Wednesday 13 July 2016 17:41, UK
Celtic's defeat by Lincoln Red Imps in the Champions League second qualifying is up there as one of the worst results in Scottish football history, says Charlie Nicholas.
Brendan Rodgers' first competitive match in charge of the Glasgow side ended in a shocking first-leg defeat in Gibraltar, Lee Casciaro's second-half goal sealing a 1-0 win for the minnows.
The former Liverpool manager said there was "no embarrassment" caused by the result, but Sky Sports' pundit Nicholas, who had two spells at Celtic, said the defeat is about as embarrassing at it could get.
"It's probably up there [as one of the worst results in Scottish history]," Nicholas told Sky Sports News HQ. "I'm trying to get my head around it.
"When you're sitting there as a Celtic fan, trying to take this all in, with a guy who has motivated all of the support, the toughest thing of all is you have to go out there and play.
"All this rubbish about the rubber pitch, they're just excuses. This is probably as humiliating as it gets.
"I was really disappointed with Brendan's comment last night. I watched 15 minutes of the first half and I thought: 'This doesn't look good at all, it doesn't look like a Brendan Rodgers team.'
"He has to take his responsibility, it's going to take him time to get this right, but it was a loss that was severely embarrassing, it's as embarrassing as it gets.
"You get bad days at the office, but last night was absolutely shocking to watch. Brendan is probably flying back to Glasgow today and thinking: 'My goodness, I didn't realise we had stooped this low.'"
Celtic won a fifth straight Scottish Premiership last year, but manager Ronny Deila stepped down at the end of the campaign to be replaced by Rodgers in the summer.
Rodgers was greeted with a sizeable fanfare at Celtic Park earlier in the summer, but Nicholas says the honeymoon period is over, and work needs to be done in the transfer market if Celtic are to progress domestically and in Europe.
"He needs better players, and he has to go right into the market now and stop picking people like Efe Ambrose, who wasn't good enough for the last three years and still isn't good enough yet.
"The hardest thing for Brendan, and I said this when he signed, he needs to sign players that are going to excite the crowd and excite him.
"What he has inherited, and you can see it in all of his pre-season games, does not have a style. There's no style, no pattern to it, and a lot of players are not good enough to deliver that style.
"This is tougher than people imagine. He can't just scatter some stardust on these players. Some of them will improve under him, but a lot of them aren't good enough to be there.
"The feel-good factor, the honeymoon period, has already gone. He now needs a big performance in the friendly against Wolfsburg on Saturday, he now needs to pick up the pieces."
