Celtic's new manager might be able to get the club going again in Scotland but he'll need to be backed by a vision 2030 to get out of this endless cycle of European failure

Drastic action is needed to break pattern of decline

- MICHAEL GANNON

CELTIC got in thumped Denmark on Thursday night but it wouldn't - and shouldn't - have surprised anyone.

Brendan Rodgers might have been lobbed under the bus a few weeks ago but losing to Midtjylland wasn't down to the former boss.

It wasn't down to the current interim one either.

Celtic would have lost to the Danes one way or another whether it was Martin O'Neill, Rodgers, Ange Postecoglou, Neil Lennon, Ronny Deila or anyone else in charge.

That's not even an opinion.

These days football data is all the range and it doesn't take a fancy Tony Bloom algorithm to predict a Celtic loss out there.

They went down in Denmark because that has been the pattern for more than 20 years.

In two decades, this club have won five times away from home in the group stages of any European competition.

Spartak Moscow, Anderlecht and Rosenborg in the Champions League, Lazio and Ferencvaros in the Europa.

That's it. So perhaps getting a chasing in some Scandinavian sleepy hollow wasn't down to one man's "self-preservation" after all.

Some fans might have swallowed Rodgers being set up as the fall guy for this year's mayhem.

But most will see through it and know there are institutional issues that go way beyond the summer relationship breakdown.