Gerrard nailing Europe lays bare Celtic’s neglect
FULFILLING expectations in Europe, becoming a presence in that arena again and using the finances raised to drive further change, was a central focus of the negotiations that led to Steven Gerrard taking over the manager’s role at Rangers.
At the same time, even punching your weight against foreign opposition was already well on the way to becoming less and less of a consideration at Celtic. Brendan Rodgers was still the benevolent messiah, stopping traffic in the Clyde Tunnel, planning to end sectarianism by handing out scented candles at Parkhead Cross and making the infirm walk again.
He was also winning football games. It’s just that the splendour of his healing light – or was it just the sparkle of those resplendent chompers? – seemed to blind everyone around the club to the fact that almost none of them came in UEFA competitions.
Sure, he’d made it into the Champions League, as you would expect, for a second season, but a spiralling £50million-plus wage bill couldn’t stop Paris Saint-Germain from scoring 12 goals in two games against his porous team.
When they scraped into the Europa League despite losing their last group game at home to Anderlecht, it all ended in rather sorry fashion with a hammering at Zenit.
Yet, no one seemed to mind much. Even though it no doubt gave the directors a little bit of a jolt, it wasn’t even that big a deal to the fanbase when some mud was flung at the boardroom on the eve of a disastrous Champions League qualifier against a dreadful AEK Athens the following season, and kicked off the now-proud tradition of being humiliated by all sorts of dross from all corners of the continent before it’s even time to begin looking out a warmer jacket for autumn.
Brendan was here for Ten In A Row, wasn’t he? That was all that mattered. Until he wasn’t.
From then on, it has been downhill all the way.
At speed.
Neil Lennon – the opaque nature of his departure from Hibs still making those at the head of the SNP look like sticklers for transparency – gave a flavour of what lay ahead last term with a collapse at home in that 4-3 basketball match with Cluj and capitulation to Copenhagen.
As did chairman Ian Bankier. In his ludicrous video shown at the last AGM, he somehow gave the impression that campaign had actually been quite successful. ‘We started very strongly, we qualified for Euro,’ he simpered.
Well, if blowing the Champions League for the umpteenth time to some two-bit mob from Romania and scraping into UEFA’s consolation cup is looked upon as starting ‘strongly’, maybe what unfolded this term against Ferencvaros and the remnants of a Sparta Prague dressing-room riddled with Covid-19 shouldn’t have been such a surprise.
That it took the best part of another four months for Lennon to finally step down after that 4-1 pasting at home in the Europa League from a Czech team’s reserves shows how low Celtic really have fallen.
Despite the existence of a Champions Path that should ease them into the moneypit of the Champions League group stage pretty much every year, the Parkhead outfit have failed to qualify five times out of seven. The club hasn’t won a knockout tie in Europe in 17 years.
They have become an irrelevance. Cannon fodder for no-marks. Yet, Lennon (pictured), whose second spell in charge started with talk of returning to the last 16 of the Champions League, discounted all that when attempting to describe this season as nowhere near as bad as painted.
It was all about domestic success and Quadruple Trebles as the board sat back and let things trundle on beyond the point of no return.
And that’s exactly where Celtic got to. So busy patting themselves on the back for years of blowing away impoverished Scottish teams along with a dysfunctional Rangers that wider ambition no longer mattered.
It maybe shouldn’t have come as such a shock, on reflection, that those conditioned to accept their position as losers in Europe while feted at home should now have become losers on the domestic front, too.
No one could have predicted that Celtic would implode so spectacularly this season, the most important in their modern history, but it is interesting to contrast their more insular attitude and the brushing-off of repeated failure abroad with the reset that came when Rangers jettisoned Pedro Caixinha and started looking for a serious figure unlikely to be found shouting at passers-by from a Luxembourg bush.
Shortly after Caixinha’s removal, then-chairman Dave King used the club’s AGM to make it clear achieving in future UEFA competition was non-negotiable.
Indeed, it was central to the business plan.
‘The club and company will only be self-sustaining when we’re consistently successful in Europe,’ he stated. It seemed pie-in-the-sky stuff. Certainly, a questionable strategy upon which to be staking their financial future.
Yet, prudent or not, it set something in motion. It made it clear Europe had to be a central plank of Gerrard’s reign. That competing for domestic honours had to be part of a symbiotic relationship with rebuilding a reputation in foreign fields.
‘Qualification for the group stage of the Europa League was just part of the chat when I first discussed the job with the board,’ said the former Liverpool captain. ‘It was one of the challenges that the board set myself and the players.’
Sure, there have been times where it didn’t look like Gerrard would make it to this point. None more so than a year ago in the wake of a Scottish Cup surrender to Hearts.
Lockdown got him off the hook. Yet, there was also something about his ability to get Rangers consistently exceeding expectations in Europe that made it difficult to discount him completely.
Wins over Porto, Feyenoord and Braga don’t come from nowhere. The last 16 of the Europa League was some achievement for a team that couldn’t string a run of wins together in the SPFL.
Twelve months on, everything has clicked. The faith in Gerrard has been justified. Galatasaray now reside on the list of scalps. Benfica couldn’t beat Rangers in two attempts.
The Premiership title is in the bag and the quarter-finals of the Europa League, at least, are within grasp ahead of a last-16 meeting with Slavia Prague. Everything points to Rangers being in the Champions League proper next term. Europe has made Gerrard a better coach. His players have also improved thanks to the rigours of staying competitive against higher-class opposition. They have all had to respond to the pressure put on them internally to succeed in that environment.
‘For this club to function in a healthy way, we need to be successful in qualifying for European competitions,’ explained Gerrard earlier this season.
Celtic, full of hubris, lost all sight of that and regressed. As they rebuild, they cannot make the same mistake again. Even when digging new foundations, you should always have one eye on the stars.
Gerrard’s eventual success across Glasgow offers them the most painful reminder of that.
‘CELTIC HAVE NOT WON A KNOCKOUT TIE IN EUROPE IN 17 YEARS’