Celtic took a pretty big step into the second qualifying round of the Champions League last night with a comfortable 3-1 away win in the Bosnian capital.
I watched it with a very mixed crowd what with the ‘Rangers’ game having kicked off at 5pm and several bluenoses deciding to hang around the bar to watch the glorious hoops. God love them. They know quality when they see it.
After a poor opening 30 mins where we dominated the ball but looked sluggish and lackadaisical at the back, we found ourselves 1-0 down when Mirko Oremuš slashed home the opener for the hosts at close range after sloppy defensive work resulting from a corner that was needly conceded in the first place by Jozo Simunovic.
Previous to that there had been a few warning shots as the Bosnian champions hit us on the break but the goal served as a timely kick up the backside as Celtic immediately went forward with increased vigour and on 35 minutes Mikey Johnstone smashed home a wonder strike from outside the box to put us back on level terms.
Soon after James Forrest rampaged into the box and should have put us ahead but used his right foot to try and arrow it home as opposed to his left to pass it in and it whistled over the bar.
In the second half, Celtic picked up where they left off and Odsonne Edouard ran at the Sarajevo back line who crumbled in his wake before he placed the ball home and then substitute Lewis Morgan crossed in from the right flank and it fell for another sub, Scott Sinclair who backheeled home beautifully.
There could have been more but you can’t really complain with three away goals and a week today Celtic will be enormous favourites in the home leg to get the job done.
Our likely second qualifying round opponents – barring an unfathomable disaster next week of course – will be Shkendija of Macedonia who triumphed 1-0 away at Estonian Champions Nomme Kalju but let’s wait until we get this round over the line before we profile them a little bit more. Safe to say though they are around equal or maybe even slightly lesser quality than Sarajevo so not much to fear there at least.
All in all last night we improved as the game went on in pretty horrible weather with the rain pissing down all night though such conditions won’t be alien to anyone who’s played regularly on these shores.
If anything we looked more comfortable in it though hopefully, we get a balmy summers evening for the home leg next Wednesday so as to encourage more season ticket holders to come out for it which might be hoping against hope considering the overcast and wet summer we’ve mostly had thus far.
New signing Bolingoli-Mbombo looked comfortable at full-back though rolled his ankle and had to be taken off as a precautionary measure on 57 mins. Fingers crossed he’s okay for next week with Tierney still in the recovery room.
Now we move on to the friendly at the weekend against Rennes where we should get a glimpse of new centre back Christopher Jullien and a runout for the returning Leigh Griffiths.
....Always A Tim! 