My second time trying to get this up today with wordpress behaving about as shambolically as our defending on Thursday night.
So here goes.
Celtic capitulated on Thursday night in rather spectacular style eerily similar to our exit against Cluj back in August.
Just like that night we showed that we couldn’t manage an away goal advantage and completely shot out ourselves in the foot.
After a dominant first 45 mins where the visitors refused to show their hand, we then blew it six-minutes into the second half.
Jozo Simunovic had a ‘Jozo moment’ and was mugged by Michael Santos who ghosted in to score after Chris Jullien fell over trying to mop up the mistake.
What looked like a formality turned into panic stations as we searched for an equaliser and it looked like it wouldn’t come before out of nowhere Ragnar Sigurðsson handled the ball and VAR intervened to award us a penalty.
Odsonne Edouard stepped up cool as aa cucumber to duly convert with aplomb and with eight minutes to go, we were back in the tie.
But only two minutes later we completely threw it away again as we lost our shape in the excitement of the goal celebration and Pep Biel scored to effectively end the tie.
By the time Dame N’Doye sauntered through our meek backline to make it 3-1 a few minutes later that was only to add insult to injury and complete the embarrassment.
A campaign that showed so much promise after a fabulous showing in the group stages has ultimately ended with a whimper and no different from our exits in the past two years at the Last 32 stage.
To make matters worse the tournament has completely opened up too thanks to the shock exits of the likes of Benfica, Red Bull Salzburg, FC Porto, Sporting Lisbon, Ajax and Arsenal during the week.
Indeed Copenhagen have been drawn against İstanbul Başakşehir in the Last 16, hardly a world footballing superpower, and will fancy their chances.
Even Rangers made it through quite comfortably against tougher opposition earlier on Wednesday evening.
It means we’ll have a free week of rest leading up to the next Old Firm game at Ibrox whilst they play on the Thursday night but that’s scant consolation.
Anyway, it’s over so it’s back to domestic action and a match against St.Johnstone in Perth on Sunday as we pursue a ‘Quadruple-Treble’.
Considering we’ve won our last seven ties against them by an aggregate of 26-0 we should be confident and indeed when we played them at McDiarmid Park last we were 3-0 up within half an hour.
But the Saints are in good form with only two losses in their last 15 domestic ties and are unbeaten in their last six.
They’ve scored sixteen goals in their last eight matches so are in fine fettle going forward and Stevie May has relocated his scoring boots with five goals over that period.
They’ll have nothing to lose and will be hoping to take advantage of our European hangover.
We’ll revert back to 3-5-2 with Griffiths coming back in to partner Edouard.
On reflection, we should maybe have stuck with that formation on Thursday night but everyone has a degree in hindsight.
Anyway, it’s in the past.
A great chance to go on our longest European run since 2004 has been lost and like I said with the draw opening up the way it has who knows where it could have taken us.
I guess we’ll just have to get back to winning loads of domestic trophies until the European rollercoaster comes back around again in five or six months.
What a ride it was.
Just a shame we had to get off it so much earlier than hoped for.
....Always A Tim! 