26.08.2015 10:05 h

Brown ashamed of Champions League exit

Celtic captain Scott Brown says he is ashamed by his side's performance after they crashed out of the Champions League following a 2-0 defeat to Malmo FF in the second leg of their play-off round clash.

The result at the Swedbank Stadion handed the Swedish champions a 4-3 aggregate win as they overturned Celtic's 3-2 advantage from the first leg.

The Hoops had found themselves 2-0 up after just 10 minutes of the first leg but Jo Inge Berget's crucial away goals helped set up a tense return in Sweden.

Malmo opened the scoring in the 23rd minute when Markus Rosenberg, suspended for the first leg, headed a corner past Craig Gordon before Dedryck Boyata's own goal in the 54th minute put Age Hareide's side through to the lucrative group stages of the Champions League for the second year running.

Hoops skipper Brown was severely critical of his side's abject display.

"I'm ashamed of our performance. The way we handled ourselves all over the park, the way we defended, the way we attacked - it's not like us at all," the Celtic captain said.

"We have to hold our hands up. We've got high expectations, which puts a lot of pressure on us, but we should have been a lot better than that. Our performance just wasn't there.

"We didn't look like we were going to score a goal and we looked like we were going to concede a few, so we need to work on it."

It is the second successive year Celtic have fallen at this hurdle and the Scottish champions must now be content with a place in the draw for the group stages of the Europa League.

"We got to the final hurdle and fell. We can't do that two years in a row," Brown added.

"We said we learned last year and we've not. We need to go away and have a big chat and learn from it.

"We will take everything on board and watch the game back and see where we've gone wrong.

"It's all about our personal pride and it's just been shattered."

Celtic manager Ronny Deila said the players hadn't coped with the pressures of trying to qualify for the cash-rich group stages.

"That's something you have to deal with at Celtic and today it didn't seem we coped with it as we looked very stressed and it didn't look like we enjoyed playing football," Deila said.

"The whole team looked frightened and scared when they played and that was very disappointing. "We looked very uncomfortable on the ball. No one wanted the ball and we lost the ball in dangerous situations all the time.

"We did it as a team. It wasn't one player here and one player there, it was a team performance not at a level we can expect in these games."

Deila admitted he had to shoulder the blame for twice failing to lead his side through Champions League qualifying.

"You lose and win together. Today we weren't good enough and that's my responsibility. This team was not up to the level it can be and I'm a part of that," the Norwegian said.

"I'm a leader in this team so again we have to learn from this.

"We knew that if we were at our best we had a very good chance to go through but we weren't even close to the performance we wanted and Malmo deserved to go through."