It’s hard to describe my feeling since Tuesday night, disappointment, embarrassment, anger, all of them and more. Celtic seem to find a way of building up your hopes, then crash you down to the ground again, they have done it so many times. I remember 1989 versus Partizan Belgrade at Celtic Park, after losing the first leg 2-1, we only needed to score one goal to go through on away goals, we scored five goals and went out on away goals. One even further back was against MTK Budapest of Hungary in the semi-final of the European Cup Winners Cup in 1964. Celtic went to the away leg with a 3-0 advantage (now where have I seen that before) and managed to lose 4-0 in the Nep Stadium, I think Jinky got sent off but my memory isn’t that good.
There are so many similarities against Lask, and let’s be clear, Lask are a good side, and thoroughly deserved to go through, and should have won by more, but it also showed that we are not as good as we thought we were. I thought we were handling the game well until the first goal, we were decent in possession, and should have been at least two goals up. But Benji Nygren made a lazy pass, I believe it was meant to go back Vilji, but it was light and lacked direction, Benji had up until then had a great start to the season, but that bad pass was crucial, and I think if we had got to half-time we would have seen it through.
I can’t put all the blame on Nygren, although his bad cross into an almost empty box contributed greatly to the third goal. Trusty at the second goal was far too passive, he should have put the player and the ball in the stand when on the shy-line. The fourth goal was pathetic marking, and naïve defending by Dane Murray. The fifth goal was criminal by Luke Mc Cowan, getting caught in possession just outside our own box is schoolboy stuff. I’m pretty sure all the players will know they have failed to deliver when the opportunity was there. It’s a massive blow for the whole club, financially it’s horrendous, in terms of trying to bring in some quality new players, the absence of Champions League Football will be a big hurdle to get over.
To put it simply, after the game Callum Mc Gregor could hold his head up, and from the starting eleven, he was the only one that could, it definitely showed we lack quality all over the pitch, it also showed we lack pace all over the pitch, and aggression as well, Callum is a fantastic player, but we need a Scott Brown or Roy Aitken in that midfield. I also thought our substitutes came on and didn’t improve the team, in the first half Kasper Hogh played up on his own, he managed got a couple of good opportunities, but failed to score. I would have taken the big man off and moved Duran through the middle, with either Hassan or Osmand out wide, we need to have some pace up top.
It’s hard to find any positives from Tuesday night, because there aren’t any to find, but we can’t just roll over and hope everybody will feel sorry for us, we need to do something about it ourselves. Remember Seville in 2003, well we were only there because we failed to beat Basel in the CL qualifier in 2002, but we had a fantastic journey, beating some really good teams on the way to the final, including Liverpool and old Big Head Souness and his Blackburn team. So we have a week left of the transfer window, we need to get the highest quality of players we possibly can to come to Celtic, we need to make Celtic Park a “Fortress” once again, and then set the target for the season of winning the Europa League, I know that’s a big ask, but so was winning in Lisbon, we proved a lot of people wrong over the years, we didn’t get to win 122 Major Trophies by “Not Believing”
Glasgow still is, and always will be Green & White.