To be honest, Celtic have been struggling for quite some time now. It is against Dundee United that they ended up paying the price for their poor performances for the last few months.

Martin O'Neill had actually named a slightly rotated starting XI on the day while also bringing Kelechi Iheanacho and Callum McGregor back into the fold. It felt that the belief was that this would be one of the Hoops' easier games on this run towards the end of the season.

Unfortunately, O'Neill was proven wrong. They lost 2-0 away against Dundee United. And that leaves them trailing Hearts by five points, and the Rangers by two, with seven league games left to be played.

It is not quite the end of the title race, with the Hoops still to play their two title rivals. But it is a damaging result nonetheless.

It did not exactly come out of nowhere either. Celtic's performances have been nowhere near the required level for months now. It just caught up with them this weekend.

This result is not down to O'Neill, who has gotten as much as he can out of this team over his two interim runs. If he had never been replaced by Wilfried Nancy, Celtic would have probably still been in control of this title race and would not have needed to play catch-up.

Some of the selection decisions on the day did not pay off though, we need to admit that as well. As one fan wrote: "That’s on O’Neill today. Shocking selection and substitutions. Let’s play our midfielder at RB the our RW at RB when there is a RB and CB that can play there on the bench."

It would be an understatement to say that Celtic fans were not happy with the result on the day, as they now see a fifth-straight league title slipping away from their fingers. Also, there is now a good chance that the Rangers could end up winning despite having been below par all season. That is how bad the Hoops have been.

One Celtic fan wrote on X at full-time: "The board had the opportunity in January to sign a proven striker. Instead of they opted for project loan signings. This is on them."

Of course, the board do deserve the lion's share of the blame for how things have played out this season. Even when things were not going their way and they had a chance to rectify things in the winter, they did not show enough efficiency or urgency.

As for strikers, they brought in Tomas Cvancara and Junior Adamu on loan, two strikers who were completely out of form in the first half of the campaign. Unsurprisingly, they have not done much of note in a Celtic shirt either.

Anyways, all we can do now is carry on giving our best until the end of the season and hope that our title rivals drop points as well. The end result is no longer in Celtic's hands.

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