Champions League playoff round, first leg: Celtic v LASK, Wednesday, 8pm – Live on RTÉ 2
Martin O’Neill admits Arne Engels’s departure from Celtic before their Champions League playoff clash against LASK was disappointing.
West Ham reportedly broke the EFL transfer record by paying £22 million (€25.7 million) to sign the 22-year-old Belgium midfielder, following Celtic’s 4-0 League Cup win over Dundee United at Tannadice on Saturday.
Ahead of the first leg against the Austrian champions at Celtic Park on Wednesday night, veteran boss O’Neill admitted that there was “a fairly decent chance” that no replacement would arrive before kick-off.
He said: “I think that Arne wanted to go, he didn’t want to play in the matches in case he got injured. I said again last week that that was understandable, that this was a move that he wanted to make.
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“But for the football club, disappointing, really, because just at this moment, he’s hard to replace in the side, that sort of running power that he has and that he gives us. So just even for these two games, that’s disappointing.
“It is what it is and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Celtic failed to make the league phase of the Champions League last season with a shock loss to Kairat Almaty.
The penalty shoot-out defeat in Kazakhstan under former boss Brendan Rodgers cost the Scottish champions about £20 million and exacerbated off-field tensions that threatened to undermine their season, albeit O’Neill, in his second spell as caretaker boss during the campaign, ultimately led Celtic to a Premiership and Scottish Cup double.
O’Neill, who became permanent boss for the second time in June, said: “I watched one of those games in fact, I think I was doing some TV work on the second leg.
“And of course it became a major disappointment, to not qualify for the Champions League is in itself that.
“But I think based on what happened the previous year [losing narrowly to Bayern Munich in last 32], I think then it became like doubly disappointing not to make it.
“But overall, I think that the players who are still here at the football club, they may well remember it, they may well think that they have something to try and achieve this time. But overall I feel I think we’re trying to look forward to the games, trying to get a result in the matches and try and get through.”
O’Neill is pleased with his side’s start to the season where they have hit 10 goals in three wins from three matches this season.
New strikers Kasper Hogh and Camilo Duran have hit the ground running while Egypt winger Haissem Hassan and German midfielder Mika Baur both made their debuts off the bench at Tannadice.
The former Ireland manager said: “I like the players that we’ve signed. I said last weekend, ideally it’d be nice if, for instance, Hassan had a little bit more football played.
“That’s the nature of the game. We’ve got him in now and. And over the course of the season, whether it’s in the Champions League or whether it’s in the Europa League, it’s up to the players now as much as anything else.
“I think the quality that we brought in will bear fruit during the course of the season.”
