CELTIC couldn’t have chosen a worse time than last Tuesday to have a bad night at the office. When they needed their players to perform to make sure they got through to the group stage of the Champions League, they just never turned up. Despite a half-decent draw, the Europa League won’t feel like much consolation at this point.

Celtic, though, can’t blame anyone but themselves. In the two legs against Malmo they lost three goals due to players being blocked off at corners, which, ironically, is a tactic Ronny Deila tends to use a lot in league games. I know he prides himself on his set-pieces, so to be knocked out this way will hurt even more.

As a coach and assistant manager, if my team was to continually lose goals from corners then I would be looking within and blaming myself. That’s what managers do. After a defeat like that there’s always a long period of soul-searching where you go over things in your head and try to work out just what you could have done differently. As someone who obviously is very thorough in his work and in all his preparation, I’m sure Ronny will have agonised over it constantly. He probably can’t believe his team have lost goals in this manner given everything they have worked on.

He will shoulder a lot of the blame just as any other manager would in that situation but it can’t all be pinned on him. The truth is his players never performed and put in their worst display of the season on the most crucial night. Ronny has every right to feel let down by them.

His Champions League record, though, doesn’t look great as he has now been knocked out three times over two seasons in the qualifying rounds. That’s what people remember, regardless of whose fault it is. Most managers get judged towards the end of a season. Maybe if you have finished one campaign poorly and then struggle at the start of the next, then people might start to question you early on. But by and large, most managers get properly assessed at the end of a campaign.

With Celtic, though, it’s different. Their season hinges on whether they make the Champions League or not and so the manager is getting judged before August is even out. They got a second chance last year after Legia Warsaw were disqualified, only to lose out to Maribor. And now, with the team seemingly gelling and Ronny having settled into the job, they have come unstuck once more by losing to Malmo. Not being in the Champions League affects their whole season, with league games moved to a Sunday, on top of the financial repercussions and feeling of disappointment at missing out.

We saw last season, with the top tier at Parkhead being closed, that there just isn’t the same appetite for the Europa League. The standard of competition isn’t the same, although if they can reach the knockout stage then it starts to get more interesting.

For now, though, that won’t be much consolation when the Champ-ions League gets under way and Celtic are left out again.

The rest of us Premiership clubs suffer too, as we now only get £35,000 from the Uefa solidarity fund and not the £150,000 we would have received had they qualified. Can we turn around and blame Celtic for that now?

RANGERS have made a great start to the season under Mark Warburton and will put their record on the line again away to Queen of the South this afternoon. Without looking too far ahead, their League Cup tie against St Johnstone looks an interesting one as it will be a real chance to measure just how far they have come, although it is often forgotten that they did beat the Perth side, plus Inverness, on their way to the semi-finals last year.

It probably suits Rangers to have avoided Celtic at this point of the competition but I would say the gap between the two has definitely shrunk recently. Celtic, of course, are still miles ahead, but Rangers are starting to get their house in order on and off the park and there’s a freshness that is paying dividends so far. That’s all the Rangers fans have wanted to see over the past few years.