Getting hammered 7-1 in the European Champions league is a bitter pill to swallow – getting out of your scratcher at 4:30am here in Brisbane to endure such a beating is, well, unpleasant to say the least…

If that’s a sight for sore eyes, it’s nothing compared to the game we just viewed. I ventured earlier in the week that if the real Celtic turned up to face the Yellow Wall, we might be in for a surprise.

Well, I was right, and wrong. We got our surprise all right, but not the one we were hoping for. We turned up in dribs and drabs and were brutally exposed at this level.

The football Celtic have played over the last few weeks has been Fantasy Football and had us all debating whether we could take this form into Europe; not a hope in hell.

The St Johnstone team we routed at the weekend is limited to say the least. They barely mustered four forays into Celtic’s box over a 90 minute period, and our ‘keeper had but one save of note to make.

Compare that to our game in Dortmund; a lovely goal fashioned out of a clever piece of skill, and then…nothing.

We were dismantled with the same cold efficiency as we did to the Saints, and there are two reasons for this.

The Celtic squad is valued at around the £100 million mark.

Dortmund players are worth just short of £500 million, yes, five times as much. Much like Celtic’s massive advantage over St Johnstone, and with the same outcome.

Dortmund play in the Bundesliga where they face-off against clubs such as Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Red Bull Leipzig and Union Berlin.

Celtic play against Aberdeen, Hearts, Motherwell and theRangers who are struggling to keep their heads above the choppy financial waters of the Scottish Premiership.

The gulf in class is staggering, and, Dortmund proved this. However…

IF Celtic had turned up and fought for the right to bring home the bacon, the result could have been different. We may well have lost, but not so brutally.

READ THIS…Sandman’s Definitive Ratings – Celtic at Rhinoland. Battered, humbled and slaughtered

History tells us that when we play against vastly superior teams we must firstly defend with our lives, and do our utmost not to lose.

We didn’t. We gave the ball away time and time again, and in vital areas of the pitch. Some say that Brendan Rodgers was ‘naive’ or ‘arrogant’ in thinking we could match the game-plan of the Germans by adopting our Scottish style of play. As a result, we left ourselves wide open, and allowed them to roast us from the midfield, and score at will.

With almost every mistake we made, they punished us. And, we made plenty. The only player who came out with his reputation intact was Kasper Schmeichel.

If not for the Great Dane, the scoreline would have been even more catastrophic than it was. Time and again his reflexes saved Celtic from an all-time low in Europe.

At this stage of the season and knowing how good we CAN be, this came as a shock. It seems to me that we bottled it when they came at us, and practically chucked it when the chips were down.

READ THIS…“Every single mistake that we made got punished,” Brendan Rodgers

That is not good enough, and we suffered badly as a result.

So, money and class told in the end, and now we go back to our bread and butter in Scotland versus Ross County up in Dingwall. Any idea how much they are worth? I’ll give you a clue; we should take the same amount of goals off them as we shed in Germany.

Reality tells me this; with the quality we have, we should win the domestic Treble in style. We have this in our locker, and there should be no excuses for not delivering ALL the silverware come May.

And…we should enjoy the occasional ‘Bratislava’ nights which will come our way. Celtic may cause a few shocks in Europe this year, but only if we learn to defend and hit better sides with Maeda/Kuhn/Kyogo rockets on the break. It would help if our midfielders turned up!

It’s gonna be a long, long season, so let’s face the reality of our prospects, both at home, and abroad, and let’s enjoy what’s to come. Hail Hail!

Eddie Murray