It’s becoming clear that the lesson in Linz brought the wheels off Celtic’s season, we’ve never really recovered from it

Something happened to Celtic’s season last August in Austria.

That fateful night in Linz, I think, has played a big part in where we find ourselves today.

After it happened, many of us said we’d be dealing with the repercussions of it for some time to come.

I’m not sure we actually realised at the time how much damage it did, and would continue to do.

The psychological trauma caused by a night like that is hard to quantify.

So, how do you quantify it?

Well, you need to examine it forensically to understand fully what it’s repercussions were.

We went to Linz brimming with confidence.

The season couldn’t have started any better, and the previous Wednesday night against LASK could not have gone any better either.

Martin O’Neill’s magic touch as a coach was getting stronger by the game.

Celtic might have been playing openly and expansively, but we were scoring goals for fun

13 goals had been scored in 4 games before we headed to Linz.

This flawless run came to a dramatic halt during the return leg at the Raiffeisen Arena.

This is a big part of the reason we have folded like a pack of cards since that awful night.

You see, it’s extremely hard to recover from something as psychologically damaging as that.

When we went 4-0 up on the night in Linz, you could see an air of resignation settling over the LASK players.

They began to psychologically accept there was no way back for them once the 4th goal went in.

All we had to do was see the remainder of the tie out and not do anything foolish.

But this is Celtic we’re talking about, and foolish and Champions League failures go hand in hand.

The damage that previous CL failures have caused seems to have cursed us.

But LASK was the worst of them all.

It shattered all illusions of a Celtic team that was going places

When Benjamin Nygren made that lax back pass, which was picked up by Moses Usor, our fate was sealed.

I’m not going to go into the whole game again.

We’ve been dragged over those coals too many times already.

The fact is, we’re still get dragged over them, again and again.

Every game we play now, we’re getting dragged over them, because every game now seems like a deja vu of what happened in Austria.

Every team that comes up against it can see how much it rattled us.

How much it knocked our confidence.

Football is a ruthless game, and when you’re down, people have no qualms about kicking you.

That’s nature of the beast.

Because of our stature in the Scottish game, people will queue up to kick us while we’re down

Especially our arch rivals.

In fact, it’s not good enough to kick us while we’re down, we have to listen to their supremacist shite on top of it too.

I’ve been getting my fair share of it over the past few days.

Tarrier, bead rattler, nonce rat, bog trotter, potato muncher, you name it.

They just cannot show any class in victory, can they?

Below is just an example of some of their shite, there’s a hell of a lot more where that came from:

My apologies, I’ve gone a bit off the beaten track here.

Back to the psychology of LASK rather than our rivals’ fanbase psychosis

In truth, LASK is the reason we are where are right now.

That much cannot be denied.

Because just imagine if we’d won that tie, and we were now safely qualified and playing in the Champions League?

Our psychological state would be a hell of a lot different.

We would be playing with the swagger and belief that comes with being at football’s top table.

Instead, now we are like a boxer who was beaten until he was punch drunk, and we’re struggling to get back in the ring due to the fear of copping another hiding.

It doesn’t matter what Martin O’Neill does now.

Because he looked lost on the touchline in Linz, he lost the faith of the players that night too.

And it shows.

He looked lost again yesterday, and in our two previous games

When your manager looks lost, then he’s going to lose the players and the dressing room too.

This has already happened.

The players have no faith in the system.

In fact, it seems at this point, most of the time they don’t even know what system they’re supposed to be playing.

That’s why there is no returning to this role for Martin O’Neill.

Because if he comes back, the players are still going to be lost to him.

The trust is gone.

As a result of what has unfolded over the last few weeks, they now see him as a 74 old pensioner who waffles a lot, makes ageist jokes in an attempt to poke fun at himself, and looks lost on the touchline.

Martin knows that’s the way they see him now too.

That’s why he’s going to consider his future over the next few days while on holiday with his wife

That in a nutshell, is the psychology of a loss as damaging as the one in Linz.

The ripple effect of that is what we’ve seen over the last seven days.

Because LASK got in our faces and mentally scarred us, any other side that does that causes us to have PTSD.

That’s why we’ve wilted in our last three fixtures.

It’s also why we now all know and understand why Martin O’Neill must call time on this too.

He knows he has to as well.

Unlike the charlatans in the boardroom, I trust that Martin will put Celtic first.

Because he loves Celtic the club, not Celtic the business, and how it can benefit him financially.

LASK will forever be his low point at Celtic, but it will not define his time at the club.

He has done too many good things at the club.

And they, ultimately, will be the things he’s remembered for.

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