Hope for Hungarians, Celtic tune-up, ploughs for Tannadice

Hungarian champions Ferencvaros are seed and have home advantage tonight over Sweden’s Djurgardens for the right to face Celtic in next week’s Champions League qualification second round.  Notwithstanding that, the Swedes are likely to be far more difficult opponents.

Djurgardens are 16 games into their season, whereas Ferencvaros have played only one competitive game since June.  Djurgardens also overcame stronger opposition to win their first Swedish title in 14 years than Ferencvaros faced in Hungary; there are no teams as good as Malmo in Hungary and I don’t think I have recovered from facing them five years ago tonight, so I hope home advantage favours the Hungarians.

Last night’s demolition of KR Reykjavik was far easier than I expected.  Celtic looked sharp from the off, perhaps chastised by sitting on that draw at Kilmarnock for so long, and the wave of negative publicity that subsequently came the club’s way.  KR were awful, worse than any Scottish lower-league team I can remember facing.  Though like Hamilton, they still made chances….

Still, you can only beat the team in front of you and Neil Lennon’s men did the necessary.  If Dundee United manager, Micky Mellon, was watching, he may have asked for a tractor to plough Tannadice ahead of our game there on Saturday.