Tom English: Both Lennon and McCoist have questions to answer

This in the wake of Shamrock Rovers taking their place in the group stages of the Europa League following their colossal victory against Partizan Belgrade on the same evening that Celtic and Rangers suffered catastrophe in the same competition.

Rovers are, indeed, a heart-warming tale, a good footballing side managed by a terrific individual in Michael O’Neill. They deserve all the plaudits they’re getting, no question. But let’s be honest here. The League of Ireland has been a basket case in recent years. Rovers were only saved from extinction by their supporters. The same with Cork City last year. They were officially wound up as a club and only came back to life thanks to a fans consortium. Derry City were thrown out of the league two years ago. Drogheda went into examinership (a process similar to administration) as reigning champions in 2008. Likewise Shelbourne in 2006. They won the league and then the full horror of their financial mismanagement was unearthed. These are not the Gretnas of Ireland. They are the establishment clubs, long-standing with big histories. The Rovers story is a brilliant one, but for heaven’s sake, let’s have a bit of context here.

There are two ways of analysing the calamities of Thursday night, the macro and the micro. The macro is the big picture and, of course, it’s horrendous. We all know the issues here. Complacency at the SFA going back years, lack of money in the domestic game, lack of facilities provided by government, dwindling attendances, falling playing numbers, everything heading south at an alarming rate – so much so that we are now in this pitiful place whereby the national coefficient is plummeting at such speed that you wonder when we will ever see a Scottish team qualify for the group stages of a European competition again (as opposed to getting there by default as Celtic still hope to do) not to mind the idea of Scotland one day qualifying for a major championship.

We can all throw up our hands and say we’re done for, it’s hopeless, the game’s a bogey – and anybody who does that has good enough cause, that’s for sure. But what about the micro element of what’s been happening in Europe, particularly what’s been happening to the supposed standard-bearers, but now international embarrassments, that are Celtic and Rangers.

True, they have had a relative pittance to spend in the transfer market compared to what they used to have. Craig Whyte has signed six new players on permanent deals and a seventh on a season-long loan, but the net outlay, factoring in sales and sell-on windfalls, has been tiny. At Celtic, over the last two and a half years there’s been a huge volume of traffic in and out but again the net spend has been negligible when you include the sales of Aiden McGeady, Scott McDonald, Artur Boruc, Stephen McManus and Gary Caldwell whose departures from Parkhead brought in about £17 million.

So, broadly speaking, they’re only spending what they’re bringing in and little more. No wonder they’re going backwards, right? Is it as simple as that, however? I’m not sure it is. In looking at the micro element you have to consider the way Neil Lennon and Ally McCoist are managing these teams. Both of them have questions to answer.

McCoist, for instance. When two of his players lost the plot and got themselves sent-off in Malmo, he was asked what he had said to the guilty men, Steven Whittaker and Madjid Bougherra, in the aftermath of that fiasco. McCoist said he didn’t feel the need to say anything to them, that they knew they’d let their team down, that it was written all over their faces.

Sometimes, though, things need to be said and said with a Sir Alex Ferguson-type ferocity. In a general sense, McCoist did preach the importance of discipline before Rangers’ next outing in Europe, the first leg in Maribor, but clearly not everybody was listening to him because by his own admission he had to take Steven Naismith off the park at half-time for fear of the player getting himself a second yellow card for the constant lip he was giving the referee. That’s an awful indictment of a player at any time, but coming so soon after the indiscipline in Malmo it was shocking. Who do you blame, the player for not heeding the manager’s message or the manager for not delivering it more forcefully?

The upshot was that Rangers were without Whittaker and Naismith on Thursday night, two players they could have done with. Naismith, especially. He’s probably Rangers’ best finisher at the moment. And a finisher was what they lacked when creating so many chances and fluffing all but one of them. As we gaze at this big picture representing Scottish football’s wretched decline let’s not lose sight of the smaller things in this crisis. And the indiscipline and rank-rotten professionalism of some of these Rangers players is definitely one of them.

Not just Rangers, Celtic, too. Daniel Majstorovic was in the Celtic starting line-up for their last away tie in European competition, the 4-0 capitulation in Utrecht last August. The Swede saw his team concede not just one early penalty that night, but two. Majstorovic didn’t play in the 3-0 loss to Braga a fortnight earlier but Celtic fell behind to an early penalty in that match also. So don’t you think it should have been uppermost in his mind that rash challenges in the box in the opening minutes should be avoided like the plague? And, of course, we know what he did. His tackle was an idiotic gamble, but it was more than that. It was the act of a guy who is technically not good enough to make a tackle of that kind and not bright enough to realise his limitations.

From the interviews he has done, Majstorovic comes across as a player with a conceit of himself. But, then, so many of them do. After the loss to St Johnstone last weekend, Lennon took pot-shots at the failings of his players, as he was entitled to, but in Switzerland he seemed to absolve them of all blame. In fact, he said they were brilliant.

Lennon does this too often. He is prone to the odd outburst but at all other times, in his public utterances at least, he lauds his players to the point of blowing smoke up their rear-ends. Beram Kayal has, I’m sure, been described as world-class by his manager. Scott Brown gets constant acclamation when he doesn’t deserve it. Georgios Samaras, with one goal in his last 16 matches, gets a new contract and more forgiveness than he is entitled to. We could go on.

Celtic and Rangers players live in a strange world, a place where the fans treat them like Premiership stars despite their modest talents, where the media – and we are culpable in this love-in, too – gives them a level of profile that far, far outweighs their ability.

There’s an understandable hubbub about the state of the game post-Thursday night, but looking at the failure of the Old Firm in detail, is it not fair to say that Rangers would have stood an infinitely better chance of making it through to the Europa League had Naismith, arguably their best player, not been so stupid in Maribor? And isn’t there some merit in the view that had Majstorovic not been so mind-alteringly thick in lunging in then Celtic might have joined them?

The macro and micro of another lamentable week.