Scottish Clubs Finally Did It In Europe. Celtic Fans Should Be Glad Of That.

I don’t know whether Hearts have what it takes to go through to the Group Stages in Europe; I know that Hibs are very much up against it and that it will take the performance of a lifetime for them to progress. I do know that last night both of them got results, and that those results were better for the game here than anything we’ve seen from either club in a while.

It will be obvious by now that I am not going to talk about the Ibrox club in the context of Scottish clubs in Europe. They are the anomaly – hey, we can all use that word when it suits us – in that their fate is tied to ours in an inverse fashion to the others. In short, whereas I wish every Scottish club in Europe well and always have, I want them to get beat all the time.

Hearts and Hibs did very well, and the Easter Road club in particular. Whilst Hearts had the better result, I thought Hibs’ initial result in Europe was so horrendous that you could easily see Luzen knocking them out. They were excellent in the first leg and got the draw in the second and so they’ve done well whether they get through against Villa or not.

It’s easy to say that Rosenborg are not the footballing force that they were, and have been for years. But at the end of the day, had they dispatched Hearts there would not have been few voices raised to call their failure a disgrace. That they got such an outstanding result last night is a testament to what Scottish clubs can do when they play with a modicum of belief.

I want them both in the Group Stages of Europe. I want Aberdeen in the Group Stages, and they are guaranteed to be, in one competition or the other. How I would love to see them in the Europa League, and there are obvious reasons why.

The co-efficient is one of them, but I’ll be honest and see it’s the least one of them. Our failures to progress in Europe down through the years have been our own damned fault. Some of the teams who have knocked us out operate with smaller budgets and lesser footballers. Some of them, we shouldn’t have been troubled by for one minute.

Automatic group stage football? This season Ibrox’s path was blocked by Servette and they now face PSV. But who could they have gotten in the draw? Not some European super club but Panathinaikos. These are ties we ‘d have been expected to win. Even PSV and Marseille – the club the Greeks beat – should not have presented us with insurmountable obstacles.

When it comes to Europe, we’re our own worst enemy. Rodgers today confirmed the worst suspicions of everyone who has complained about this window; he works with what this board, locked into the “strategy” thinks he ought to have, not what he needs to take us forward. And this board is content to have us at the draw. Progress? That’s only a few more quid in the bank.

So the co-efficient is not my primary focus. If we were a tiny bit better it wouldn’t matter what Ibrox did or what other clubs around us are able to do. We would face qualifiers, sure. But the calibre of teams who have beaten us in those qualifiers in years past has been shameful, and we’re the sole architects of that. Still, wel done Hearts and Hibs on getting us some points.

No, I’m concerned with something else, with the money that these clubs will make for playing in Europe, and especially for competing in the Groups. They will make more from that than we will for winning the SPFL title, and that money will be invested out on the pitch. These teams will improve in terms of their quality, and that will make our lives harder … but also better.

We need that challenge. We need teams to give us a tougher time of it. One of the reasons we so often get found out in Europe is that our domestic opposition is so far behind us. This won’t bridge the gap but it will close the gap, and if that means we need to be just that little bit better to stay in front of them, then that’s the little bit that might make us better elsewhere.

Congratulations to both clubs from Edinburgh on their results last night. I would love to think they can both join Aberdeen in playing Group Stage football … but right now I’m just glad that they beat what was in front of them and made us all walk a little taller today.