Martin O’Neill spoke to the media following Celtic’s emphatic 3-1 defeat to FC Midtjylland in Herning last night. Here’s everything that the interim Celtic manager had to say to the media…
Q: Can you sum up your thoughts on that, Martin?
Martin O’Neill: “It was a tough evening, there’s no question about it. We were in the game for half an hour, we conceded two goals within a minute or 90 seconds of each other and the game goes away from you very, very quickly. They score a third after seven minutes and it’s a long way back. In terms of European football, they’re a very fine side, there’s no question about it. They’re strong, physically very, very strong. It was something that I knew anyway because I’d seen them a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit disappointing, but I thought that we showed the character in the second half. We could have gone under, it could have been any sort of score but the players, I thought, pulled themselves together, pulled it round a bit and showed some character.”
Q: Yesterday you spoke about the physicality of Midtjylland, so you were aware of that. From that point of view then, how disappointing and frustrating was it in the manner to concede the goals?
Martin O’Neill: “Yeah, the goals that we conceded weren’t good but eventually that hadn’t really much to do with physicality or certainly to the goals in the sense that we left 1 v 1. I think in terms of defending, I’ve just said to the players in there, some things change in the game, other things don’t change and once a player starts to take you on, let’s say a winger takes you on at full-back, you’ve got to stop him from getting into the penalty area and you have to engage him before he gets there because once he gets in there, then he’s as safe as anything. It’s a safe place for him because the minute then you might put your foot in, you could give away a penalty. Attackers, that’s the one thing they want to do, 1 v 1s, they want to get at the players and they want to get into that penalty area as quickly as possible. So we didn’t do that very well. Then in the second goal, we had a 2 v 2 situation and we allowed the players just to come inside and then into the net. So from our viewpoint, not good defending.”
Q: Where does it leave you now in terms of the league table, the league group?
Martin O’Neill:“Right, okay, well, I suppose I probably always thought this here that 10 points would probably get you, so we’re not out of it. That’s a big lesson for us to know, to know what it takes to be a really decent European team. Midtjylland have shown that and they have good experience in the side, they’ve got really good players and they have that thing that is necessary, a bit of physicality.”
