Simon Jordan has torn into Celtic’s performance against LASK and insisted it was a “cowardly” showing.

The Hoops were destroyed by their Austrian rivals in their Champions League playoff second-leg despite leading 4-0 on aggregate at one stage in the first-half. Callum McGregor found the net to give the visitors a false sense of security as LASK bulldozed their way back into the game before ultimately delivering the knockout blow in extra-time.

Jordan is adamant the tie should never have got that far with Celts failing in every aspect of their performance. Their big players hid and LASK seemed to find it easy to break through the backline and create constant problems.

And speaking on talkSPORT, Jordan filleted the Celtic performance, especially after the restart. “It was an appallingly cowardly performance. What really started the rot was an unforgiveable error from one of Celtic’s players which brought them back from the dead. Then to concede goals directly after half-time, you wonder what managers say at half-time that makes them so unresponsive and they go and concede.

“I thought it was a dreadful performance and all this nonsense about them getting lucky in the first-leg, I don’t hear that narrative being spun out when they won 3-0. All of a sudden, ‘They got lucky in the first leg, LASK did have a lot of shots on goal. Their expected xG was three. They didn’t score three, they scored zero.

“In this instance you look at the performance, Martin taking the blame… this is not about Martin O’Neill, it’s about the players on the field. They didn’t buy this player, they sold £36million worth of players and only bought in £32m. And the players off the bench didn’t look like they had the wherewithal.

“But it shouldn’t have got to the stage where it got to extra-time and playes coming off the bench looked lost. They were just cowardly, they were 4-0 up in a Champions League qualifier, the game done, they hand them back the initiative giving them one goal and they absolutely capitulated.”

Martin O’Neill accepted the blame for the performance after the action but in reality it was the players who put in a shoddy showing. Neither Kasper Hogh nor Camilo Duran really got a sniff of possession with the Scottish giants pinned back for most of the evening.

Substitute Luke McCowan surrendered possession a staggering 19 times and was at fault for Samuel Adeniran’s second goal which made it 4-1 and tied up the result before the late winner.

The midfielder was forced to deactivate his Instagram account following the result with social media awash with criticism of his performance as well as abuse directed towards the former Dundee man.

But the blame could hardly be left solely at McCowan’s door. Celtic were dreadful on the night and survived a penalty miss by Adeniran with Viljami Sinisalo pulling off a brilliant save to keep the score at 5-4.