Celtic hit the Champions League buffers and Neil Lennon questions attitudes

Neil Lennon expressed “anger and frustration” after his Celtic team suffered a shock Champions League qualifying round defeat at home to Ferencvaros.

The Scottish champions fell behind to an early David Siger goal but restored parity through Ryan Christie’s deflected effort. With Celtic territorially dominant, victory appeared a formality, but slack defending by Hatem Elhamed allowed Tokmac Nguen to hand Ferencvaros an advantage they refused to let slip. This marks Celtic’s earliest departure from the Champions League in 15 years, with Lennon’s men now consigned to trying to reach the group phase of the Europa League.

Related: Celtic put six past Reykjavik to start Champions League journey in style

Lennon duly took a barely disguised swipe at certain members of his squad when asked what his post-match message to them had been. “We have to do better,” he told BBC Scotland. “Get your mentality right, get your attitude right. If some of you don’t want to be here, leave. Let us work with players who want to be here.” Pressed on whether he thought some of his group had eyes on other things, he added: “In some cases.

“The players need to buckle up. They’ve been OK but some of their attitudes need to be better if they want to come and play for the club. I’m detecting a little bit of a malaise among them where sometimes they’re not as good as they think they are.”

Lennon had been without the services of the prolific Odsonne Édouard through injury. Two strikers bought by the club, Patryk Klimala and Albian Ajeti, were named as substitutes. “The game was actually a lot easier than what I thought it was going to be but we didn’t take our chances,” said Lennon. “We had plenty of them.

“The first goal we can maybe legislate for a little bit, the second goal is really poor decision-making. It’s individual mistakes. It’s cost us against Copenhagen [in last season’s Europa League] and it’s cost us again tonight.

It’s not fine going out at this stage of the competition because we’re better than that.

“I’m devastated. That shouldn’t happen. We all have to take responsibility, certainly I do for the team selection but we had enough chances to win that game twice over.”