Hamburg drew at home yesterday with Bayer Leverkusen to leave both team in joint top spot in the Bundesliga with 21 points from nine games.
Thursday’s Europa League tie becomes more daunting by the day with confidence low amongst both players and supporters approaching the visit of the Germans.
Facing the leaders of the Bundesliga would have been a tough enough task for the better Celtic side’s of recent seasons, I doubt if there will be any Celtic supporters confident of a home win on Thursday.
Yesterday’s draw with Leverkusen was the first points that Hamburg have dropped at home this season with their away record almost as impressive with two wins and two draws from four matches.
Hamburg did of course lose spectacularly away to Rapid Vienna 3-0 in the opening match of the Europa League but that appears to be a one off blip in an impressive start to the season by Bruno Labbadia’s side.
Of more concern than the form of Hamburg is Celtic’s own performances with the goal-less draw against Motherwell allowing Rangers to move into top place.
Although it was the first time this season that the team had failed to score the result wasn’t really surprising against a young, fit and organised Motherwell side who took a point from Celtic without being outstanding.
For many supporters it was a distressing return to last season which was hardly surprising since none of Tony Mowbray’s summer signings were in the starting line-up.
Despite that fact Mowbray knows that more is expected from HIS team, yesterdays side should have had enough about them to break down a resolute but limited Motherwell team.
After the match the Celtic manager came up with some impressive statistics about his side’s performance but again that sounded more like a throwback to last season when Gordon Strachan would produce some stats to deflect from his side’s shortcomings.
A massive effort is now required if Celtic are to remain in contention to qualify from the Europa League, but again, expectations are low amongst a support that has had very little to get enthused or excited about over the last 18 months.
Elsewhere in the Europa League Rapid Vienna travel to meet Sturn Graz in the Austrian league, Rapid are currently in third place domestically, a win away to fourth placed Graz would take Rapid to a point behind Salzburg and Austria Vienna.
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