Celtic will need to bounce back from their midweek defeat at the hands of Bodo/Glimt. The Norwegian champions walked out of Parkhead with a 3-1 win in the first leg of their UEFA Europa Conference League tie, meaning that the Hoops have a mountain to climb when they travel to Norway for the second leg. The situation is far from ideal for Ange Postecoglou’s side to say the least.

Celtic must have been very confident of their chances ahead of the game, having not lost since November. But that run came to a sudden end against Bodo/Glimt.

It was a combination of the Norwegian champions being extremely clinical infront of goal and a number of Celtic players just not showing up on the occasion. Their are still at least 90 more minutes of this tie to be played though.

Thus, the only thing that the Hoops can do right now is hold on to the belief that they can turn this tie around away in Norway. And that appears to be what they are doing. As reported by The Scottish Sun, Matt O’Riley said:

“We believe we can win this tie. We said it in the dressing room afterwards. We’re going to come back out and give it all we’ve got.

“It’s only one game, it’s only two goals difference and we’ve scored enough this season to know we can make that deficit up. So we’re not worried.

“We’re disappointed at the result, but we can go there, put in a performance and win the game.”

Celtic players believe that they can win this tie

This is certainly the right attitude to have about things. It is not like Celtic were at their best on the night and still outplayed by Bodo/Glimt.

There are a lot of areas that the Hoops struggled in which can hopefully be fixed easily with selection tweaks.

Postecoglou surprised a lot of fans by starting O’Riley and Tom Rogic together on the night and it clearly did not work out. Neither had good games and it also left Celtic more open to counter attacks. Starting Reo Hatate instead might have helped in that regard.

Daizen Maeda also did not look ready to lead the line in a game like this and Giorgos Giakoumakis could have made a difference.

This article was originally posted here