Celtic were well and truly destroyed by Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday – that much is true.

Indeed, a little over 48 hours since Brendan Rodgers’ side shipped seven goals to Nuri Sahin’s black and machine, the feeling of both disbelief and disappointment still lingers around the club as a whole nearly three days on.

This is no new feeling, however, as the manager has been inflicted with similar defeats to the likes of Atletico Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. His predecessor Ange Postecoglou even felt the wrath of the likes of Real Madrid and RB Leipzig in his two-season stint with the club – this is not purely exclusive to the incumbent manager.

Whilst the very public anatomy of Tuesday night’s thrashing (hopefully) now firmly in the rear-view mirror, those of a Celtic persuasion need to remember and remind themselves that the club have started this campaign superbly. Indeed, out of 10 total games in all competitions, Rodgers’ side has won nine – their only loss coming at the hands of last season’s Champions League finalists last time out.

34 goals in just 10 games so far this season is an extremely positive start to the campaign from an offensive point of view. While seven out of their 11 conceded goals came during the same game, to only concede four in nine games apart from Tuesday’s horror show is some going for Rodgers and his side, surely?

Admittedly, the feeling surrounding the club presently – at least from the support online and those covering the club – has been largely negative, after what has been positive after positive concerning the manager and his players. Taking the scale and scoreline of the result away from Tuesday’s encounter between Celtic and Dortmund, was a home win all that surprising?

I hold both of my hands up: I was supremely confident that the visitors to Signal Iduna Park could get a positive result on the night. While I was wildly inaccurate in my beliefs – given the nature of the defeat – it does not take away from the positivity that was collectively being enjoyed by the masses prior to Tuesday. Rodgers had many believing that Celtic had the firepower to hurt Dortmund – the problem being they only managed that for around 90 seconds when Daizen Maeda instinctively equalised with his hip.

The Celtic Way’s data provider StatsBomb uses xG (expected goals) to calculate each shot, chance and goal to gauge the probability of an opportunity finding its target during a match. When you observe Dortmund’s cumulative xG for Tuesday’s game, it reads as being 2.89 in total – quite the overachievement, considering Sahin’s side scored seven goals.

This statistic becomes even more ludicrous when you take into account the fact that the home team were awarded two penalties – both of which were scored by Emre Can and Serhou Guirassy respectively. By default – due to the controlled nature of penalties because of the 1v1 scenario between the taker and the goalkeeper – spot-kicks are automatically scored as 0.78 out of 1.00 – a high-probability chance that the attacker is the favourite to succeed in, compared to the defending keeper.

In post-shot expected goals (PSxG for short), the 0.78 xG rose to 0.88. When you add these two totals to the cumulative xG score in total, you arrive at 1.76 – a significant chunk of Borussia Dortmund’s 2.89 cumulative score in total.

What am I getting at here, you may ask yourself? When you add up the remaining goals that the home side scored – including a hat-trick by the speedy Karim Adeyemi – the cumulative xG score is 1.13. To convert a total of five goals from this lowly xG sum is some going, which perhaps points to a degree of sympathy needing to be dished out on Celtic’s behalf, due to the freak nature of this display of German efficiency.

I must underline this point clearly: I am not exonerating Celtic from all of the blame here. Tactically, the Scottish champions were all over the place versus statistically, the fifth-best team in Germany last season, which allowed the latter to register 14 out of their 17 total shots on target, resulting in a six-goal advantage. Pragmatism has been the word of the week for Celtic, something that Rodgers may have to adapt for the next leg of their European adventure away to Atalanta.

Still, it is encouraging to hear that those Celtic players involved in Tuesday’s harrowing result are getting it out of their system. Record-signing Arne Engels told German media after the game: “It wasn’t our best game; I think everyone could see that.

“The good thing is that our next game comes quickly and it’s up to us to show again that Dortmund was just a bad day and that we are still in a good mood.”

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Meanwhile, Kasper Schmeichel – who kept the score down despite conceding seven on the night – revealed how he copes with every result in football, regardless of the scoreline. He said: “That’s life, that’s football. This game has an incredible way of bringing you back down to earth sometimes. This is a lesson we have to learn from.

“Throughout my career, I’ve always had a rule where I allow myself to feel how I feel until midnight. That’s whether it’s joy from winning or devastation from losing but after midnight we move on.

“Now it’s all about Ross County.”

This sentiment was echoed by Engels and Schmeichel’s manager, who did not downplay the gravity and scale of Dortmund’s victory over his side but turned his attention to Sunday’s detour to Dingwall. He said: “It was a tough watch, to be honest. We weren't quite at our best, and they showed why they're a top, top team.

“We got punished tonight, but we will learn from it for sure. Obviously, it's the first defeat in a long time but it's a heavy one. The best team won by a long way.

“We can learn from it and get going again at the weekend.”

Despite the nature of the result, it would seem as if Celtic have now moved on from Tuesday’s game completely, with all focus turning to Ross County this Sunday in the Scottish Premiership. If the club can record another win to continue their perfect start to the league season, then much of the negative feeling surrounding the club’s European exploits will surely evaporate – or at least quieten down.

‘One game at a time’ – that must be the slogan going forward for Rodgers and his Celtic side…