“The better the tifo the worse the display,” seems to be line from last night that’s stuck in my head this morning. The Green Brigade’s outstanding tribute to Ange Postecoglou, perhaps with a cute node to James Connolly, was outstanding and maybe we should have feared the worst at that stage.

While Celtic have been competing at a high intensity in Scottish football since returning from our winter break, the Norwegian Champions had been based in Spain watching our matches, picking our game apart and working out how they were going to play at Celtic Park. The “two engines” were never allowed to get into gear, Callum McGregor was swarmed as soon as he got possession, the Celtic weakness at left back was identified and exploited and they took their chances when they came.

The played the away European game like past-masters, they even had an in match huddle after Celtic scored late in the game, with the referee taking no action and it worked perfectly because they scored their third within seconds thanks to a wicked deflection from Callum McGregor, or perhaps Cameron Carter-Vickers.

Sandman covers the individual performances of the players in his unmissable and Definitive Ratings – see below – yet it’s worth mentioning how poor a show that was from so many of the players last night most notably Taylor, Rogic, Abada and Jota.

READ THIS…Sandman’s Definitive Ratings – Celtic v Internet Password

This result and the frankly astonishing score in Dortmund last night can have implications for the Scottish Premiership title race. Since the turn of the year all momentum has been with Celtic who were unbeaten in all competitions and had overturned a six point deficit to top the table by a single point. The 3-0 win over theRangers knocked the stuffing out of them but make no mistake their tails will be up now.

And Celtic have to pick ourselves up, lose no confidence as a result of that dreadful result and performance and make sure we keep picking up three points. Dundee at Celtic Park becomes the most important game of the season now and the support will have a part to play in roaring the team on.  Then we head into the unknown, a plastic park in the Arctic Circle  – can it be any worse than West Lothian’s version.

After the second leg against Bodo/Glimt there are three league games in a week, a midweek home match against St Mirren sandwiched in between two dangerous away challenges against Hibs and Livingston (who we have already dropped  5 points from 6 already this season).

It’s Dundee United in the Scottish Cup after that, then a home game in the league against Ross County before we go to Ibrox.

What happened last night threatens the Celtic momentum and also re-ignites theRangers belief. We must do all we can to help the team, especially over the next few games.  Ange Postecoglou isn’t giving up on the Europa Conference League after last night’s 3-1 defeat at Celtic Park.

“It’s not over. It’s half-time,” a defiant Celtic Manager said last night to Celtic TV. “I don’t think anyone will think we are just going over there to play 90 minutes.

“It was a disappointing night for a number of reasons but that’s part of football. We will dust ourselves off and go again. It’s still an opportunity. From our perspective it’s about going there and playing our football. When we’ve done that we are a hard team to knock off. It’s half time, we are 3-1 down and we’ll see what happens.

“It was a disappointing night and we didn’t get the result we wanted. The performance was okay. We controlled the game but got caught on the counter a couple of times and they scored from that. That made us a bit vulnerable going forward but we had some chances and probably weren’t clinical enough.

“We should have worn them down in the game. But we conceded a second and that gave them the opportunity to sit back and hit us on the counter attack. We had some chances but I thought we didn’t have enough variety in our front third.

“It’s all part of football and part of our evolution.”

Callum McGregor also spoke to Celtic TV after the defeat rueing the loss of that third goal so soon after Maeda’ header got Celtic back into the game.  “If the game finishes 2-1 then you’ve got a real good chance. That’s the naivety we’ve got at this level in terms of being a new group,” the Celtic captain noted.

“So, we’ve got to learn from that. We’ll do the analysis and learn that you’ve always got to switch on, especially when you score. That’s probably when you’re at your most vulnerable.

“It is always difficult when you go a goal behind so early in the game. That gives you a mountain to climb. But I still felt we had enough in the game and had some good situations around their box.

“It was just that last wee bit of quality that was probably missing. Even when we got the goal, you would think that maybe gives us the ascendancy. But then we conceded straight away and that sort of kills us again. For me, there was enough in the game that suggests we can go over there and turn it around. We need to stay positive and stay calm and look to do that.

Here are last night’s ‘highlights’…