Thomas Pettigrew | Sports
Celtic put themselves into a very difficult position in their Europa League group after falling 1-2 to Molde FK of Norway on Thursday.
Things started badly as centre-back Jozo Simunovic had to be substituted after 9 minutes with an injury, the situation was made worse after Celtic had 2 goals disallowed for offside and then, to make things even worse when Molde went up the other end and scored.
However, Celtic did manage to pull it back through striker Leigh Griffiths and then, just before half time Molde scored again. Then, to rub salt into the wounds Nir Bitton, an Israeli defensive midfielder, was sent off late on which got rid of any hope the fans had of a late comeback.
This leaves the Glasgow side in a precarious position in the group meaning they need to win both games left in the group in order to progress to knockout stages of the competition.
The remaining games in the group are quite difficult as firstly, we welcome Dutch side Ajax to Celtic Park and then followed up by a hard away trip to the Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium in Istanbul to play Fenerbache.
Overall, against Molde Celtic simply were not good enough for the most part although at time there were flashes of quality in my opinion the best player in a Celtic shirt was most definitely young left-back Kieran Tierney, but the poorest player was the Englishmen Tyler Blackett. This opinion is seemingly shared by the Norwegian manager Ronnie Deila who originally subbed on the loan signing from Manchester United to cover for the injury to Croat Jozo Simunovic. However, this didn’t go to plan as Blackett was later substituted himself due to an extremely poor and disappointing performance.
