Tomorrow night Celtic will limber up for a Europa League clash with Leipzig, or Red Bull Leipzig to give them their full moniker or even RasenBallsport Leipzig e.V. if you’re going to get technical.
Whatever the hell you want to call them the fact is that it’s a ‘must win’ game if we want to maintain any hopes of European football after Christmas.
There has been a general malaise about Celtic in European football so far this term. Indeed you could’ve said that about the season as a whole but since thumping St.Johnstone 6-0 just over four weeks ago we seem to have kicked on big style domestically with five straight wins scoring a pretty incredible 23 goals in the process with only two conceded. That’s made even more impressive by the fact we’d only scored 10 in our previous eight matches on domestic soil.
We are in another League Cup final and are just one point behind Hearts at the top of the League with a game in hand.
So safe to say the worm has turned.
Of course in Europe though, it’s another story. Having cruised through the first few Champions League qualifying rounds we were disappointingly eliminated by a pretty bang average AEK Athens side and then struggled away against Lithuanian champions FK Suduva before a comfortable win at Celtic Park secured the group stages.
It was a tough draw but after squeezing past Rosenborg on matchday one we have looked decidedly uninspired on the road in our two away games against Salzburg and Leipzig.
So uninspired in fact that we now require a win tomorrow night to stand a realistic chance of continuing onto the Last 32. Indeed a defeat and we’ll be out if Salzburg win or draw in Norway – which let’s face it they are pretty much guaranteed to do – as that would put the Swiss on an unattainable 10 or 12 points whilst we could only match Leipzig’s 9 points but would be out on the head to head.
It’s pretty incredible that we find ourselves in this situation of possible Europa League elimination after only four group games. I mean I’ve grown accustomed to us getting skelped in the Champions League but there you are up against top quality in the likes of PSG, Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Financially they exist in a different stratosphere and although we are still somewhat outgunned by the two Red Bull teams the gap shouldn’t be unbridgeable. But in the two games, we’ve been up against them so far we’ve been pretty easily swatted aside.
Against Salzburg, we played the perfect European away game in the first 45 mins as we scored early, looked difficult to break down and almost had another on the break just before the half-time whistle. In the second half though we inexplicably changed it and lost 3-1 going on five or six. Away in Germany a fortnight ago we similarly looked decent for the opening half an hour and could have been in front before capitulating just before halftime and from there we meekly saw out the rest of the game.
Brendan’s record in home competitions is of course sensational. Only six defeats from 108 games with every domestic tournament he’s entered ending in victory. He has an 84% win ratio which is pretty incredible. However, on the continent, it’s been a different story.
Very different.
Brendan’s current record stands at a mere 14 wins from 37 matches with 8 draws and 15 defeats. A 38% win ratio. Quite a drop.
Yes, the standard in Europe is better than domestically. We know that.
But as Red Star Belgrade proved on Tuesday night against Liverpool there are ways of taking down a financial leviathan.
The problem is we try and apply our domestic tactics to our continental opposition and that’s the equivalent of taking a knife to a gun fight or in the case of the Champions League a sword to a nuclear arms race.
Just look across the city as a pretty bang average Rangers team have gone unbeaten in 11 matches in Europe and though I suspect that record-breaking run will be ending pretty soon it just goes to show that with the right tactics good results are possible.
Tomorrow night will see the return of several key players such as impressive central defender Filipe Benkovic, James Forrest – who’s already racked up nine goals this season – and most importantly midfield playmaker Tom Rogic. All three were desperately missed in the away game and will be vitally important against our German visitors.
There is, of course, an elephant in the room though. That being Leipzig themselves. They were in impresisve form coming into the last match and since then…….well they’ve continued to do pretty well with two back to back goalless draws away to Augsburg and at home to Schalke 04 followed by last weekends 3-0 away thumping of Hertha Berlin. As a result, they sit in fourth place in the Bundesliga only one point behind Bayern Munich and Borussia Mönchengladbach and five behind unbeaten leaders Borussia Dortmund. They also won 2-1 away to Hoffenheim last week in the second round of the national cup and have suffered only one domestic loss all season, that coming in the opening day to Dortmund.
So that doesn’t bode well but there is salvation and it’s the fact that their three best players won’t feature as according to the Bundesliga website Forsberg (groin), Poulsen (muscular), and Werner (foot) all won’t make it. The thing is though that none of those three featured in the home match either and it made little difference but we were of course shorn of the three I mentioned above.
In summation, we’ll be stronger and they’ll remain without their three-star players with Werner missing being a particular bonus as he’s scored four times in his last two matches.
Our record at home in Europe recently has been impressive – five wins and one draw in the last six – but the record against German clubs on the continent is pretty horrific winning only three of 23 encounters and none of our last 10 (D3 L7).
Scary stuff, however, I take comfort in our recent form, our returning players, the personnel they’ll have out and if we can deliver anything like the kind of intensity we produced against Bayern Munich this time last season which was the last time a German club visited Celtic Park then maybe just maybe we can win this one and resurrect the Europa League dream.
It’s a big night for Celtic but an even bigger night for Brendan.
....Always A Tim! 