Chris Sutton was at Celtic Park on Wednesday to see the Hoops go down to Lazio.
It was a gutting climax for us all as Pedro’s late winner gave the Italians a victory that their performance had not merited. Celtic had been dominant in the second half, yet were left pointless at full-time.
Like the rest of us, Sutton feels the performance was a good one. But he can’t shake the feeling that Celtic need to find a way to win and score ugly against Europe’s elite.
“I was off duty on Wednesday night and sat in the stands watching the game and it was a real sickener,” he said in his Saturday Daily Record column.
“It was beyond frustrating. Last weekend at Fir Park it was ‘typical Celtic’ when they scored a late winner. On Wednesday it was ‘typical Celtic in Europe’. That was the feeling from the fans around me. Yes, they were gutted – but it was entirely expected.
“It’s hard to be overly critical because they did play well. They deserved at least a draw but certainly not to lose. But how many times can we hear them going on about ‘learning’ from these experiences?
“When are they going to learn? The annoying part for me was this feeling they have to score the perfect goal every time. The one they did get was pretty much perfect.
“But how about an ugly goal at this level? Like the one Lazio got to equalise. I get the way Celtic like to play but there has to be some variation.
“They don’t have the players suited to playing any other way than on the deck, so you can’t criticise them for not whipping in crosses. But it does make them predictable when there isn’t any variation.”
Sutton’s comment on perfect and ugly goals is one we made after full-time on Wednesday. Our opener was a thing of beauty, crafted by Daizen Maeda and Matt O’Riley, and finished by Kyogo Furuhashi.
Lazio’s equaliser was not a beautiful goal. Their winner had a fair bit of quality about it but again arrived from a Celtic mistake.
I’ll be honest in saying I was pretty deflated after the game in midweek. Losing big games is hard enough but it’s ten times worse when you know the team deserved so much more for their efforts.
There is definitely a feeling of ‘what can go wrong, will go wrong’ for us in Europe right now. The only way to get through that is by forcing a win.
A few days down the line and I’m feeling a good bit better about things. Celtic have shown over the past 12 months that we can match teams like Lazio, Feyenoord and Shakhtar Donetsk, in terms of performance at least.
The issue is that these teams seem to find a way to win tight matches, while we invariably lose them. I’m confident we’ll get that big Champions League breakthrough win during this campaign. After that, anything could be possible.
In other news, the Celtic vs Kilmarnock status as severe weather warning issued for Glasgow
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