Bodo/Glimt star Elias Hagen has confirmed that they’ll approach this week’s second leg against Celtic exactly how they approached the first.
Bodo impressed at Parkhead in the first leg of our Europa Conference League last-32 clash. They managed to take a 3-1 win from Glasgow, as they stifled Celtic’s main creative threats and broke with a directness and accuracy to their play.
The Norwegians managed to stretch the Parkhead pitch really well to drag the likes of Callum McGregor out of position. From there, they quickly exploited the space available to them centrally in the final third.
And as Celtic try to come up with a plan to get themselves back into the tie, Bodo midfielder Hagen believes it’s simply a case of same again for the hosts.
As quoted by the Daily Record, Hagen said: “It’s not finished. We need to recreate the performance in Bodo. I expect Celtic will give it a real go. They will go hard on us because they need goals.
“Our only focus is on our performance. If we can play at our best level we will do well. We will not change the way we play. We have a saying at Glimt, our focus is on the performance, not the score. “If it is 1-0, 1-0 or 2-0 down, we continue to do the same thing. We want to perform well and if we do that we know we will win.
“Celtic are in the middle of their season but we worked really hard at our training camp in Spain to try and decrease any advantage Celtic might have had. We stuck to our plan and played the way we always play, no matter the opponent or the occasion. It worked really well for us. We were happy with the performance and the result. Hopefully we can do it again.”
Celtic need to come up with a new game-plan for Bodo/Glimt system
Ange Postecoglou has had a fine first season so far as Celtic manager. However, there’s no denying that last week was a disappointing failure for the club. We were hoping, and still are, to make a splash in the Conference League this year. It’s fair to say we were brought back down to earth.
Very quickly, it became evident that we had no real clue as to how to break down Bodo. We fired cross after cross into the penalty box. And for the rare ones that did manage to find a Celtic jersey, the shooting boots simply weren’t on.
But we also found it difficult to halt Bodo as an attacking threat. They consistently put their wingers and wingbacks as close to the touchline as possible. They then used their attacking midfielders to exploit the space being left in our defensive third. That’s exactly how goal number 1 and 3 came about.
If we go out with a same again approach like Bodo, we simply won’t survive this. We need to show some real adaptability after last week. We need to show that we can learn from ineffective performances and realise where we went wrong.
Not one Celtic fan will believe for a minute that Bodo/Glimt have a stronger squad of players than us. But the fact is that they’re so well organised, drilled, and know exactly how they want to play. Celtic just didn’t look ready for that approach at all.
And Bodo have made their thoughts on the second leg clear – they’re coming to do the exact same thing. Hopefully, Celtic show some new tricks up their sleeve.
In other news, Report: Celtic set to attend VAR meeting on Monday; details on what will be discussed
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