Surprising Heroes As Celtic Beat Feyenoord. But That Was What We All Needed.

And so it ends, another Champions League campaign for which we have taken unbelievable stick in spite of some good displays. We flirted with victory on several occasions and surrendered leads.

We had a disallowed goal against Lazio where we thought we’d won the match late, and then promptly flogged it at the other end of the pitch. Tonight, we’ve got the three points, and a lot of players can take a bow. They aren’t the ones we’d have expected.

Let’s do this first; Scales, Taylor and Hart were brilliant.

Lagerbielke turns out to be the hero though. He got the winner. He put the smiles on everyone’s faces after an exceptional piece of football from Matt O’Riley.

His cross was perfect. He could have taken the shot. (I wanted him to; he’d have won me £85 on a build-a-bet special.) Instead, unselfishly, he dinked it beautifully to the back-post and you better believe I danced around like he’d scored it himself.

The media’s stupid, meaningless, “ten years since” Champions League stat was preposterous.

In reality we were talking about three campaigns without one; we beat Anderlecht in the one they take as their starting point and we’ve done it here. So, they can put that one in the bin along with whatever headlines they intended before that winner.

I said before the game that there was more at stake tonight than a lot of people were suggesting. Pride, yes. But those four important elements I talked about; morale, money, calm and credibility. We are a long way from restoring the credibility but looking back you wonder.

Had we not gone down to nine men in Holland. Had Palma’s goal counted against Lazio. You wonder if we’d been able to cut out the daft defending at home against Atletico.

Fine margins. Just as we keep saying. A fully fit squad.

A couple of decent signings, ready for that level, and we might all be singing a different song tonight. The board should not get any alibis. They didn’t come even close to giving us the best chance to qualify; if this was a car-crash as a lot of people believe, that can be laid entirely at their door.

I am thrilled for the guys tonight, and for us as much as anything.

Because we needed this, by God we needed it.

We needed to put all those nonsense stats behind us and give us a lift going into the weekend. The club would have been rocked by a bad result tonight and we’ve averted that. We’ve done the job tonight, we’ve gotten the home win, we’ve picked up the three points.

I wish we were going into the Europa; that disallowed goal against Lazio cost us that, as I’m convinced, we’d have won that one but for that decision.

But the win is what mattered tonight, and for more than just pride.

We have the domestic campaign to focus on now and we must go all out for that, with the money on offer for that Champions League spot in the next campaign. Nothing less will be acceptable. No nickel and diming, no holding back. The Asian Cup puts a clock on us and we need to have all the pieces in place before we lose the whole front line of the team.

The board is responsible for us not progressing here. Had they made even the smallest effort, it might have been enough because the margins here were very small and that little push would have made a huge difference. They cannot mess up the rest of it.

Congratulations to Brendan and the team tonight. They did their bit.