AND now the really difficult work for Celtic begins.
At 5pm today, UEFA will begin the always convoluted Champions League draw, which means it will finish around midnight, and then we will know the three teams Brendan Rodgers and his players will have to take on.
Celtic will fear nobody and neither will they be feared. But they believe.
They have set their sights on at least third place and to do that they will have to improve on last season’s three draws and three defeats.
Seven points tends to be good enough for a team to drop into the Europa League and that is most likely going two require two wins against teams with more money than the Scottish champions. It’s far from easy but there is nowhere else the players want to be.
“We will always land a big gun but it doesn’t bother me who we get,” said Leigh Griffiths whose selfless night ended with a goal in Astana. “We didn’t do ourselves justice in the opening game last season in Barcelona but now we’re a year further down the line.
“We recovered well last year and now we’re a stronger unit. The manager has made a massive difference.
"He’s brought quality to the club and there is a calmness with people on the ball who can all see a pass.
“I’m sure the manager will strengthen again but you can see that the boys here can go forward and score goals.”
The key will be Glasgow. When in the past Celtic have qualified out of the group stage it’s been down to their home record which over recent years has been far from great.
Griffiths knows this. Hyperbole aside, Parkhead is one of THE great European venues, too many say this for it to be a nonsense, and the players must take every advantage from this if they are going to make a fist of the six matches.
“Celtic Park is one of the best arenas for Champions League. We get 60000 through the gates and you look at the names of players from the past who have played there,” said the striker.
“I get Goosebumps thinking about it never mind going out and playing under the floodlights on nights like these.
“No-one will look forward to coming to Glasgow. Manchester City thought they could turn us over but they didn’t and we were unlucky not to get the win. Then we down there to take on the English champions and went toe-to-toe with them.
“Barcelona have been to our place and lost and last year we made it hard for them after they hammered us at their place.
"We’re looking to progress but we can’t be complacent. The first leg against Astana was close to the complete European performance. The second leg left room for improvement.
“We’ll look to do ourselves justice in the group stages and hopefully still be involved come Christmas.”
Mikael Lustig has been here before. The Swede has had some of his best Celtic game in the Champions League and is delighted the always complicated qualifying is over for another year.
"This is really big for everyone involved in Celtic," he said.
"What can we achieve? First of all we need to see what kind of group we get. We are quite satisfied the way we played in the last campaign but we still want more points, especially at home.
"But we know that we can go away from home and play good football and create chances.”
"Last year was a really hard group but to be fair it doesn’t matter what team we’re going to get, we’re going to face teams with a lot of money and a lot of quality so it’s going to be hard.
"But of course you could get an easier group than we’ve had over the last couple of years.”
We have been really tested, the full squad, we’ve had a midfielder at centre-half, right wings at number ten and as striker. So the games have been quite hard but we’re through and that’s the main thing.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel