MARTIN O’NEILL was transfixed on the Ibrox touchline as he watched his Celtic team being dismantled in the Premier Sports League Cup quarter-final.
The feeble Hoops, who failed to respond to the vigour of Derek McInnes’ team, were humiliated 3-0 in a lopsided Glasgow derby.
It wasn’t easy on the eye for anyone of a Celtic persuasion to witness the champions being outfought all over the pitch while mustering one miserly shot on target throughout the 90 minutes-plus.
And that was an effort from the edge of the box from Camilo Duran that bounced into the grateful arms of the underworked Ivor Pandour before the interval.
In the aftermath of the Govan carnage, O’Neill looked ahead to Sunday when the teams lock horns again in the Premiersip at Parkhead – and the manager admitted he was GLAD to be playing them again.
HITTING THE BOTTLE…Martin O’Neill watches Celtic toil at Ibrox.
The veteran gaffer watched his side produce a performance that could be filed under x-certificate as they surrendered possession and littered the game with misplaced and wasteful passes.
But the Irishman remained defiant as he prepares for the weekend confrontation in which Celtic can move EIGHT points ahead of their Glasgow rivals at the top of the table.
O’Neill said: “It’ll be a big test for us next Sunday again in every aspect, but I’m actually quite glad we play them again.
“I’m looking forward to our crowd making the same sort of noise as the Ibrox crowd made.
“A lot of our boys have won here when we’ve had no fans.
“But certainly for some of the younger and newer lads, it’s an experience I don’t think they’ll forget.”
Reflecting on the embarrassing capitulation in Govan, O’Neill commented: “Hopefully, it’s a wake-up call, for myself for a start, then the team.
“We just didn’t play. We were second best. We were well beaten in the end and we’ll have to try to learn from it.
“There has to be a realisation how big this game is. It’s so important to the fans, to everybody.
“It’s still one of the great fixtures in European football, if not the world, and people have to know it, that’s the point.
GRIM VIEWING…Martin O’Neill stares ahead as Celtic get wake-up call in Govan.
“I hope this defeat is a culture shock for some and I’m sure it will be.
“It was definitely that when I first came here 26 years ago and we got mauled 5-1.”
The 74-year-old team chief, speaking to Premier Sports, continued: “We now have a midweek European game we have to win, then we play Rangers again.
“You have to be able to deal with these occasions, with any permutation the opposition put in front of you. It’s their prerogative to do exactly that.
“But if you misplace a lot of passes when you have comfortable possession, I don’t think that’s to do with systems.”
Quizzed if the team should be doing better out of possession, O’Neill added: “I absolutely agree, we can do much better than that.
“We can get the ball back a bit quicker and start getting back to dominating.
“We’ll see what next Sunday brings. We had players who were below par and well below par — that’s not a great mix.
“We didn’t create many opportunities and that’s a bit of a surprise to me.
“The one thing I’ve felt domestically is that we look as if we can create, so we have to look at the reasons why it didn’t materialise on this occasion.
“But we’ve got to gather ourselves together because the games are coming thick and fast.”
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