The inquest into Celtic’s exit from the Champions League at the hands of AEK Athens is sure to be a lengthy process. There have been fingers pointed in various directions over the summer about a perceived lack of investment in the playing squad and questions asked about whether Brendan Rodgers has been backed by the board.

There has been a frostiness between the two protagonists in recent weeks but Celtic’s premature departure from the competition is the result of various factors - both tangible and less apparent. Here Herald Sport assesses the conditions that left Celtic standing on the outside looking in at European football’s annual bun fight and determines where the fault lies . . .

Glasgow Times:

THE BOARD

IT is clear where Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers places the blame for the club’s Champions League exit, and it is squarely at the door of the boardroom.

Rodgers, as captain of the Celtic ship, could see the iceberg coming in the shape of AEK Athens a mile off.

It was an opponent that was always likely to have a chance of knocking his side off course in their quest for a third-successive season of Champions League football, and that is why he the recriminations over the club’s summer transfer business were sparked by Rodgers even before the first leg of the tie was played.

The groundwork was being laid well before a ball was kicked in the tie to highlight where accusing eyes should be trained should what eventually transpired come to pass.

Does the Celtic manager have a point, have the Celtic board failed to back him? Well, yes and no.

You would like to think that a quality centre-half would have made some sort of difference to the shambolic showing from the Celtic backline in the Olympic Stadium, and Rodgers may even justifiably feel that he deserved a significant investment at the heart of his defence in the summer given the fortunes that he has poured into the board’s biscuit tin through his team’s performances.

Was the £9m invested in Odsonne Edouard not enough of a show of faith in the manager during the summer though, the board may argue?

It was Rodgers’ choice to invest that club-record fee in the promising French forward in an area where Celtic were already strong, rather than in an area where it has been proven they are desperately weak as soon as they step up from the domestic game.

The board would also argue that they have already allowed Rodgers free reign to strengthen at the back during the January transfer window, and it was the selections made then rather than the finance made available that led to what happened in Athens.

Jack Hendry may be 23, but he is young in terms of experience as a defender and in what was such a crucial tie, while Marvin Compper is by now a quasi-mythical figure.

It has been made plain from sources at the club that the German

defender didn’t cost Celtic a penny in a transfer fee, despite reports at the time claiming up to a million pounds had gone to RB Leipzig in exchange for a man who was earmarked as the experience Champions League level centre-half that the team was crying out for.

And who was the biggest advocate for the level of support provided to the manager in a January window when Charly Musonda, Scott Bain and Lewis Morgan were also signed up? Well, Brendan Rodgers himself.

“Today I have to say a big thank you to Dermot, Peter and the board at Celtic,” the Celtic boss said back in early February.

“January was going to be an important month for us and everything I asked for I was able to get.

“In terms of experience, quality and players we think we can develop, they delivered everything I wanted so it’s a great credit to them and our recruitment team.”

With a wage bill that has expanded by around £20m a year in his time at the club, rising to £52m in 2017, the board may well wonder what else it is their manager wants.

The counter-point would be that by loosening the purse strings a little now, the Celtic board could have speculated to accumulate and helped Rodgers nudge his team over the line and into the Champions League group stage once more.

They may argue though that they already had.

Graeme McGarry

Glasgow Times:

THE RECRUITMENT TEAM

SIGNING players who would immediately improve the current Celtic team is far from easy. Bang average footballers based in England are on a minimum of £25,000 a week plus all sorts of bonuses added on top. Not only that but the inflated market down south dictates that players from mid-table clubs in the second tier cost £10m.

So, the job of a chief scout – Lee Congerton in this case – is to find those who fit Celtic’s wage bracket. In truth there aren’t that many out there.

Celtic are hardly the only club shopping in this aisle and many of their direct competitors can offer warmer weather and a stronger league.

To get a playmaker, for example, who would walk into the team before Olivier Ntcham, Callum McGregor and Tom Rogic for a maximum £20,000 a week, plus a fee of around £7m and for him to be young enough to have a sell-on possibility, is hardly a simple chore.

The truth is that should Celtic spend a club record £10m on a player there is no guarantee that expensive new face would make Brendan Rodgers’s side better. However, Congerton’s job, or so it would seem from the outside looking in, is to find the hidden gems and in 18 months at Celtic Park it is difficult to see exactly what he has brought to the party.

Kundai Benyu was by all accounts a Congerton signing who joined in June 2017, has played one game for Celtic and is loaned out to Oldham Athletic.

Maybe Ntcham and Odsonne Edouard were his, it is unclear, but most of the signings made since he arrived can hardly be said to have been revelatory and fans, unsurprisingly, are asking questions. The primary one is: What does Lee Congerton actually do? That may be a harsh assessment but it stems from the Englishman’s past experiences.

He spent two years at Sunderland between 2013 and 2015 as the Wearside club’s sporting director. Even for a club notorious for getting stuff really wrong, the signing policy during this time will go down as one of the worst ever.

Jack Rodwell cost £10m, ‘earned’ £80,000 a week and did nothing. So, too, Will Buckley, Jermain Lens, Fabio Borini and worst of all Ricky Alvarez.

Sunderland were billed £9m for Alvarez, an Inter Milan loan, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that they unwittingly triggered an agreement to sign him permanently. Incredibly, Sunderland never actually owned the player. It is not outrageous to suggest that Congerton, who was appointed by Brendan Rodgers, has yet to show his best when it comes to signing first-team players for the club.

Congerton, and Celtic, have two weeks to right a few wrongs. Two or three good signings would make progress in the Europa League and the club continuing with domestic success so much simpler. But it will have come too late and with a huge price.

Neil Cameron

Glasgow Times:

THE MANAGER

WELL, that escalated quickly. Considering Brendan Rodgers has guided Celtic to the club’s first-ever invincible treble, then followed it up by becoming the first manager in Scottish football history to make it a double, perhaps the Northern Irishman expected a longer period of grace after what is still the only thing even remotely resembling a setback in his time in charge. But if he didn’t know it before, he does now. This is Glasgow – where you are only ever as good as your last match. And Celtic should have been too good for their Greek opponents.

As the blame game got under way in earnest following Champions League elimination, phone-ins and forums were ablaze last night about how much of it could be heaped directly on Rodgers. While he is hardly exempt from criticism, I am not sure how much of it sticks.

Let’s deal with them as methodically as possible. Ultimately, it was conceding three goals over two legs against a well-organised but hardly spectacular side which did for the club’s hopes of a third successive Champions League spot, but how much can Rodgers carry the can for that? Signing defenders is said to be a blind spot and in retrospect, he fought too hard to keep Dedryck Boyata instead of selling him and getting an early replacement in. But is Rodgers really to blame for his most reliable defender going AWOL?

And what about the defenders who did play? Well, as much as Rodgers has trumpeted the abilities of Jack Hendry, a player he feels he can mould into a top centre half, would he really have pressed him into action if Boyata or Kristoffer Ajer was available? Jozo Simunovic is a better player than he showed in midweek and so too Mikael Lustig but by all accounts Rodgers has been chasing a centre back and right back all summer, only to be priced out. Is it his fault the eight players he had back in in his own box couldn’t clear the cross for that first goal?

Where the Northern Irishman hasn’t helped himself, though, when it comes to making that case for extra investment, is his strike rate in the market. While some – such as Odsonne Edouard, Olivier Ntcham and Moussa Dembele have been huge successes – the lack of playing time afforded to signings such as Marvin Compper, Eboue Kouassi and Cristian Gamboa tells its own story. Money has been frittered away on the likes of Charly Musonda and even to a degree Patrick Roberts.

Was the timing of Rodgers going public on his differences with the board over their failure to bolster their squad an issue? Perhaps, but this didn’t look a Celtic team lacking in motivation nor one failing to execute their manager’s demands. Some would say this group of Parkhead players aren’t good enough to expect to make the Champions League each season but I would take issue with that. While injuries and suspensions to the likes of Odsonne Edouard, Moussa Dembele and Kristoffer Ajer didn’t help, they created enough over the two legs to win the tie – for once they couldn’t get the job done. Rodgers can only be blamed for so much. But his job has just got a lot harder.

Stewart Fisher

Glasgow Times:

THE PLAYERS

“IT’S all about working with the players that are here,” said Brendan Rodgers prior to Celtic’s loss in Athens when fielding questions about one man who had decided not to come. And from the evidence of Wednesday night, there is a fair bit of work to be done with them.

The heart of the defence is the most obvious area of concern for Celtic, with Jack Hendry and a faltering Jozo Simunovic exposed badly by AEK Athens, Dedryck Boyata unlikely to feature in the green and white again, Kris Ajer still just a prospect and Marvin Compper perhaps just a figment of our imaginations.

The decline especially in the level of performance from Simunovic is remarkable. The 24-year-old was missing the mark so wildly with his distribution on Wednesday evening that he became scared to attempt a pass.

Elsewhere too though, there are areas of concern, not least of all at right-back. Mikael Lustig has been a wonderful servant for Celtic and has enjoyed and contributed to years of success at the club. But while he flourished in the more conservative system adopted by Sweden in the summer’s World Cup in Russia, he is struggling to deliver for his club side as his athleticism dims with age.

He failed to close down his man and prevent an easy cross for the first two goals that AEK Athens scored in the tie, and gave away a needless free-kick for the third.

“We’ve lost bad goals and it doesn’t matter how well you play in the game if you shoot yourselves in the foot like that and lose bad goals,” lamented Craig Gordon after the game. “In that situation you’re always going to be up against it.”

Staving off English interest in Kieran Tierney has been a huge boost, and he was his usual marauding self in Greece against a tough opponent in Michalis Bakakis.

The midfield looks okay. Scott Brown continues to push his team on and is usually complemented well by the likes of Olivier Ntcham and Tom Rogic. Ntcham was well below his usual standard in Greece though, and while Rogic looked dangerous, he ran out of puff on the hour mark, as he tends to do.

Callum McGregor is a superb technician and along with James Forrest, provided the main threats for Celtic on the night. Scott Sinclair too looked more like his old self when he came on to grab Celtic a lifeline, and the area in behind the front is where Celtic are particularly strong.

They also boast a wealth of riches up top, and here is where bad luck played a part in sealing Celtic’s fate. Leigh Griffiths is a more than able back-up to Odsonne Edouard and Moussa Dembele, and will see himself as a contender to be a starter most weeks, but had the latter two been fully fit and firing then it may have made all the difference.

Graeme McGarry