Let me just say from the off that I have no objection to Martin O’Neill being critical of criticism when he thinks it is without foundation.

In the aftermath of the Benfica game, he got a lot of stick for his post-match comments about the performance and various aspects of it, and I did not agree with all of that criticism. But I will defend every one of my fellow Celtic supporters who makes it, because they have that right.

My issue with O’Neill’s comments was not that the praise he gave certain aspects of the performance was completely undeserved.

My issue was that they appeared to set a brand-new standard at this club, one which under almost any other circumstances would have been regarded as wholly unacceptable.

Once upon a time, Martin O’Neill would have regarded a European fixture as a benchmark-setting occasion. Not as a write-off. Not as something to handwave away afterwards because there had been a few positive elements in what was still another wretched experience.

When a Celtic team loses heavily, supporters do not want to hear the manager praising the team or the performance in a way which sounds as though the result itself is secondary.

Even when some of the praise is justified, the optics matter.

And that is where the problem lies.

The message he sent was that losing heavily in Europe is somehow acceptable provided you can take positives from the performance. That is not a message any of us wants to hear.

We have a lot of supporters who travel to European away games, and they are absolutely entitled to be miffed when, after watching Celtic take a heavy thumping, the manager comes out and talks up the performance.

Again, I am not saying O’Neill was wrong to identify positives. I am saying he cannot afford to get the optics this badly wrong.

Trying to mount some kind of defence today, then almost rub people’s faces in it by suggesting that the weekend performance proved him right, does not help either.

To some people, it will sound smug. To others, patronising. To more still, it will feel like an attack on supporters themselves.

I just wish he would read the room a little better. He has been away for a long time. Anyone who still refers to fan media as “fanzines” is showing his age. This is not the same environment he was used to the first time around.

And when the club’s own media channel appears to line up questions designed to let him make that point, it comes across as crass and insulting to a lot of people.

And one more time, let me say it: I agreed with him on the night that there were positives from the Benfica game worth taking into the next one and the one after that.

I thought the movement was good. I thought the running was good. I thought the pace of the game was good.

And the fact that we carried so much of that into Sunday was immensely encouraging. That is one of the reasons I think we can get something on Thursday. But we also have to remember what we are talking about here.

He had suffered four defeats in five games. It was another European defeat in which we conceded heavily. Another night where Celtic had to endure the usual nonsense about being humiliated and embarrassing the country.

In circumstances like that, is it really smart to come out and talk as though one good domestic performance has settled the argument?

I can agree with somebody without believing that every word which leaves their mouth is wise. This is not the time for a curtain call.

It is not the time for a victory lap.

There is still a long way to go and an awful lot of work to be done.

The number of chances Hearts were still able to create at the weekend is enough to ensure that none of us is going into Thursday expecting a clean sheet.

So, discretion, being the better part of valour, might have been the better option.

Look, we are all delighted with Sunday. Not just the result; the performance mattered even more than the scoreline because it has given us far more confidence going into Thursday than we otherwise would have had.

But O’Neill has been vindicated for 90 minutes. That is all. Supporters are going to need to see a lot more than that before they are convinced.

And if he had simply said that, I would not be writing this piece.

What is this club’s problem with recognising when a narrative sucks? Why is there no message discipline anymore? I used to be proud of the fact that Celtic had strong message discipline and did not get itself dragged into these situations or fall into these traps, while the club across the city did it constantly. They still do.

For a long time, that was the one part of Celtic’s media operation which actually seemed to be run by professionals.

And now here is Martin O’Neill, a man who once played the media like a fiddle, a man who once had them eating out of his hand, giving headline writers everything they need.

That is what bothers me here. Not that he saw positives. Not that he praised parts of the performance. Not even that he believes subsequent events justified some of what he said.

It is that he allowed the bigger message to become muddled.

A performance like that, and a result like that, should never be allowed to look acceptable.

Twenty years ago, Martin O’Neill would have been the first person to say so.

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