If Celtic Get Half As Many Chances At Ibrox As Red Star Missed Last Night The League’s Over.

I sometimes read our media half convinced that the audience are the targets of some giant spoof. It seems impossible for it to be anything else, because they surely cannot believe some of the words that they are putting down on the page.

I’ve felt that way all day today, as if a game took place last night in a parallel universe.

Today you have some incredibly over-excited people claiming that the club across the city turned in some sort of brilliant performance instead of getting out of the Red Star Belgrade two legged tie barely alive.

To some that will sound preposterous, but I think the way those two matches went makes it even more ridiculous that folk think they were brilliant.

At Ibrox, Red Star had the ball in the net twice and missed a penalty.

The stats for last night don’t paint the picture of a plucky away performance but one they were lucky to escape without being on the end of an absolute doing. Here are the key stats, to give you some idea.

Red Star had 12 shots on and four shots off target last night, forcing McGregor into a string of excellent saves.

They tore the away club apart every time they went up the park.

The Ibrox club got four on target and scored with a deflection … the Red Star keeper was barely tested in the course of a game where his team played most of it in the opposition half.

Watching Red Star’s abysmally wasteful forwards I pondered what a Leverkusen or Barcelona or Atalanta might do to them in the next round. Of course, they got Braga.

But another idea, even more appealing, niggles at me and it’s this;

If they turn in such a “brilliant” performance at home in the league against us as they did last night, and they allow us that many chances – and we ripped them to shreds at Parkhead – we will brutalise them and end their league challenge.

If we do it at Hampden, we’ll end their domestic season at a stroke.

The media will continue wetting itself over the prospect of the Ibrox club travelling to Seville – oh how the city must be looking forward to that, eah? – but they shouldn’t really get their hopes up.

A better side than Red Star would have put their lights out last night, even accounting for a 3-0 first leg deficit.

If we get that many chances against them, it’ll be a cricket score.