A frustrated, disappointed Fran Alonso spoke to Celtic TV after the Hoops lost out to Glasgow City in the top of the table clash at the Excelsior Stadium in Airdrie yesterday afternoon with the only goal of the game coming from Chinchilla, so often a thorn in Celtic’s side, on 64 minutes.
Celtic had much the better of the first half with both Ross and Jacynta passing up excellent opportunities. Menglu was terrorising the City defence down the left hand side but was often the victim of some punishing challenges, one particularly cynical one resulted in a yellow card being shown.
Strangely Celtic seemed to be out of sorts after the break and when Flint was hit in the face by the ball, the balance of the game swung away from Fran Alonso’s side as Chinchilla burst forward coming in from left to find the bottom corner in off the post. Liv Fergusson didn’t have the same physical strength worry with Glasgow City defence and maybe Celtic could have brought on a defender and pushed Caitlin Hayes into an emergency striker role?
⚽ABAIR TADHAL DO GLASGOW CITY ⚽
Fantastic play from @maireadFultonxx and Chinchilla securing the goal… City take the lead🔥🔥🔥#SWPL@GlasgowCityFC pic.twitter.com/ZdXTbgtPcH
— BBC ALBA (@bbcalba) March 5, 2023
The Celtic manager picked over the bones of the second defeat of the season to Glasgow City which combined with theRangers winning 1-0 against Spartans means that Celtic are this morning in second place six points behind Glasgow City and one point ahead of theRangers who are in third spot in the SWPL1 table.
There’s one more round of games before the split – Celtic are away to Hibs next Sunday – and then the top six will all play each other home and away.
“A very disappointing result. I thought it was an even game, although I would say we were the better of the two teams. We played the better football and created better chances but we know that they are a threat on the counter attack and they have one very good action to score and they get the three points,” Fran Alonso said.
“At the end of the day that is the most important thing, they managed to get the win at our home ground, that’s the first time we conceded a goal at home all season so it’s disappointing.
“I cannot fault the Ghirls really, they tried their very best. I thought that the energy was fantastic, but today we couldn’t do it and it’s a big disappointment,” the Celtic FC Women manager added.
“It’s only one more game, we’ve made it tougher for ourselves in terms of wanting to win the league but it is still in our hands. We have to play them twice and we are still in second place. It’s still in our hands just a little bit more difficult.
“I thought that everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We lost Tash, she had just created a great chance, we lost a goal and we had to adjust quickly with players coming on who had not properly warmed up so the circumstances in the game could have been better.
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“Overall we have to congratulate them, they won and we have to try to learn from the little bits that we could do better but the attitude and the energy were there, maybe a little more quality was needed to get three points.”
Now for Alonso it’s all about bouncing back against Hibs next weekend in the final match before the split where both Celtic and theRangers will be looking to take points from Glasgow City to narrow that 6/7 point lead.
“Yes of course we can feel sad and reflect, today and tomorrow, then when we come back in for training we’ll only focus on Hibs. We go again, it’s still a fantastic season for us but it’s disappointing to lose our second game (in the league) this season.
“Our stats, our numbers are very good this season and we still have everything to play for and we believe we are good enough to keep fighting for the league. We believe we will be up there come the last couple of weeks of the competition.”
🎥 The manager spoke to @celtictv after this evening’s defeat.
🍀0-1🔶#CELCIT | #SWPL | #COYGIG pic.twitter.com/YamYuRB9P1
— Celtic FC Women (@CelticFCWomen) March 5, 2023
