Celtic’s youth side are looking to do a Spartak on PSV Eindhoven in tonight’s Next Gen Series match at Firhill.
Two single goal defeats mean that tonight’s clash is a must-win if the hoops are to progress beyond the group stages.
PSV have shown their class by beating Aston Villa and Sporting Lisbon at home but Stevie Frail is confident that it can be third time lucky for his side.
“We’ve had two games and probably only did ourselves justice in half of each match,” the Celtic coach admitted. “That’s not good enough and we need to get in a full 90 minutes against PSV.
“They’ll be tough opponents but we’ve shown enough in both of our games that we’re a match for anyone in the group. Tonight we need to start in the proper fashion and get the three points that we need.
“Looking at the games afterwards the players know that we should have taken something from each match, particularly the game with Aston Villa.
“We watched that game again yesterday afternoon, the players know that it could have been a different result if they’d played in the first half like they did in the second half.
“There’s lots that we can take from both matches, we can take confidence from these matches but they have to put that into practise against PSV.”
Frail added: “I watched PSV last week against Sporting and they won 1-0. We know that we are up against a side that play the Dutch way, we’ll need to be at our very best to take three points.
“Dutch football is highly rated, their philosophy is to get the ball down and pass it around which will make for a good game.
“Playing in front of a good crowd will help our players, it gives them a lift and lets the supporters see who is coming through into the manager’s first team plans.
“We have a lot of good players that are wanting to make the step up, that’ll happen when they are ready and the Next Gen games are a great exercise in their development.”
Tonight’s match kicks off at 7pm with payment at the turnstyle.
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