Brad Lyons was devastated as his side shot themselves in the foot and refused to blame added time for the last-gasp loss

16:00, 16 Feb 2026Updated 19:29, 16 Feb 2026

Kilmarnock’s Brad Lyons

Brad Lyons reckons the last-gasp Celtic defeat was the sorest of his Kilmarnock career.

And the Rugby Park skipper is adamant it was themselves and not officials to blame for the agonising loss.

Lyons and his colleagues were left devastated after a stoppage-time winner from Julian Araujo sank Neil McCann’s team.

Celtic also scored an injury-time winner in Ayrshire from the penalty spot earlier in the season, but the Killie skipper reckons the latest setback was far worse having been 2-0 up at half-time and contributing to their own downfall with mistakes.

Lyons said: “It was probably the sorest defeat I can remember to date, but it makes it even more sore when we concede from two long throw-ins.

“I think that’s three long throw-ins in two games we’ve conceded from and then we’ve lost the game. The way we implemented our game plan was absolutely brilliant, but we shot ourselves in our own foot, so it’s devastating.

“We have chances to maybe put the game to bed because obviously 3-0 is more comfortable than 2-0. It’s always that dodgy scoreline, but if you give us a 2-0 lead at half-time, we would snap your arm off against anyone, even though Celtic has their qualities. But, against anyone at half-time going in 2-0, you should be winning the game.”

Celtic’s Julian Araujo celebrates scoring in the 97th minute

Boss McCann was fuming at the seven minutes of injury time added, but when asked if had any complaints about the amount of extra played, Lyons said: “It’s clutching at straws really, isn’t it? I went down with a head injury, Dom [Thompson] went down with a head injury, there’s a few subs and stuff. So, no, we’re not blaming anyone, we’re blaming ourselves for conceding those two late goals.”

Lyons insists that, once the dust has settled, the positivity within the performance will become clearer as they get set to face Dundee United on Saturday. He said: “Yeah, absolutely. I’m proud of every one of them boys. You see the passion, you see how much it hurts us and you see how well we did play.

“That whole feeling is round the club at the minute, even you’ve seen the fans, how upbeat they were, how loud they were and right behind us. It does give us confidence, but right now it’s hard to look by our mistakes. I’ve been in here so many times and said if we cut out the mistakes, we’re right in every game.

“You’ve seen it again, we’re 2-0 up and then we make two mistakes like that towards the end of the game and it just kills us. That’s football, especially football at the highest level. I would say if you go through more or less every goal, there’s a mistake in it, so you try and cut them, you try and keep them to a minimum.

“It’s sort of been a story all season that mistakes has killed us and big mistakes, but we’ll dust ourselves down, we’ll take the positives out of it, we’ll work on our negatives and go again next Saturday.”