At the end of last month, looking ahead to the Miydjitlland tie, I predicted, “a Halloween movie awaits”. Home and away, Miydjitlland created few chances until late in normal time, when Celtic tired. They were unable to sustain periods of pressure and will surely not lay a glove on PSV Eindhoven in the next round. Still, we endure Halloween in July.
The young and inexperienced defenders performed well, this one was not on them. As did Scott Bain, whose confidence to drop the shoulder before playing a 30-yard forward pass, created our best chance of the game. He also made two fine saves, which makes me wonder what could have been had we never embarked on our Greek Odyssey.
Callum McGregor’s goal was sublime; he placed rather than blasted his shot, one of the few occasions we tested a keeper who never convinced. Anthony Ralston reminded us why we had such high hopes for him a few years back, while Stephen Welsh and Dane Murray outperformed expectations.
James Forrest should have put the tie beyond the Danes shortly after coming on but poked his shot wide. Within seconds, Miydjitlland were level.
Like Celtic, Miydjitlland were short of reinforcements, but started extra time with four substitutes on the field, including an 18-year-old debutant, Victor Lind. The teenager repeatedly mishit the ball whenever he got near it, but he and the other subs managed to provide what proved to be crucial energy. Celtic made only the one change, Forrest for Liel Abada, until after they went a goal down in the 94th minute. When energy sapped from ever-busy Ryan Christie and David Turnbull, the writing was on the wall.
Even though Celtic closed the game unable to pass out of their half, Ange Postecoglou stuck to his game plan. Teams on their way out of a cup invariably go Route One in the final minutes, not so this time.
I am sure none of us had Champions League expectations; we are not at PSV Eindhoven level, but Europa League group stage qualification is crucial for financial, competitive, coefficient and recruitment reasons. That would have been achieved with a win last night. Two qualification rounds now have to be negotiated, you have more fraught evenings ahead.
I remain hopeful the squad we have on 1 September will be significantly better that that available last night. Whether that will be sufficient to take the Champions League bounty available to this season’s Premiership winners is another story.
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It would appear that the consensus opinion is that DD reason to control Celtic is to reach the promise land of the EPL.
Why.?
An ego trip ,? To sell up and make a profit .
Why does a Billionaire at 70 years of age want more money .
Greed ? Ego .Look at me I am so clever .
Strange that there has been no response to being called out by the guy from South Africa.ie The house of cards .
RT @ 11.45
Our structural weakness is that we are very dependent on our matchday income.
That is why the CL was so important to us
If we fail this season the season ticket sales could have.
If that happens we are in the financial doo doo.
The board need to keep the support on-side.
They are not doing a good job of that at the moment.
If the season ticket sales go south then the team will follow it.
We are paying very high wages for very poor performance.
That will take a lot of changing.
NB @ £22K pw must be a joke.
yaaas. got a pass into CP on 8th and i am arriving in scotland off the ferry on 7th. there is a God
TIMMY7_NOTED on 30TH JULY 2021 11:18 AM
I’m only suggesting we support the players during the matches and moderate comments on specific players in the social media. By all means criticise the running of the club in every department. In fact I’m encouraging widescale protests to get the current board out, new board in, new coaches in., support for Ange’s vision. But while we have specific players building their confidence or at least not destroying it is in our best interests.
GO TELL THE SPARTIM on 30TH JULY 2021 11:20 AM
I really hope we don’t panic buy a GK or buy a cheap option just because we paid over 4M for Barkas who is not any time soon going to be first choice. From what I’ve seen of Buta on YouTube clips he is fast, passes accurately, can beat his man, swing in good corners and cut the ball back accurately. Of course it is all carefully curated and didn’t show anything about his defensive abilities, powers of recovery etc.