Ange Postecoglou today dismissed the media narrative that his Celtic side have lost goals in Europe due to slackness.
The Hoops are in action against Bodo/Glimt tomorrow night in a Europa Conference League last-32 clash. It’s certainly shaping up to be an interesting evening too with Bodo having yet to have kicked off their domestic campaign.
So far, Celtic have shown that they can find the net against some of the best Europe has to offer. In our Europa League group stage campaign alone, we rattled home 13 goals in all 6 games. 8 against the teams that qualified for the last-32. However, defensively we just couldn’t keep the back door closed with as many as 15 conceded.
That’s ultimately what sent us dropping down into the third-tier competition. However, Ange wasn’t willing to put that down to anything other than the quality of the opposition. The manager was speaking at a press conference attended by 67HailHail today, and when asked by the BBC whether the number of goals conceded represented a slackness, Ange bit back:
“No, that’s misrepresenting the picture of our group. It’s not slackness that concedes goals against Bayer Leverkusen, it’s quality. There’s a big difference. Like I said, we started our campaign and we lost narrowly in Spain against a side currently 3rd in La Liga above some significant teams. Then we lost 4-0 here and through that we realised that we can create and score goals against good opposition but also that our mistakes will get punished.
“The mistakes weren’t from slackness, it’s just the difference in quality. But Ferencvaros are no mugs either and we beat them home and away. We beat Betis here. We lost to Leverkusen but we scored goals against them.
“I think for us what we saw through that group is that we definitely improved, the players gained belief, and we showed that our football can make an impact against even the very best teams.”
Celtic approach will always lead to opportunities for rivals
Unfortunately, that’s one of the downsides with Ange’s Celtic approach. Every system and formation has its weaknesses. From a Celtic perspective, ours comes with glaring gaps at the back that the best teams will be more ruthless in exploiting.
Carl Starfelt, Stephen Welsh, and Cameron Carter-Vickers all played a part at the heart of our backline in the Europa group stages. However, the stone cold fact is that when you’re up against that level of quality, you’re going to concede opportunities and goals.
Nobody would’ve gone into the UEL groups wanting to concede 15 goals. But you had to admire how clinical Leverkusen were at Parkhead. They took the vast majority of their goalscoring opportunities. Meanwhile, we missed a host of chances that would’ve seen us be much more competitive in the game.
That didn’t come to fruition, but nobody can say it isn’t an exciting brand of football Ange plays. It gets supporters off their seats and it’s what we want to see from a Hoops team at Parkhead.
Tomorrow night when we face Bodo/Glimt, nobody will be demanding we sit back and protect any lead we may end up achieving. It’s all about going and getting goal number 2 and 3 with Ange. Yes, it comes at the risk of increased opportunity on the counter for the opposition. But that’s just what you have to accept.
We were ruthlessly undone by better quality sides in the Europa League. There’s no point pretending it was down to our own slackness.
In other news, “It’s something extra” Giorgos Giakoumakis’ class explanation on why he signed for Celtic
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