DANE & OUT
CELTIC 1 COPENHAGEN 3
No disco? No, this was a disaster and given Celtic’s superiority during the opening 45 minutes of the first leg it’s going to take some while to sink in.
Lennon had left Leigh Griffiths out of his attack and gave Kristoffer Ajer the run of the right flank from the full-back position. It was the 4-3-3 formation that had served the boss so well on his travels.
But, despite this familiar set-up, this was not the Celtic Lennon will have expected. Nervous, cagey and subdued, they spent most of the opening five minutes pinned back into their own territory.
It was almost as if, with an away goal in the bank from the first leg, they couldn’t decide whether to stick or twist. So they ended up doing neither.
It took a good 10 minutes for the shackles to start slipping off and when they did James Forrest very nearly unlocked the Copenhagen defence with a drop of the shoulder and a twist of the hips. The winger looked up to spot Ajer on the gallop inside the box and picked the Norwegian out with a crisp through ball.
It required a perfectly timed but last-gasp intervention from skipper Carlos Zeca to charge Ajer’s shot down and divert it behind for a corner.
The longer it went on the more the home side began to settle into their stride. Chances came for both Forrest, who failed to connect with a flashing cross at the back post, and for Mohamed Elyounoussi, who fired over the top moments after bursting to life down the left.
Then came a freakish escape for Copenhagen when keeper Karl-Johan
Johnsson managed to feather the ball on to the base of his right post with his fingertips after it had ricocheted towards the net off the chest of Tom Rogic as the Danes attempted to clear a dangerous cross from Greg Taylor.
And yet there was always the whiff of danger every time Copenhagen’s players sprang out from the back.
It felt as if they were only one accurate final pass away from cutting through the Hoops defence. But there was a blow for the visitors before the half-time whistle though when frontman Mikkel Kaufmann limped off, replaced by Michael Santos.
And just as they were getting to grips with this alteration they survived two huge scares, first when a horribly sliced mis-hit from Edouard dropped out of the sky and spooked keeper Johnsson into dropping it on his own goalline.
A disbelieving Elyanoussi reacted quickly to jab it across an empty net but it found no takers even though the merest touch would have sufficed.
Then with seconds left in the half Edouard made a proper connection with a cross and thudded a header towards the target only for the keeper to come up with a fine reaction save.
At the start of the second half Celtic’s pressure intensified with ref Artur Dias waving away a loud penalty appeal and then chopping off what looked like a perfectly good opener for a foul on the keeper just when Callum McGregor was rifling a drive into the roof of his net.
But the anger was followed by sheer
disbelief at the other end when, out of absolutely nowhere, Celtic gifted a their guests with nightmarish goal.
There was no danger at all until Jozo Simunovic, who had looked shaky all night, attempted to roll a pass back to Forster but came up hopelessly short.
Sub Santos raced on to it before the keeper could get close and attempted to set up N’Doye for a tap-in to an open goal. Christopher Jullien threw himself in the way to shut that down but the ball broke back to Santos and he took a touch before smashing a shot home from eight yards.
It was a catastrophic concession and all at once this old place was plunged into a state of blind panic.
Lennon responded by switching to a back three but by now there was less than half an hour left to turn this tie on its head. Celtic’s performance was deteriorating as quickly as the clock was ticking down. It was time to send for Griffiths.
Within seconds of his arrival as a replacement for Elyounoussi the striker had spun on to a bouncing ball inside the Copenhagen box and with a swing of his right boot he must have thought he’d arrived in the nick of time to save the day.
But although he could hardly have