Ki Sung Yeung may be the man to solve Celtic’s spot kick misery.
The Korean smashed a third minute penalty high into the net to give Celtic the lead against Udinese.
Although the Italians equalised from the same penalty spot in the closing minutes Ki’s penalty was one of many bonuses for Celtic against the joint leaders of Serie A.
Neil Lennon’s team selection threw in Victor Wanyama, Mohamed Bangaru and Adam Matthews for their first European start while Lucasz Zaluska made his first appearance since the loan signing of Fraser Forster.
With less than two seasons experience of the club Ki was one of the most experienced Celtic players on the park and is looking forward to further penalty kick duty.
“If I play, I hope to take more penalties,” he confirmed. “I have been practising them and I think that is important.
“I just have to make sure that I don’t mis-hit them because I know how important they can be for the team.
“I slipped a little bit as I hit this one, but that was just because of the pitch. I could see the ball was heading for the goal, I wasn’t worried.”
The equaliser for Udinese completely changed the complexion of the group leaving Celtic three points behind the Italians rather than level on points after two matches.
Ki added: “We showed to everyone we’re capable of winning games in this group. Now we will try and show that again in the next match against Rennes.
“The boys really played well tonight. I was impressed by everyone in the team but it was a ridiculous decision that cost us.
“We should have won this game and got three points. We had chances, so did they, but it’s very disappointing to end up at 1-1. I thought we were going to win.
“It was our game and I felt that we played well right from the start of the first half. We did well in the second half and stayed very organised and composed.”
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Disappointing to lose a goal so late…but in fairness everyone could see it coming…they stepped up the tempo in the 2nd half and ran the game. Our midfield was swamped & Lennon put on a non scoring striker !!
Left back continues to cause us major problems in Europe, Mulgrew is clearly not good enough while Ledley is just wasted there. Quite why Lennon put the rookie Matthews to left back and the more experienced Wilson to right back is beyond me….neither is fully comfortable at left back but surely Wilson’s extra experience would have given him the nod.
Asking Hooper to drop back to midfield after running his guts out up front didn’t help us shore up the midfield.