CELTIC’s European campaign will come to an end away to Fenerbahce early next month and their fans might now be wondering whether that will also be Ronny Deila’s last tie as manager. There is a long way to go until the Champions League qualifiers come round again next summer but, with the team bottom of their Europa League group without a win after five games, then there will be plenty of people interested to see whether the Celtic board decide to give Ronny another chance to take them into the group stage.
I wrote at the start of the season that he would be primarily judged on Europe but failing that there would be an expectation on him to win a double if not a treble. And the Celtic supporters will crave domestic success even more now that they have no European football to look forward to in the new year.
In the last four seasons now Celtic have gone from reaching the knock-out phase of the Champions League, to reaching the group phase of that competition, to reaching the knock-out stage of the Europa League, to now finishing bottom of the group stage. But it is not just about them. All of Scottish football is struggling in Europe. At least Celtic are regularly reaching the group stages which is something the other clubs are failing to do. Something has to change at some point. I’ve been writing about it for years but we just don’t seem to be able to stop the rot. We have got to be careful that as a nation we don’t get left behind and it gets to the point where we no longer have any clubs competing at the highest level.
It goes back to my column the other week when I was talking about looking at our grassroots programmes and trying to get more kids back playing regularly. We’re getting it wrong year after year and there is a snowball effect where it will just keep getting worse and worse until we finally take matters into our own hands and try to fix the game. It can’t go on like this.
Domestically Celtic will be fine. They’re a good team and will score enough goals to cover any defensive lapses that might crop up. But at European level when the quality is a bit higher and there are fewer chances for the Celtic strikers then they’ve not been able to cancel out the mistakes at the other end. Against Molde in both games they only managed one goal, and it was the same the other night against Ajax. They have been scoring in every game but not enough to turn defeats into draws, or draws into wins. When you need to score two or three goals in every game then that’s not really feasible at that level.
You cannot blame the standard of the Scottish league, though, for what happens to Celtic in Europe. They buy the players they think should be able to perform at that level. And it shouldn’t matter whether they are being tested properly in the league week to week. They should be able to compete against a club like Molde who aren’t playing in one of Europe’s elite leagues either. And the Norwegians have a smaller budget as well. So that can’t be held up as an excuse.
I thought Celtic played well in spells against Ajax the other night although you could see they lacked confidence. They have maybe started to doubt themselves at that level. They have been criticised by the fans this season for defending poorly but the two goals they lost to Ajax weren’t like that. The first one Callum McGregor gives the ball away in midfield and Ajax then get a couple of lucky breaks and score. And then the second one, when Celtic really had to chase the game, Scott Allan is dispossessed high up the pitch and Ajax sprint away on the counter. It just seems typical of Celtic’s luck in Europe this season that even when they finally look a bit more solid at the back that they still end up losing another two goals from mistakes elsewhere on the pitch.
YOU can’t blame Dundee and Celtic for trying to think outside the box with their plans to play a SPFL game in the USA but I’m not sure it’s what the Scottish game needs right now. When our clubs are struggling to make their mark in Europe and the national team isn’t qualifying for tournaments talk about American franchises and tapping into that market seems way off the mark. It would be different if it was one of the big English clubs whose players are household names over there too. There would be a demand for that. I just don’t think we’re in a healthy enough position as a nation to try to export our game right now.
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