Senior sports writer at The Herald, Graeme McGarry, didn’t hold back in his assessment of Celtic’s latest slip-up at McDiarmid Park, echoing a growing concern among fans and pundits about the team’s recent performances.

Speaking on Graham Spiers’ Press Box podcast, McGarry painted a picture of a Celtic side that’s regressed since the turn of the year and claimed that no one epitomizes it more than Nicolas Kuhn, whose form has fallen off a cliff.

The German winger was once in the Player of the Year chat, but he’s quickly fallen off the pace.

“Celtic were really poor and it’s becoming a bit of a pattern,” McGarry said. 

“I was reading a bit this morning about Celtic’s recent run and I think up until Hogmanay, they dropped four points all season and since they lost 3-0 at Ibrox, they’ve dropped 14, so there’s obviously been a big drop-off in terms of level of performance.

“Obviously, Nicolas Kuhn is the guy who’s been held up as sort of the poster boy for this regression, and it’s been quite remarkable the way his form has regressed over the last wee while.

“There was a moment at the start of the second half yesterday and I thought Brendan Rodgers, I think if you remember a game last season up at MacDermid Park, he said it was the angriest he’d ever been in his career because of the lack of application, the lack of effort from his players and I thought it’d be a similar situation yesterday at halftime.

“But the very first sort of sequence of action after the halftime whistle, Auston Trusty jogs towards a ball and Sidibeh runs in and beats him to it and I just felt as if that just sums Celtic up, they were just a yard off it.”

Celtic’s early season momentum appears to have stalled, and while the title will almost certainly return to Parkhead for there fourth consecutive time, there are growing calls for a reaction and an injection of urgency.

Earlier this season, Celtic looked like they could be invincible. They were scoring goals and weren’t shipping them, but the loss at Ibrox derailed the whole thing. Celtic were 16 clear heading into that match, and the ability to relax, just a little bit, has crept into performance.

With the Scottish still in play, Brendan Rodgers will need to ensure this slump doesn’t stretch into something more damaging.

Celtic go to face St Johnstone at Hampden Park on Easter Sunday. The players have got to be up for it then, with the opposition already showing they’re more than capable of causing a shock, and deserving a win against the Champions-elect.