CRAIG GORDON maybe could have come for that cross last night but any percentage of the blame allocated to the keeper would be small, given what happened with the outfield Celtic players just in front of him. The Scotland goalie was rested at Firhill on Saturday so was blameless for the Thistle goal – from their first shot on target.
AEK Athens scored three goals from four efforts. All poor defending.
Hearts got the only goal in a tight game against an understrength Celtic side – from a defensive error.
Livingston even managed a goal to somehow get away from Celtic Park losing only 3-1. They had one attempt on goal. Shocking defending.
Rosenborg opened the scoring at Celtic Park with their only real effort of the game. The return, thankfully was goalless. From a defensive error.
Gordon, and indeed Scott Bain, who he sat beside on the the flight to Lithuania, and presumably did so on the way back, must be wondering what has happened to the Celtic defending, which for the past two years, domestically at least, has been fine.
Here’s his conclusion.
“I think that everybody is every man for themselves in there. We need to get back to working as a team and make sure that nobody gets the headers in that they have been doing.
“We have to put a stop to that, we will put a stop to that. I am very confident that we will get it right and get it right very quickly,” Gordon said.
“We have been very good at that in recent seasons. We have been going on with 50 per cent clean sheets which is an incredible record. To go from that to losing goals the way we are – we need to put that right.
“But we have done it in the past. We know what we are doing wrong and we have to fix it. We will sort it out and do it quickly and get back to keeping clean sheets which we have been doing in the past few seasons.”
Looking ahead to the second leg against FK Suduva next Thursday, Gordon is confident that Celtic will be too strong for the Lithuanians.
“We are ahead in the tie but we would like to be further ahead,” he said. “We got the away goal and we will take that and look to finish the job next week.”
Three home wins over the next week or so, preferably with a few good goals going in each time and of course three clean sheets, and the entire mood around Celtic will be completely transformed.
