It was not Tony Mowbray or his players’ fault that they were hit with some loaded questions when the draw for Group C of the inaugural Europa League was made back in August, but they could not resist the temptation to get ahead of themselves.

“We believe we can win it,” was Gary Caldwell’s assessment of the competition they had fallen into after Arsenal eliminated them from the Champions League. Mowbray was more canny and circumspect, yet even he licked his lips and said “there could be huge tests ahead” against the likes of Roma or Villareal in the knock-out stages. “That might show how far we’ve come or how far we have to go.” Momentarily, he had allowed himself to mentally plough through Hamburg, Rapid Vienna and Hapoel Tel Aviv and on to a place in the last 32.

Something similar happened when Rangers were paired with Sevilla, Stuttgart and Unirea Urziceni in their Champions League group. These were generally interpreted as being “good draws”. Instead, both halves of the Old Firm were bundled out of their respective competitions with a fixture to spare.

Reduced/non-existent transfer budgets and a glass ceiling on wages do not come without depressing side-effects. The notion of Celtic winning the first Europa League turned out to be risible. It took them five attempts to win a match.

What a demoralising, backpedalling sequence of performances and results were delivered.

Mowbray tried to sift some encouragement from Wednesday’s 2-0 victory over Hapoel Tel Aviv, but it wasn’t easy to rally to his argument that Celtic had been competitive in every game or that only missed opportunities had denied them a higher points total. That was an overly generous analysis of a side which has had fewer attempts on goal, just 23 over four matches, than any of the other 47 clubs in the tournament. Ajax have had 83.

Sympathy doesn’t come easily for a side which makes fewer chances than anyone else, fails to convert more than 80% of them, and could not keep a clean sheet in four out of five attempts.

Those are not figures to back up Mowbray’s contention that Celtic “deserved better”. The manager himself had said his players’ concentration had not been good enough in the home draw with Rapid and their quality lacking in the home defeat against Hamburg.

It was understandable that the manager should show all the patience and optimism of a gold prospector when it came to rummaging through the reasons why his team had been unceremoniously bundled out of a cup tournament for the third time this season. That’s what managers do when they are searching for answers.

But his claim that Celtic had been competitive in all five ties so far was unimpressive. It would have had some merit if they were in a section with Manchester United, Barcelona and AC Milan, but not middle-tier opponents from Austria and Israel.

Celtic are changing in Europe and not for the better. Those heroic recent campaigns to reach the last 16 of the Champions League, those toe-to-toe home battles with United, Milan, Barcelona and the rest in front of a throbbing Parkhead already feel like they belong in a different era.

Even the great energy and electricity provided by Parkhead has ebbed away. Only 42,013 supporters turned up for the first Europa League home game against Rapid Vienna, and that was a real wake-up call given the hype which surrounded that game.

That figure dropped by 4000 for Hamburg and by another 4000 for the Hapoel match. Parkhead is not nearly so much of a coliseum when it is half full. Without that enormous advantage Celtic suddenly have an unremarkable home record to match an ordinary away one. The consequences of that have been quite predictable: seven winless matches out of nine European ties.

There have been injuries, of course. Scott Brown, Marc-Antoine Fortune, Shaun Maloney and Artur Boruc have been absent at times. But injuries cannot disguise the overall evidence of decline and inadequacy.

Fortune, Maloney and Aiden McGeady have not managed a goal between them in a combined total of 21 European appearances.

Despite the theory that Mowbray does not fancy McDonald he has actually started the Australian in seven of the European ties and brought him off the bench in the other two. McDonald has not been as consistent and rewarding for Mowbray as he was for Gordon Strachan.

Europe has been damaging for this Celtic manager. The side has deteriorated and supporters have turned their backs. From the five tournaments open to him in August only two are still alive, the SPL and the Scottish Cup.

He has a few months to construct a squad which can be revitalised in Europe next season. Ki Sung-Jong, the promising young South Korean internationalist arriving for £2m, might lift the place.

Whatever happens, next season let’s spare ourselves the fantasy that any Scottish representative in the Europa League is a big club in a diddy tournament.