We Don’t Get Knocked Out By Good Teams – And That’s Exactly Why LASK Worries Me

The Draw Is In. LASK. Linz.

So there it is.

Celtic have been handed LASK in the Champions League play-off round, home first on the 18th or 19th, then over to Linz on the 25th or 26th.

Two legs.

One place in the league phase.

And the small matter of 40 Million Pounds sitting on the other side of it.

On paper, we should be beating LASK.

But Celtic never does easy ties in Europe.

So Why Am I Not Celebrating?

Because I’ve seen this film before.

And I know exactly how it ends.

Are we going to trust a goalkeeper nobody’s fully sure of again?

Are we going to concede one soft, preventable goal that undoes the whole tie?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about Celtic in Europe.

We don’t get knocked out by good teams.

We get knocked out by our own weaknesses.

Every single time, the holes we papered over all summer get ripped wide open the second the level rises.

Same story. Different opponent.

Kairat Almaty. Need I Say Any More?

Let’s start with the freshest wound.

This exact stage. Last season. Kairat Almaty.

Two goalless draws.

Out on penalties.

Read that back slowly. Kairat Almaty knocked Celtic out of the Champions League.

And how did we go out?

Because we couldn’t score.

We lined up without a natural striker and asked Daizen Maeda to lead the line—a brilliant footballer, but never a number nine.

180 minutes of European football. Zero goals.

We didn’t lose because Kairat was better than us.

We lost because we had a striker-shaped hole and spent the whole summer pretending it wasn’t there.

Barkas Against Ferencváros

Then there’s the goalkeeper.

Cast your mind back to Ferencváros.

Vasilis Barkas between the sticks.

A keeper we all knew wasn’t up to it, thrown into a knockout European tie anyway.

The nerves. The flaps. The sinking feeling every time a cross came into our box.

We knew. Everyone knew.

And it cost us.

That’s the part that stings the most. It wasn’t a shock. The weakness was staring us in the face and we walked into the tie carrying it anyway.

Simunović And Copenhagen

And who could forget Copenhagen.

One Jozo Simunović moment.

One error.

One European night unravelling because of a defensive mistake we’d been getting away with domestically for months.

Are you starting to see it yet?

Goalkeeper.

Striker.

Centre-half.

Three different windows. Three different weaknesses. Three exits.

But the same root cause every single time.

This Is The Part That Worries Me

Because look at where we actually are right now.

We’re still not entirely sure who our number one even is.

Kasper Høgh has just walked through the door carrying the weight of the world, still to kick a competitive ball for us.

Alistair Johnston looks like he’s on his way out, and the right-back cupboard suddenly looks bare.

Sound familiar?

Every summer we tell ourselves this is the year we finally get the squad right before the qualifiers.

Every summer we drift.

And every summer, Europe arrives before we’re ready.

Here’s Where I Land

LASK are there for the taking.

They genuinely are.

If Celtic turn up as the vastly superior side they are on paper, we go through, and nobody remembers the name LASK by October.

But that’s the entire point.

We are never beaten by the LASKs of this world on quality.

We’re beaten by the weaknesses we knew about in July and chose to ignore.

So no. I’m not scared of LASK.

I’m scared of us.

Fix the holes. Sort the midfield.

Do that, and this is a routine two legs against a poor side.

Don’t, and it’s already LASK chance for many supporters’ faith in this Celtic team.