Celtic suffer The Hangover part XI as intoxicating cocktail leads to pride swallowing chaser – Keith Jackson

There's a very good reason why Todd Phillips restricted his money-making blockbuster The Hangover to a trilogy.

The Hollywood director realised he could only ask his audience to sit through a variation of the same plot line so many times - watching the same bunch of grown men making the same catastrophic mistakes, pre-empting the same chaotic consequences. They may have developed a great affection for the movie’s main characters but eventually, the joke would inevitably wear a bit thin.

Which all sounds a bit like watching Celtic’s misadventures in the Champions League. No matter how many big nights out they have, the penny never seems to drop. The lessons hardly ever change and yet, somehow, they become no easier - and no less painful - to learn. Year after year, season after season, all it takes is the sound of UEFA’s favourite anthem to overload the senses and make the impossible seem achievable. The intoxicating cocktail of hope and anticipation invariably proves impossible to resist. After it’s washed down with a pride swallowing chaser - the hangover hits. And when it does, it doesn’t half hit hard.

‘Never again’, Scottish football tells itself in that familiar moment of self loathing and navel gazing. The whole thing left Rangers nursing such a headsplitter last year, some of their most ardent supporters were secretly relieved to drop down a level this time around. And yet Celtic fell for it hook line and sinker in Rotterdam on Tuesday and must now begin the process of another period of introspection, wondering how something so good could turn so bad. So quickly.

This latest road trip to the Netherlands represented The Hangover part XI as far as Scotland’s champions are concerned. That’s 11 Champions League group