Sometimes it’s great to be proved right.
This isn’t one of those times.
As predicted Celtic were pretty emphatically swept aside by Red Bull Salzburg in the Red Bull Arena last night.
Like most, I had approached the game with little to no belief that we could get something due to a combination of our opponent’s red-hot form and our own indifferent performances thus far this season. That plus the fact our record away in Europe is generally God awful.
So I was pretty shocked when after about 90 seconds Odsonne Edouard got the better of Andre Romalho and then finished expertly after a hopeful ball over the top from McGregor.
Thereafter we actually played the game pretty well with a good defensive shape and looked pretty tasty at times on the break.
We reduced Salzburg to some speculative shots from distance and right before half-time we looked to have increased our lead after another stampeding run at their goal from Edouard ended up with the same player scoring again after Salzburg keeper Alexander Walke saved well from a James Forrest effort but alas French Eddy had strayed offside.
Then came the second half and well…………….as the title alluded to we completely capitulated.
Salzburg went through the gears and we got deeper and deeper with Craig Gordon saving well from Dabbur and you hoped we had weathered the storm but then bang on 55 mins the same man was left standing alone in the box and with Jack Hendry marking thin air five yeards away he received a cutback from Hannes Wolf and swept it home for the equaliser.
From then on out there was only one team in it and wave after wave of attack resulted in a second Salzburg goal as Japanese internationalist Minamino almost waked in with Boyata missing wildly with a sliding challenge and Hendry again taken to the cleaners.
An inevitable third came when Dabbur swept home a penalty after Forrest was adjudged to have taken down Andreas Ulmer with 18 mins to go. It looked harsh, to be honest, but what the hell Forrest was doing in that position in the first place is anyone’s guess and it very much was a winger’s tackle.
Substitute Junuzovicat smacked one off the post late on and Celtic provided little to nothing going forward in the whole of the second half so it was a relief to hear the final whistle.
Performance wise Leigh Griffiths was an empty jersey all night, Ntcham was absolutely wretched, Lustig continues to add weight o the belief that he is a spent force and Hendry as previously stated is lost in a Celtic jersey.
We desperately need Benkovic back in defence and sorely missed both Rogic and Brown, the latter especially in the second half as the team looked absolutely rudderless.
Yes, we didn’t expect a win or even a draw and yes Salzburg now remain undefeated at home since November 2016 in all competitions – which included rattling Lazio 4-1 in the quarter-finals of this very competition last season – so on the face of it, there is no disgrace.
But they were nowhere near the level of the Champions League teams we’ve faced in recent years ie: Barca, PSG, Bayern Munich etc yet in the second half we folded against them in almost identical fashion.
Brendan’s record in European football at the club is pretty poor, to say the least.
It currently stands at 14 wins from 36 matches for a 39% win percentage with 14 losses and 8 draws. In those 36 matches we’ve conceded 55 goals and scored 54 but it’s away from home where it really comes eye-watering.
You see on the road that was our 18th away tie under Brendan last night of which we’ve won four with five draws and nine defeats scoring 18 and conceding a pretty remarkable 36 so an average of two a game.
Too often we looked disjointed, confused and hopeless at the back and it’s been going on for three seasons now with no end in sight.
Our next two Europa League games are a doubleheader against RB Leipzig with the first game two weeks next Thursday so three weeks to try and get the likes of Benkovic, Rogic and Brown back and try and find some form as well as an actually feasible gameplan for playing away in Europe.
This really is turning into one long hard season.
....Always A Tim! 