It wasn’t particularly exciting but Celtic got the job done with a pretty comfortable 1-0 win against a pretty sedate – or is that limited? – Rosenborg in Trondheim.
There were 800 travelling fans in Lerkendal Stadion last night and allegedly the best part of 13,000 + home supporters too according to the official attendance but the ground only holds 21,405 and looked about a third full to me so I think someone was being tricky with the figures.
Ultimately the Norwegians needed a miracle to go through and clearly had one eye on this coming Sunday’s national cup final where they have a chance for a rare domestic treble though despite some prematch predictions they actually fielded more or less their full strength team.
Celtic though dominated from the start and were all over the home team in the first half. Despite the constant peppering of the Rosenborg box chances were few and far between until keeper Andre Hansen saved from a Tom Rogic effort from the edge of the box that the Aussie should have done better with on 22 mins. Not long after James Forrest also broke through and tested Hansen with a left foot drive that was touched over the bar.
Forrest himself turned creator as Celtic finally opened the scoring as he crossed it delightfully to the back post from inside the box to the unmarked Scott Sinclair who had all evening to line-up his header and put it home with ease only minutes before halftime.
The second half was not quite as comfortable but the hosts never actually registered a shot on goal – the same thing happened at Celtic Park the last time we played them – and though it was frustrating not seeing us turn our dominance into more goals, in the end, we cruised to a pretty easy three points and indeed our first win away in the Europa League in 20 attempts.
For Brendan Rodgers, it was only his fifth win in twenty away games and arguably his most important. Two of those away wins have also been in Trondheim so he’ll be wishing we could play them every season.
Talking of stats this means that Rosenborg have one win from 23 Europea League matches and have failed to keep a clean sheet in their last 29 Europa League games, conceding 59 goals in the process. I thought we had it bad in Europe.
We should be beating Rosenborg and we did and it puts us on 9 points and second in the group behind Red Bull Salzburg going into the final match against that very team. The Austrians secured their place in the last 32 and kept up their incredible unbeaten run so far this season in all competitions with a 1-0 win at home over Leipzig. Many, including myself, had suspected a carve up when the Germans somehow started as favourites but it was a Norweigan ironically in Fredrik Gulbrandsen who did Celtic a favour as he scored the only goal in the final 15 minutes.
So all that means that in 13 days at Celtic Park we only need a point to progress though it’s almost impossible to set your stall out for a draw at home in Europe so expect Celtic to go for the win. As for Salzburg, it’ll be interesting to see how much this unbeaten run means to them as they may elect to rest players or decide to try and keep it intact.
Either way, it’ll be interesting and most likely heart stopping to boot.
....Always A Tim! 