Goals no longer matter

Rovers had about 65% of possession at Celtic Park on Thursday night and as a result are now in complete control of the tie.

UEFA has made some preposterous changes to European club competitions in recent years, but the rule in which the team scoring the most goals is declared the winners has not, as far as I know, been altered.

It’s just that it has appeared that way following our 1-0 victory over the in-form English club. Snide remarks about Celtic struggling to overcome a mid-table Premiership team are completely irrelevant and totally petty.

Rovers beat English champions Arsenal at Highbury last week. The Celts defeated Basel at home in the Champions League qualifier and Valencia at Celtic Park last December. The Swiss champions and the Spanish champions departed Liverpool with a draw and a win respectively in recent weeks.
 

So, what does that all say? Performances varied in all of the above games, but the bottom line is goals are what win matches and goals are what matter most in football games.

If not, then Rangers would not have equalled our nine-in-a-row record of Scottish titles. In the penultimate season of that run, we lost one league match all season and there were very, very few folk who did not admit Tommy Burns’ side were by far more entertaining than Walter Smith’s counter-attacking team.

But we were of course reminded that possession was not what mattered but goals. They won the league and football style mattered not a jot. It certainly did not soften the blow for us. On Thursday night, Blackburn had plenty of the ball, and despite the fact that Celtic were very poor, especially in the first half we still created the two best chances in the game, and of course put one of them away.

Even the most partisan among our support will admit that some of our traditional flair has been lost under Martin O’Neill. Unfortunately it’s the price we’ve had to pay to stop another period of Huns domination.

That’s not to say we never play with any of our traditional style. Bordeaux, Ajax, Juventus, Valencia and several wins over Huns all spring to mind. However, when we played them off-the-park a few weeks ago we still only got one point for our efforts.

The result was all that mattered. I would rather we played with a certain amount of flair all the time, but we have to be realistic, sometimes games are won when you are not the better team.

I for one think it’s a positive sign when you can play so badly and still win. All of Souness’s bullshit after the match about the outcome belied his actions at full-time when he was a paragon of ecstasy. His attempts at putting a brave face on kid no-one though. He was clearly sick. But given his atrocious record at Celtic Park, he should have been happy with the narrow defeat.

Then we had the bleating of Blackburn skipper Garry Flitcroft, a man more recognised for his exploits as a serial-shagger than his football ability, mouthing off too. He claimed Henrik Larsson done nothing and was a big disappointment. He only scored the goal right enough!

We have two major advantages going into the second-leg at Ewood Park. The away goals rule and the fact that we will not perform so ineptly again. The UEFA Cup is a two match affair.

We outplayed Nottingham Forest at the City Ground in our first-leg tie in 1984 and came away with a scoreless draw. My confidence at progressing was shattered when they took the lead at Celtic Park, and went on to win the tie.

More recently we outplayed Liverpool in the competition in both legs. Again we drew 0-0 in the away tie, but the 2-2 draw at home when Steve McManaman scored that fantastic goal cost us dearly. We’ll see who is shouting the odds after we visit Ewood Park.