Blogs

More European struggle for Celtic?

|

Celtic lost their fifth Champions League group game at home to Anderlecht on Tuesday night but still scraped through to the Europa League. They took three points from a possible 18 and finished with a goal difference of -13, but fortunately Anderlecht were slightly worse overall. Fans may be pleased that the European adventure will continue in 2017/18 as no team can give Celtic a game domestically, but the evidence suggests Celtic will struggle in Europe’s lesser competition.

Brendan Rodgers said he was proud to finish third in a group containing PSG and Bayern Munich, but expressed disappointment at his team’s performance. “It was a poor performance,” he said. “Our technique was poor. The players could not play quickly enough and needed five or six touches on the ball. Some of them think they are Champions League players, but this is a good leveller for some of those guys to reflect on the performance and be better. “We now have a few months to put in a lot of work and there are always lessons to be learned at this level because of the players you are up against.”

Rodgers admitted that the better team won as Anderlecht were hungrier, sharper, stronger and more inventive on the night. They are only third in the Belgian league table and they played Celtic off the park. The Hoops may have beaten them away from home, but Anderlecht were in disarray at the time after sacking their manager. Now Rodger’s men are in a less prestigious competition but far bigger names than Anderlecht await them there: Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, AC Milan, Lyon and more. There is every reason for Celtic to give it their all and try to win the competition as they are looking increasingly like walking towards another unbeaten treble in Scotland, but the odds are stacked against them in Europe.

Sports betting sites offer a range of prices on the Hoops winning the Europa League, and most have them at around the 66/1 mark. That puts at least teams ahead of them in the betting. They seem ill-equipped for European football, perhaps because the level of competition in the domestic league is so poor that they cannot prepare properly and are stunned by strong opponents. There is no shame in losing to PSG, but the manner of the defeats was hard to take for Celtic fans as they simply rolled over. They are still without a home win in the Champions League group stage for more than four years and they looked shell-shocked on Tuesday night as Anderlecht totally overran and overwhelmed them.

They will not be seeded for the Europa League knockout draw and could come up against heavyweight opposition like Arsenal or Atletico. “We’ve got to have a touch of realism, there are going to be much better teams in that than ourselves,” said Rodgers. “Tonight is an example of the long, long way to go and the gap there is between the teams at the very top end of European football and even those in behind that. There’s a lot of work for us to do, we’ll analyse the performance and think about how we could be better, then we will be better in the Europa League in February.” On the evidence of Tuesday night, and the other four defeats they suffered, he really does have a lot of analysing to do.

Share this article