ARNE ENGELS has just witnessed first-hand the price of failure in Glasgow with his fellow-Belgian Philippe Clement getting the boot from Ibrox.
The pair acknowledged each other as the Hoops’ record £11million recruit warmed up with the other substitutes before the first derby encounter of the season at Parkhead in September.
Engels made his first appearance following his deadline-day switch when he replaced Paulo Bernardo just after the hour mark with the champions already 2-0 ahead through goals from Japanese double-act Daizen Maeda and Kyogo Furuhashi.
The new Bhoy celebrated with his team-mates after Callum McGregor had rifled in a blistering left-foot strike for No.3.
OUT OF LUCK…Arne Engels fires in a free-kick, but, like all Celtic’s first-half attempts, it didn’t trouble Hibs keeper Jordan Smith.
Clement winced in the opposition dug-out and his 16-month tenure in Govan came to a halt yesterday when he was handed his P45 in the wake of a 2-0 home loss to St Mirren that saw the Hoops maintain their 13-point advantage at the Premiership pinnacle, despite a controversial 2-1 loss at Hibs earlier in the day.
Engels discovered very early the demands and expectations as a Celtic player.
And the smooth 21-year-old operator didn’t attempt to make excuses for the champions’ second league loss of the campaign.
Reflecting on an awful first-half display that saw the visitors go in trailing 2-0 at the break, the Belgian international said: “Of course everybody was angry at the team performance.
“But nobody was screaming because we knew we had a second-half to go and try to get the equaliser and the winning goal.
“You saw us pushing to the limit. We are disappointed, especially with the first-half. I think this can never happen to us.
“We don’t have excuses. If we lose or win, we don’t have excuses.”
CHEERS AND TEARS…Auston Trusty is the lone Celt as Josh Campbell celebrates his second goal with his his delighted Hibs team-mates.
Engels, speaking to the Daily Record, continued: “I think we are like real sports people and we always that mentality of trying to do everything really good. That’s a really positive thing of our group.
“You also saw it in the second-half that we don’t put our heads down. We just keep on pushing to try to get that equaliser and we almost got it. We just need to take the positive points of the second-half with us.
“That was our normal level. The first-half can never happen to us, but we also need to take the positive. I think we did great in the second-half.
“You saw that we were pressing to get a goal. We got so much energy into the second-half that we also had chances. So, we just need to carry on.”
Maeda threw the Hoops a lifeline with an opportunist strike in the 68th minute to haul his goal tally to 23 this term, but a puzzling VAR call by Alan Muir nullified what looked like a good equaliser from the Japanese ace.
NET LOSS…Daizen Maeda thumps one past grounded Hibs keeper Jordan Smith for what everyone thought was Celtic’s equaliser – apart from VAR official Alan Muir who ruled it out.
Engels added: “You saw that we had so much energy and we push every team to the limits.
“We got chances and we kept on running and doing our stuff, as we always do. That’s also what makes us really strong.
“It’s up to us to do this every game and keep on going until the end of the season.”
Engels is likely to line up alongside skipper McGregor and Reo Hatate when the pacesetters take on Aberdeen under the lights in the east end of Glasgow tomorrow night.
