Celtic won last night in the Latvian capital to progress to the playoff round of the Europa League and that’s really all you can say.
It was a dreary 90 mins display as the hosts sat in with virtually their whole team behind the ball seemingly trying to take the game to penalties.
They never registered one shot on goal all night but that being said we did ourselves no favours as Duffy, Bitton and Ajer passed the ball relentlessly side to side to each other at around the halfway line and Odsonne Edouard up front looked disinterested all evening.
I can understand not going with two strikers when playing formidable opposition in Europe but against a team the quality of Riga it’s not really justifiable and indicates fear on manager Neil Lennon’s part in that he approaches every tie on the continent with the mindset that caution is always the best approach no matter who we’re playing.
Callum McGregor squared a glorious chance across the face of goal when he should have been looking to finish it himself and Bitton tried to pass it in when he should have buried it in what were our only real chances of the first half.
In the second-half substitute, Jeremie Frimpong who had come on for the injured James Forrest nearly set up another sub Albian Ajeti twice but the Swiss hitman scooped the ball off the line bizarrely in the first instance and then failed to make any decent connection for the second.
The winner finally did come in the 90th minute of action as Mohamed Elyounoussi, also a sub for the ineffective Edouard, got on to another Frimpong cross and finished nicely.
And that was that!
Onto the playoff round we go.
There we will meet Bosnian Champions FK Sarajevo who triumphed 2-1 over FK Budućnost Podgorica last night and will host us next Thursday.
We played them in the 1st Qualifying round the Champions League last season and triumphed 3-1 over there after going a goal down and truth be told we should have won by a lot more that night so there isn’t too much to fear.
Of course, we will have to play a lot better than we did last night but I’m hoping that Sarajevo show a lot more ambition than Riga did.
Just a few final notes about yesterday’s game and to start with Frimpong really did produce a smashing display and made the difference in the end and I was actually quite impressed with Nir Bitton at the back where he was very composed and sniffed out any rare instances of danger.
Neil Lennon also frustrated many in the support describing it as a ‘dominant performance’ which of course it was from a possession perspective but not in terms of creating clear cut chances though that being said when we were by defeated Ferencvaros he was slaughtered for throwing the team under the bus and now he’s getting it in the neck for the opposite approach after winning.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t as is often the way as a football manager.
So now that’s out of the way we can get back to domestic action and a 3pm meeting with Hibs at Celtic Park on Sunday.
The Easter Road side are flying with five wins, two draws and only one defeat in their opening eight Scottish Premiership matches scoring thirteen times and conceding only five.
Having jettisoned the likes of Daryl Horgan, Vykintas Slivka, Steven Whittaker, Adam Jackson and Florian Kamberi over the summer they have bought well with Jamie Murphy, Alex Gogic, Drey Wright, Stephen McGinn and striker Kevin Nesbit joining their ranks.
Nesbit was a goal machine in the lower tiers of Scottish football netting 57 goals in 78 games over the past two seasons with Raith Rovers and Dunfermline Athletic and got off to a flyer with Hibs scoring a hattrick in the first game of the season against Livingston. But he’s only hit the goal trail once since.
Others to watch are pacey winger Martin Boyle who has three goals already this season and big frontman Christian Doidge who had an impressive return of 18 goals in 38 games in the last campaign and also has three so far this term.
Having gone on a five-game unbeaten run to start off with they lost for the first time in late August going down 1-0 at home to Aberdeen but have bounced back impressively with a 3-0 win at St.Mirren and then held Rangers to a 2-2 draw last weekend.
Under normal circumstances, I’d still expect us to take care of business at Celtic Park where we haven’t lost to them in over ten years with the last home defeat coming way back in January 2010.
Since then we’ve won eight and drawn three of our last eleven home league encounters with the Leith side but this is probably the best Hibs team we’ve faced in a long time and as is the case with many clubs the absence of a crowd is really affecting us.
We still haven’t really produced that 90 mins performance yet and Sunday would be a good time to do it especially considering the opposition, their proximity to us in the league table and the fact that Rangers kick-off at 12pm away at Motherwell that day and have a chance to stretch their lead at the top to 4 points as a result.
Come on Celtic.
You owe us a performance.
....Always A Tim! 