Valencia 1-0 Celtic. We weren’t bad!

Right, first thing’s first, the glorious failure narrative frustrates the life out me and ultimately we’re out at the same stage in Europe as we were last season.

HOWEVER

That wasn’t as bad as I was expecting , and the team deserve credit for going out and giving it a go last night instead of being passive and letting the match pass them by. With some composure in front of goal, we could have scored as well, but the fact we troubled Valencia at times was encouraging.

In fact, their manager had admitted that until the sending off, Celtic were the superior team.

Now, I am aware there is no silverware handed out for controlling a game for 35 minutes, we went out mainly down to our dreadful showing at Celtic Park last week, and I can only wonder if it’s a pressure/mentality thing. Did we play well last night because we were written off, and no one fancied us ? Did it play into our hands ? Probably.

A combination of that, Valencia being slightly complacent and our system being spot on stopped a doing last night after we went down to ten men.

What frustrated me was when Oliver Burke burst through twice on goal and made the wrong decision each time, when domestically, he’d more than likely have smashed the ball on target at the very least. This is where wee things like that add up to be a mentality thing in my opinion, and we NEED to be tested on a weekly basis in the league to be able to step it up in Europe, but that’s never going to happen.

I hope we can build on that showing last night in Europe, but it will be harder without our various loanees we currently have on our books, not to mention a few players who did excel last night, such as Jozo Simunovic and Jonny Hayes, are not likely to be at Celtic Park next season, with another rebuilding job to be done.

Up next, it’s Alan Burrows FC at the weekend and I cannot see anything other than us strolling to a 4 or 5-0 success.