Blog

There were a few different things to take away from the humiliating first leg home defeat to Bodo Glimt.

The main one being that we still have a long way to go, and we aren’t as good as we thought we were, which is a worry because this is the Conference League, its not the Champions League, which we hope to be competing in next season, and God forbid because the score lines could get scary.

Another obvious thing to take away from the first leg was that Matt O’Riley and Tom Rogic cannot play in midfield together, at least at this level. Maybe certain home games domestically we can get away with it, but certainly not in Europe.

That’s why I was stunned when I saw both players lining up again away to Glimt tonight, and it turns out my concerns like a lot of other supporters were justified, as Celtic were completely ran over the top of in midfield in the first half before both players were taken off at the interval.

As soon as Bodo got the ball, it’s like our whole midfield was non existent, they just bypassed them with ease, including Bitton who had a shocker first half also and left his man totally unmarked in the box for him to saunter into the box and score their second.

Ange is human, despite what some supporters seem to think, he does make mistakes, he isn’t perfect, no one is. But the mistakes he has made in the past he has learned from them. Such as playing Kyogo on the left wing in the first Glasgow derby of the season, a shocking decision, but he learned from it and didn’t make it again.

To watch Rogic and O’Riley get completely overran in the first leg and then play them away from home, in tough conditions, and expecting a better outcome, is concerning.

Another concern is that our players never trained on the pitch beforehand, with Ange choosing to do the session at Lennoxtown instead.

One of their players came out in the press recently and said Roma also arrived the day of the game and were totally unprepared for the conditions that lay ahead, and incredibly, we’ve just done the exact same thing.

Chris Sutton even said it at Half-Time, he said if he was playing he would have preferred to get a feel for the pitch the night before, so he could get used to the artificial surface, as it does play very different to a typical grass pitch.

Overall, these two legs have been extremely disappointing, but we must learn from them and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes moving forward.