Celtic allowed him to hurt them from a similar area again.
When a central midfielder scores twice from that sort of position, you have to look at what is happening in front of the defence. Celtic did not protect that area properly and, more worryingly, did not solve the problem after being punished for it the first time.
That has to concern O’Neill and his coaching staff.
One shot on target tells you almost everything
Rangers had 15 attempts and eight on target. Celtic managed seven attempts and troubled Ivor Pandur once.
Kasper Hogh had an opportunity after 12 minutes when Colby Donovan picked him out with a very good pass, but the striker lost his footing while attempting to bring the ball under control.
Camilo Duran eventually registered Celtic’s only effort on target, a tame attempt straight at Pandur.
It wasn’t as though Celtic spent the afternoon defending their own penalty area either. They had 47 per cent possession.
They simply did very little with it.
For all the ball Celtic had, there was precious little movement or imagination in the final third. Rangers looked far more likely to score whenever they got near the Celtic box.
O’Neill’s selection will be picked apart
Sebastian Tounekti and Duran started either side of Hogh, with James Forrest, Oliver Sorensen and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain among those left on the bench.
Tounekti and Duran are still relatively new to Scottish football and this was about as unforgiving an afternoon as Celtic could have asked them to negotiate.
No away support. Ibrox. A knockout tie.
Chris Sutton questioned one of O’Neill’s decisions before a ball was kicked and the eventual performance will inevitably bring more scrutiny.
More concerning was what happened when Celtic fell behind. The options from the bench never altered the direction of the game.
The six-game winning run cannot hide performances like this
Celtic had won six league matches on the bounce before Sunday and deserve credit for doing so.
But there is now another side to the early months of this season that cannot be ignored.
Celtic have been beaten 5-1 by LASK in Europe and have now gone to Ibrox for a knockout tie and lost 3-0.
Last season’s League Cup final defeat to St Mirren hurt. Going out at Ibrox, particularly on an afternoon when there wasn’t a single Celtic supporter inside the stadium, is another sore one.
The league form remains good. Nobody can take those six wins away.
But Celtic’s two biggest tests of the season so far have produced eight goals conceded and two damaging cup exits.
That is the part Martin O’Neill and his players need to address.
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