Celtic 0 Valencia 2
Goals from Cheryshev and Sobrino either side of the interval gave Valencia a well deserved win at Celtic Park and left the Scottish Champions heading for the European exit door this time next week.
Twice Celtic were caught in possession and the defence was then caught unable to keep a line. First it was Izaguirre and then Simunovic – both of whom would probably not have started had Brendan Rodgers had his full strength squad to choose from.
Valencia arrived complaining of tiredness but they hemmed Celtic in and after a relatively promising start, the home side struggled to get out of their own half.
And under constant pressing high up the park by the La Liga side, who a few weeks ago were two up in the Nou Camp, mistakes started to creep in.
Scott Brown had three or four misplaced passes consecutively and it seemed to have a demoralising effect on the team.
Looking back on the game it is hard to pick out any Celtic player for praise for a decent performance. Bain was error prone in his passing, the back four looked hesitant and the rest of the team just couldn’t get into the game.
The European performances from Celtic under Brendan Rodgers remain poor with just a few notable exceptions, ie Anderlecht away. This season in particular has been particularly poor.
The Champions League route was wide open to Celtic and they were knocked out by a rotten side in AEK Athens. We predicted they’d be pointless in the Champions League and that’s the way it turned out.
We were only involved tonight, let us not forget, because RB Leipzig tried to game manage their ‘dead rudder’ game against what they thought was a hopeless Rosenborg side. The Germans made nine changes to their side, took the lead, missed loads of chances and got caught by a sucker punch near the end.
Salzburg were busy in Glasgow handing out another European lesson to the Hoops while that was going on.
The Celtic support turned up in huge numbers tonight and got a decent light show to talk about on the way home. Those lights, and the bonus paid to the Chief Executive are the biggest cheques that have been written this season.
Bayo, our modest £2million purchase in January was down at Cappielow during the week playing against Falkirk Reserves and he looked way short of being ready for the first team.
If we strip out the players on loan from the team we are well short of where we need to be to complete in the Europa League, never mind the Champions League.
Tactical flexibility though is something that ought to be considered. Surely if the opposition think we might use a long ball to get a knock-on and play the second ball then they would not have so many players pressing high up the park.
If we are not going to do this we need to be better on the ball and that means the cheque book is used for new players. That quality costs more than Celtic can muster and their is no stomach in the boardroom to speculate to push on in Europe.
So where does that leave us? Going nowhere fast in Europe but domestic success looking likely.
There are some tricky fixtures coming up, Kilmarnock away has been difficult to say the least on our last few visits and the Zombies are pinning their hopes on another stumble to let them back into the title race. Then there’s a trip Tynecastle after what should be a more straight forward task of playing Motherwell at home.
Hibs away in the Scottish Cup is another tough test. We’ve also lost on our last few visits to Easter Road and they’ll be looking to end our run of domestic cup wins and kill the treble treble.
Thousands of Celtic fans are heading to Spain next week to support the team. They will be a credit to us all as usual but they are being short changed by a cautious board who reckon we’ll keep coming back regardless.
Maybe someday soon we’ll get sick of being taken for mugs.
