Celtic’s Europa League campaign has certainly started in fine form, but they must be wary of what almost happened to Ronny Deila.
Not many can argue with seven points from our first three games. Celtic had the advantage of having back-to-back home games in the group. And, in a real credit to the players, they’ve managed to rack up six points out of six at Parkhead.
Every single result so far has been impressive. The battling 1-1 draw in Rennes, the dominant 2-0 win over Cluj, and the character-filled 2-1 success against Lazio. They all have their trademarks.
But when it comes to when we last started a European campaign the way we have with this one, you don’t have to cast your mind too far back. Because it was actually under Deila in his first campaign that we had a stunning first half of a Europa League group.
Indeed, back in 2014, the Hoops secured a priceless 2-2 draw in Salzburg. They then followed it up with home wins against Dinamo Zagreb and Astra Giurgiu respectively. Seven points out of a possible nine – the exact same position we find ourselves in now.
But a massively ropey second-half of the group led to us coming close to being knocked out.
Deila was fortunate to qualify – we won’t get away with the same this time
On matchday four, we secured a 1-1 draw in Astra. It was a place we really looked to nab all three from. But it was deemed acceptable. And that was because nobody envisioned that it would be the last point we would manage in the campaign.
Salzburg would come to Parkhead and take a dominant 3-1 win, before Zagreb punished us for every defensive mistake in a 4-3 loss in Croatia. It left us finishing the group with eight points after looking like we would get well into double figures.
We got away with it back in 2015. The fact that Zagreb and Astra took wins from each other whilst Salzburg bossed both of them gave us a big hand. We were fortunate to scrape through on eight points come the end.
And that’s why we can’t go thinking we’re close to qualification just yet. There is still plenty of hard work to be done before we can get too confident about where we are.
Celtic won’t get helping hand this year
The fact that Lazio have struggled to dominate the group means that eight points likely won’t be enough this time around. We have to go one better than Ronny’s class of 2014/15.
Even a point in Italy guarantees nothing. We’ve nearly collapsed at this stage before, and we must make sure something similar doesn’t happen this time around.
The start to this campaign has been eerily similar to Deila’s. Make no mistake, Ronny ultimately deserved credit for getting us out of an extremely tough group. However, it’s time to kick on and prove we can keep up this kind of form for six games – something we failed to do back in 2014.
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