It was McGregor who opened the scoring on the night, a deflected shot and a 4-0 lead on aggregate.
LASK had started well but that goal looked to all the world like a kick to their solar plexus. They had chances in Glasgow and they had chances in the opening minutes in Linz – and they were 4-0 down!
How many punches can one team take before they lose their fight? Many, as it turned out.
Celtic were obliging, of course. Painfully so. We trumpeted their classy goals and their adventurous play a week ago and wrongly assumed that they had gumption to go with it. Big mistake. When Benjamin Nygren’s ridiculously loose pass led directly to LASK’s equaliser on the night, the first signs of a wobble were visible.
Thirty-two minutes had been played and Celtic didn’t look wholly comfortable at 4-1 on aggregate. Mad, but true. When they conceded again three minutes into the second half, there were a few jelly legs on show. Auston Trusty was culpable this time. Brushed off the ball. Swatted and 4-2 now.
Trusty was poor, not the only one, but a point of real weakness that LASK went for.
Ten minutes after the hosts scored their second, they scored their third. Too many parts of the Celtic team were in full fright mode now. The slow death was picking up pace.
Camilo Duran, the hero of the first leg, was reduced to a non-event. Kasper Hogh worked hard but with no impact. Passes went astray. Celtic were directionless. Everything fell apart. Rabbits in headlights don’t tend to look as lost as Celtic did when the pressure really hit.
If McGregor was trying to put out fires in his own team he was failing. He could not cut through the tension.
Martin O’Neill looked on like a man 10 years older than his true age. This was a shocking night for him. One of his worst in football, he said later. He took responsibility, but he can’t be alone in that.
He emptied his bench in a desperate attempt to stem the flow, but his substitutions, five in 12 befuddled minutes, had zero impact.
Celtic did not have a shot on target in the second half of normal time nor in extra-time. They only existed as a man hanging off a cliff edge exists. There was only one way this was going to end.
LASK’s fourth goal might have come in the 90th minute but it was deserved.
By that point they’d had 33 shots on Celtic’s goal (they finished on 40) to go with the 20 from last week. It was a rout.
Cameron Carter-Vickers was hobbling about on one leg. Hogh much the same. Forward came the waves and Celtic tried to hold them back with a back four of Anthony Ralston, Dane Murray, Trusty and Liam Scales.
The fifth goal was a mercy, and another Celtic player doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place. For Nygren and Trusty read Luke McCowan. Hapless and helpless – and out of the Champions League.
