Paulina has already written this morning about Haissem Hassan and Callum Osmand, and rightly so. Both of them gave Celtic something different in the second half last night, something quicker, more direct and more dangerous than what we had seen before the interval.

I do not want to simply repeat that argument here.

I want to widen the lens a little, because what happened in Lisbon told us something about more than two individual players. It told us something about the shape of this team, the problems Martin O’Neill still has to solve and, perhaps, one version of Celtic which might actually be worth pursuing.

That was a strange night.

The first half was every bit as bad as we feared and every bit as difficult as we expected, given the options available to the manager at the back and the continued absence of a proper ball-winning player in the middle of the pitch.

At half-time, Celtic had pretty much got what we deserved.

The second half was different. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain came into midfield, Hassan appeared on one side and Osmand on the other, and suddenly Celtic looked more mobile, more dangerous and far more capable of causing Benfica problems.

There is an experiment in there which I think O’Neill should try again.

I feel slightly sorry for Høgh because I think he was scapegoated for the first-half performance. Sebastian Tounekti was too, and I am not quite ready to throw either of them to the wolves.

For a start, I think Høgh is being unfairly maligned. I actually thought he played reasonably well in the first half, certainly compared with the dysfunction happening behind him.

He worked hard, tried to make things happen and was operating in a team where some of it was functioning badly. Strikers are often judged in isolation when the real problem is that the service into them is poor, the wide areas are not working and the midfield is not giving them enough support.

Last night was worse than that; I thought our attacking players were punished for lapses at the back that had damn all to do with them.

So, I am not prepared to pin that first-half performance on them. Still, there is another reality which Celtic now has to confront: I do not see a version of this team which accommodates Hassan, Høgh and Durán together.

At some point, one of them has to be sacrificed. Right now, because Durán is scoring goals and Hassan is creating them, Høgh is probably the one who drops out.

I feel bad for him, but that is football.

Osmand also gave Celtic more than Tounekti did when he came on. That does not necessarily mean Tounekti had a bad game. I thought his getting subbed last night was more about the guy being asked to do things which are not naturally part of his game.

When he was caught completely wrong-footed in the penalty area for the first-half goal, that was not because he is a bad footballer. It is because Tounekti is not a defender, and that is not what where he was supposed to be in the first place.

If you want to examine how Celtic ended up with an attacking player performing defensive duties in his own penalty area, then look at the tactical structure around him.

Kieran Tierney was excellent overall, but the way Celtic pushes both full-backs so high up the pitch means attacking players are regularly required to cover the space behind them. Those players do not have a defender’s instincts, so why are we surprised when they can’t quite get the job done?

The same problem exists on the other side, perhaps even more. Colby Donovan plays far too high up the pitch for the amount of protection Celtic has behind him.

There was one moment in the first half where he was crossing the ball from Benfica’s corner flag. A simple pass out of defence then left their player running into an enormous space down our right-hand side with nobody anywhere near him.

That is not primarily an individual error. It is coaching, tactics and structure.

And that is exactly why I am reluctant to savage individual players for problems which the system itself is helping to create.

At the weekend, I would probably go with much the same back four which started against Benfica. There are not many alternatives.

Dane Murray made a horrendous mistake in giving away the penalty, but that is what can happen when you throw an inexperienced young defender into a game against opposition of this quality. You cannot demand that young players learn at the highest level and simultaneously expect them never to make painful mistakes while doing it.

The midfield is where the decision is more complex, but I think it was made easier last night.

I would play Callum McGregor, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Mika Baur all day, every day. I thought the McGregor-Oxlade-Chamberlain combination looked significantly more promising than most of the midfield combinations we have seen this season, and Baur is the obvious player to complete that three.

Then I would put Osmand wide left and Hassan on the right. Up front, take your pick as far as I am concerned, but Durán is scoring goals and right now that means he gets the nod.

The negatives from last night could fill another article, and there is one issue in particular which I want to come back to properly, so I am not going to disappear down that road here.

We knew Celtic needed central defenders. We knew we needed better options across the back line. We knew we needed a defensive midfielder. We have all said it often enough.

The club chose not to address those problems properly, and we are seeing the consequences. So very little about the negative side of the Benfica performance surprised me. What surprised me were the positives.

I did not expect Oxlade-Chamberlain to improve the midfield as much as he did. I did not expect Hassan and Osmand to give us that much more energy and threat in the wide areas, and I did not expect to come away from this game thinking there might actually be a version of this team worth pursuing.

That is the part I want to hold onto.

I said after the Motherwell game that it was one of Celtic’s best performances of the season, and there was one reason above all others: movement off the ball.

Football has to be fluid.

Watching a static system where players hold their positions and the ball is eventually lumped towards a solitary striker was horrible, and we saw far too much of that, particularly in the two games against the club from Ibrox.

Those performances should be seared into the memory of everybody who had responsibility for the coaching on those days.

Against Motherwell, the movement returned. Players pulled defenders out of position, created space, created chances and got shots on target.

Crucially, we saw plenty of that again against Benfica. Celtic hit the woodwork three times. We had opportunities, the forwards looked mobile and their movement created space for themselves and for other players.

In the attacking third, I thought Celtic played well. On another night, if we keep the door closed at the other end and avoid conceding the early goal, perhaps we even get something from the game.

Because this is exactly what we thought when those new players arrived. They are good footballers. They change the dynamic of this team and make us quicker, more fluid and less predictable. The problem is that the weaknesses behind them remain.

That is the wider issue for me this morning.

Paulina is right to concentrate on Hassan and Osmand because their performances deserve attention. But I think the bigger question for O’Neill is whether he can build a structure which allows those players, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Durán to express themselves without constantly exposing the defensive weaknesses Celtic failed to address in the summer.

That is the balancing act. Because there is the outline of a good attacking side here.

There are players who can move the ball quickly. There are wide players who can beat opponents. There is a striker currently scoring goals. There is now a midfielder in Oxlade-Chamberlain who looks capable of adding some drive and presence … if and when he plays and that’s going to be the X factor of course.

But none of that matters enough if every time Celtic commits players forward, one simple pass leaves the defence exposed.

Overall, it was a poor result. Benfica are a top-class side capable of punishing exactly the weaknesses Celtic carried into Lisbon, and I never expected this to be some glorious European evening.

What I did not expect was to see things I genuinely liked, especially after the break.

That gives me some comfort, but more importantly it gives Martin O’Neill something to work with at the weekend.

He could do far worse than look closely at the team which finished in Lisbon and ask himself whether starting with Oxlade-Chamberlain, Osmand and Hassan gives Celtic something we have been missing for much of this campaign.

Movement, energy and fluency.

Players creating space for one another rather than standing in rigid positions waiting for something to happen.

The problems have not disappeared. Not in the least.

But for the first time in a while, I came away from a European defeat thinking Celtic might actually have stumbled across part of the solution.

Paulina has dealt with two of those individual answers already this morning. The wider challenge now is whether O’Neill can put those answers inside a system which does not simply create another problem somewhere else.

That is the real work. And now he has to be brave enough to do it.

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